After almost a year today I finally spoke to my girl Emily Cotton Top on the phone today. It’s weird how you can work with someone for so long and have no idea how they sound. Accent doesn’t travel well over blogs so I was oddly tickled to hear her American accent, naturally everyone sounds British in my head, lol!
I may not have mentioned it before but I have taken charge of my sister Tasha’s hair and we have resolved to get her to full BSL by the end of 2013. You may remember Tasha’s hair from a post I added back in May 2011.
A quick background on Tasha’s hair. She was part of the natural movement when it first became popular back in 2007. She even had a pretty busy fotki that was regularly updated.
At the time she tried to tell me about how great natural hair was but my head was still in the relaxed way of thinking so I simply didn’t want to know. It was in 2008 that I finally got into the idea of natural hair and I started transitioning.
Now when I learn something new I tend to want to learn everything there is to know about it so I became almost obsessive about natural hair, growing it, keeping it healthy, styling it etc. Actually that’s how BHI got started, just as a way to keep my thoughts organized, I never really imagined that anyone would be interested enough to read anything I wrote but hey ho that’s how things go.
Well somewhere along the line it occurred to me that Tasha actually knows lots about styling natural hair but very little about how to care for it specifically for length retention. As time went on I reached the same length as her eventually surpassing her’s and even my own expectations.
I suppose it was when I finally reached waist length that Tasha decided to take her hair seriously and learn how to care for it specifically for length retention but alas my sister is a busy teacher and has little time to dedicate to reading every article I ever wrote. As luck would have it, earlier this year, she moved to a house on the same street that I live so I offered to wash and style her hair for her every weekend and generally help her with her hair reggie.
Tasha’s hair unfortunately has remained the same length since 2011 and at some point she lost the spark that she had for natural hair styling and began wearing wigs. She eventually became way to attached to her wigs and her hair was being seriously ignored.
When I agreed to help her with her hair, the first thing that we did was to get rid of the wig. We cut it up with a sharp pair of shears and dumped it in the bin so there would be no going back, it was magical!
That was almost 3 months ago since we started and I have seen her hair transform from rough and coarse even when soaking wet to soft, pliable and wonderfully springy. All it took was 40 minute DC’s under a dryer every week for the first month.
After that we dialed it back to a wash and DC every fortnight and her hair has been thriving. She is going to join us in the protective styling challenge on BHI in a few weeks and I think she and I may extend our challenge up to the end of 2013. I know we will definitely achieve the goal that we have set out for her. Best of all though, she has restored her love for styling her hair (mostly in protective styles like twists or mini braids at my insistence until she is at goal).
She has been such a trooper and she is really learning about hair care now. It would have been a disservice for me to do everything for her so at this stage she is doing most of the washing herself with me being just the ‘overseer’ of her regimen. Today she finally mastered the art of finger detangling!
I also at her request installed some gorgeous havana twists for her. She loved them and even Otis who usually makes a point of not noticing hair, actually mentioned that she looked great! She will be wearing these for two weeks with daily misting with a leave in conditioner. I can’t tell you how proud I am at her progress and I look forward to showing you the length pictures at the end of the year!
Anyway, I’ve had a super hectic week. The weather has been so good in Birmingham that I have felt compelled to get out of the house to enjoy it every single day which means that I have been behind on my work consistently through the week. This Wednesday’s newsletter was created literally an hour before it was due to sent and I have zero posts scheduled for next week which means that I will most likely remain cooped up in the house on Sunday working.
Have a nice weekend all!
