If you're thinking about transitioning...Read this now!

So I recently had a conversation with a young lady and she was asking for my advice about going natural. She did the usual steps: 1. Admire possible hair idol's pictures 2. Asked her friends what they thought 3. Thought, "What the hell am I
going to do to transition?" and 4. Called me.

I gave her the best advice I could but here is the number one thing I can tell anyone who is making the transition...

DECIDE WHAT TYPE OF NATURAL YOU WANT TO BE!

Here's what I mean. Of course it is simply just my opinion.

To me there are different types of naturals. One type is what I call the "straight" naturals. These ladies choose to go natural and wear their hair straight the majority of the time. The benefit of being a straight natural is that your hair gets "trained" to "lay down." With this training however, you damage your texture from the heat leading to possible inconsistency with your curl pattern and possible random straight pieces. The thing is, if you are a dedicated straight natural, it doesn't matter much anyway and your hair will have more body and most likely be healthier than when you had a relaxer.

Then you have what I like to call the "curly" naturals. This is obviously the category I fit into. Here's the part though where transitioners must take my advice:

If you do not want to be a straight natural, you MUST lay off of the heat during the transition. Mark my words ladies. I can't tell you how many friends have transitioned and cut the perm only to find straight, raggedy pieces everywhere because of heat damage. You have to think about which route you want to take. There are definitely exceptions who have supernatural, heat damage defying hair, but for most transitioners, this is where they mess up. For the next few days I will feature various methods I used during my transition. Hope this helps!

XOXO