3 Days Until the BIG CHOP!

So I decided that since this is such a significant turning point in my life, I'm going to attempt to blog about it.
I'm 30 years old and have been relaxing my hair for the last 20 years! (Save for about a year in the early 2000s where I attempted to go natural, but gave up and went back to the lye.) I just got tired of feeling as though my hair had to conform. I have hated the fact that I have to use chemicals that burn my scalp, have an unpleasant smell, and eventually break my hair off. I would say the last straw was _________, but I have several last straws so I will list them:

• My hair had gotten so long and thick during my last pregnancy, I couldn't wait to see what it would be like once I got a perm. Afterward, it was beautiful and straight and actually came down past my armpit, but then it started breaking off. I had this area in the back that felt as though it didn't even take the relaxer and eventually, my hair broke off to about shoulder-length.
• I was so tired of hearing people tell me I needed to go to the shop and get my hair done. I didn't want to pay the money and didn't want to get stuck back in the cycle of shelling out a ridiculous amount every 6-8 weeks just so I could have hair that looked like someone else's.
• I started thinking about my daughter. She has beautiful curly hair that reaches to her waist when it's wet or stretched out. I started wondering how much it would break off and how short it would become once she decided to get a relaxer. I then realized that if I could get her to love her hair the way it is, she wouldn't have the desire to permanently alter it!

There were many other things that contributed to this decision, but it boils down to what is good for me and also, my daughter. I remember watching Claire Huxtable and looking at my mom thinking how I couldn't wait to grow up so my hair will turn into something beautiful and manageable that I could swing around. I honestly thought that your nappy hair grows out as you get older and is replaced by straight hair! LOL It's so funny looking back on it, but it is also sad. If only I had had more role models who wore their hair natural so that I could see that was an option too. If I had known about the pitfalls of using shampoo made for straight hair and the damage done by using too much heat, if only my mother had known...

The good news is now we know! I have already planted the seed in my little girl's mind that her curls are beautiful and she is special because she has curly hair. I even tried the washing/conditioning method from tightlycurly.com on her and it turned out beautifully! It looked like she had gotten a straw set. Her curls literally bounced up and down every time she moved her head. She loved swinging her hair around and kept going back to the mirror. I almost cried. How wonderful that I could get my daughter to love her hair just as deeply as I had hated mine. I was truly thankful and I told God so. Now I know that she will not hastily make the decision to permanently straighten her hair - she may not do it at all. My hope is for her to know that she has so many options, that the hair she was born with is unique and beautiful, and that she does not have to conform to the standard of another race. My hope is that she believes that what she has is good enough. My hope is that she loves herself completely.