Hello,
My name is Pti Kikó and here is my (hopefully) brief story.
Unlike most girls on their hair journey, I honestly do not remember precisely when I started to relax my hair. The earliest memory of a relaxer experience is in a hairdresser salon in the carribeans when on holidays with my mum and my sister. We both had our hair relaxed and it was a painful experience: it burnt!! I was in my early teens. Therefore, I can say for sure that I have been relaxing my hair for the last 20 years probably.
I started looking after my hair alone from then, as my mum did not have to spend time styling my natural hair for the coming week. Like most girls, I was scared of water and washed them when necessary. I remember that my hair was long though when I started relaxing them: probably about APL. Unfortunately, the lack of care got my hair to slowly (but surely) got damaged. And they got shorter, and shorter....and shorter! So I turned to weaves. Oh the relief of it all: I could hide my own hair and pretend that those nice, natural long and sleek hair was mine. I got a few of them on, but one over excited hairdresser destroyed the length I had left (I was just about shoulder length then). She put so much thread and pulled it so tight that it was like it had melted with my own hair. So when the time came to remove it, the only way to do it was to use scissors. And of course, my hair got cut in the process. I was in my mid-twenties then.
It was around 2005 I think and I was in my mid-twenties and as I was at university, far, far away from home (actually in a different country lol), I decided to move on to box braids. And I kept this style for the next 5 years. As I had to do them myself (much cheaper), I did not now how to make them tight enough so I "renewed" them every 4 or 5 weeks. This used to take me a whole weekend each time!
In 2010, I got tired of box braids and was thinking about what to do with my hair. So I started looking for new hairstyles on the Internet. Of course, I ended up on YouTube looking at hair stuff, and one specific video got me thinking. It was a video from uluvmegz (who I thought was the cutest teenager ever at the time. But it turned out, she wasn't a teenager anymore then lol). It was a video on rollersetting and I just got hooked! I started looking at her videos, signed up to YouTube so I could subscribe to her channel and follow her. And this is how I discovered the term "Hair Journey" and decided to start my own: this was October 2010 and my hair was shoulder length (yes, despite the five years wearing only box braids, I know! Lol)
Two years later, I almost reached BSL. But my ends were still split and really thin so I decided to cut my hair and start again as for me there is no point in having "long" hair, if it is unhealthy and breaking. On 9th January 2012, I cut my ends and here I am, starting my second hair journey.
I decided to start a blog on that hair journey to document it better than the first time around. I think this could help me in keeping all the information in one place. Plus, I have made so many progress and learnt so many things thanks to all the lovely ladies who share information on blogs, forums and various websites...I thought that if I can help anyone just a tiny bit with the little knowledge I have well...it cannot be a bad thing, can it? I will try (yes, try) to post things regularly, but please, be patient lol
Happy hair journey to you all :-)
