LEARNING TO TAKE CARE OF MY HAIR
Loving my curls has been a life long journey, growing up as a Bi-Racial child of the '80s and '90s there weren't a lot of hair products specifically made for African American hair or Mixed hair like mine. Back then, most stores carried only 1-2 hair products for African American hair, if that! Today, I'm thrilled there are shelves of hair products from several different brands, giving curly hair women like myself lots of options! It's a fantastic time to be a woman of color with natural women. Read my Ancestry.com results here.
My mom is white and did her best, keeping my hair braided and moisturized. Honesty she did an excellent job given the lack of information and products available. Around the age of 10-12, I outgrew wanting to wear braids, plus my mom didn't know how to French Braid, so options were limited. I started learning how to care for my hair. Boy did I do so many things wrong and right! As a teen before flat irons were a thing, I used to set my hair in pink sponge curls, to get big 'fluffier' curls or I would attempt to flat iron my hair with a curling iron, good times! I also taught myself to french braid. Growing up, I always loved my mom and sisters hair; in my eyes, their hair was easier to manage and seemed to grow so fast.
I grew up in a very non-diverse area in Northern California, where everyone was predominantly white, I tried to mold my hair to 'fit in' especially in high school. At one time I've even used a kids relaxer on my hair (a relaxer is a chemical treatment that changes your natural hair pattern and makes it straight) It's crazy the lengths I went to, to get my hair straight; or rather to get my hair to be the preconceived notion of what beautiful hair is.
There were maybe 1-2 other African Americans in my entire high school out of hundreds of kids. By my junior year, I started wearing my hair in box braids with extensions and had long braids down my back. I formed a bond with the lady who braided my hair and learned about more products and ways to style my hair, which felt so good.
After moving to Sacramento, I met one of my best friends, who has a very similar background to mine and very similar hair. We've been close friends for over nineteen years, and through her friendship, I learned to love my hair, how to take care of it, including how often to wash my hair and products to use. Taking care of my hair takes a lot of time. But I love my hair and its worth it, I am worth it.
CURLY GIRLS UNITE!
One of my favorite people I love spending time with is Kachet, she makes me laugh, and she's a great friend to chat with about all the topics. I met Kachet a few years ago through blogging; we became real-life friends; her blog is The Kachet Life she blogs about lifestyle topics, beauty, travel, and much more! When you meet Kachet, your drawn to down-to-earth confidence and curls! She's got some fantastic curls that pop! We love chatting about what hair products we love using to keep our hair healthy. We teamed up to share our curly hair journey to loving our natural curls and rocking them with confidence, our favorite hair products, and curly hair routine.
Learning to take care of your curls, isn't a one-size-fits-all model, quite honestly African American hair, Mixed Hair is beautiful, diverse, and complex; each curl, coil, and kink is unique. I'm so happy she is sharing her curly girl hair journey on her blog. This blog post is a passion project for us, we're 100% sharing what we love because we use these products all the time!
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Quite honestly African American hair, Mixed Hair is beautiful, diverse, and complex; each curl, coil, and kink is unique - Katrina