A year and a half ago.....

Just before my Grama got sick, a little over a year ago, I decided I was going to embark on an adventure. You see, I'm a Curly Girl. My mom has some wave to her hair and my dad has curl. It was passed down to me. As a little girl, leave in conditioner didn't exist. We didn't use a detangler on my baby tresses. This caused me to keep it pretty short. This is me and my siblings. My hair is actually pretty long for me in these shots.

As I grew up, no one really was guiding curly girls specifically. We were lumped in with everyone else and told to use shampoo and conditioner. In high school, I remember, they started coming out with lines of product for Curly hair. Panteen and a few others were trying to sell to a broader group. My hair was so dried out and frizzy. I just didn't know what to do with it. I ironed it to make it straight, but that was too much work. In general it was pulled up. My mom didn't have the curls I did so she didn't know how to help. It most often looked like this through high school and college.

For my wedding I used product and diffused the crap out of it. I loved it. It was springy and curly and full. Lovely, but let me tell you about then next morning. I sat in the shower for twenty minutes letting conditioner soak into my tresses to help my comb make it through the mess without ripping most of my hair out. That's how most of my formal day afters went.

This is a normal day. My hair would have been washed with shampoo and conditioner, which ever my preference at the time, towel dried and then styled with gel and left to air dry. My curls were not clumpy and shiny. They were very susceptible to the weather and would break up and frizz easily.

Something this period in my life taught me was not to touch my hair. The more I touched the worse it looked.

I was tired of not being happy with my hair and had lots of thoughts of chopping it to my shoulders. I wanted something more like this.

So my quest began slowly. I googled curly hair. I began talking to people with curls. I explored the beauty section in the bookstore. I was looking for anything that would help me in this area that I was totally lost in.

To be continued.......