Happy One Year Anniversary to Me!!!

It seems like just yesterday.

My life had been uprooted. I had just buried and said goodbye to one of the most important people in my life. The woman, who gave me my first Shirley Temple curls and had spent weeks and hours oiling my hair back or touching my edges up with a burning hot comb, had died.

My granny was old school. She remembered everything she learned in beauty school decades ago when they were "teaching" young black women how to do hair. In 2008, when I was interning out in D.C. and stressed about graduation, I went to a salon about a block from Howard University's campus and cut my hair into a very short bob. I loved it -- my granny, in her on special way said, "Mmhm, that's nice, but you shouldn't cut it again. Let it grow out."

It's not simply the one-year anniversary of my decision to go natural, it's also the one-year anniversary where a significant part of me died. They say, you shouldn't change anything drastic about yourself after losing a loved one. But I decided my hair needed a-changing. I don't know what my granny would say about the tightly coiled naps that have grown far further than the nape and edges of my head. Or the wavy and "uncontrolled" curls I've been flaunting over the past year.

There's a certain connection black women share with one another when we decide to share our hair. That connection is made deeper between mother and daughter and even grandmother and granddaughter. The centuries of history and feelings we've wrapped around hair have made this connection inescapable. As women, and not just black women, there are memories and feelings tied to who and when and what happened during a simple hair styling moment. I can remember ever single person who ever styled my hair better than I can remember all the people I talked to on the phone last week (Editorial note: I'm a journalist, so granted, it's probably a lot of people... but still.) Why this is, I don't know. I do know that a few weeks ago I started to think about my granny's hands. The way she placed one hand on top of the other on her lap. The movements of her hands as she spent 20 minutes laying out one of my curls as I sat in the kitchen getting my hair done -- itching to get up and move about as a child. The clicking of the curling irons in my ear and the unique way she held them. Even when arthritis was starting to bother her, the way she swept the hair around the thin, hot, metal rods never changed.

I don't know what my grandmother would think of my hair now. Don't get me wrong, there's no way in the world I would have my granny back on this Earth to suffer the way she did like the last few months of her life, but I think I want to know more than ever what she thinks, because it's the first change in my life that she's not a part of, however minor of a change it is. I think she would be happy that I was taking care of my hair. That I was learning how to manage and grow it. She would be happy that I was no longer putting chemicals in my hair and destroying it.

On another note, on this 1-year anniversary, there's a few thank you's I should send out. The first being to my curly buddy Fredricka, who after some needling and prodding convinced me to try going natural. Dricka turned me on to the natural community and even got me experimenting with Miss Jessie's. The second thank you, as a whole goes out to the Curly Nikki community forum. When it was 3 a.m. and I was detangling knots out of my hair, there were ladies there who were giving me suggestions and advice for how to manage my tangles (detangle under water, use a conditioner with plenty of slip).

When I set out a year ago to "try something new with my hair", I didn't know how long my "experiment" would last. The fact is,I had never seen MY hair before. Certainly I had only been receiving relaxers since I was 15, but even before then, I was always under a hot comb, braids or using thick oils that didn't allow moisture to penetrate the hair shaft. My mother says, "In another year, your hair will return to how it was when you were a little girl." Thick and long. And while that is something I look forward to, there's another component I want my hair to embody....healthy.

If anyone has managed to make it through my extremely long blog post, I just want to say thank you for joining me on this roller coaster. There are a few pictures of my hair I've recently taken that I'm going to post below. And with it being a year, I'm going to take Labor Day to post my length check and do a before and after of my hair blown out.

 Look at all the new growth!! A little length perspective. 

 I tried a new twisting method this week, using bobby pins to curl my ends.