"The High Puff Tutorial"

This is one of the first tutorials I watched when my hair started growing, "The High Puff" I would wear this very often, I'll even wear it now.

High Puff at the end of a day..my version.

The Perfect Product

So you guys knows how I said that actually cutting off my hair was the easy part, but actually getting accustomed to it and finding the right products for my hair would be the hard part.. well I wasn't joking. Natural hair products are no where close to cheap but if used properly you can have them for a very long time.I spent a lot of money and time testing out different hair care products and to me it was pretty adventurous and fun. I'm just going to show you a couple of pictures of different gels and creams that I used.

Motions Define My Curls, one of my favorite products, nice texture, really enhanced my natural curls.

At one point I used this everyday, it made it easy for actually styling my hair.

I did not use this often but, my cousin who are all natural used this and I tried it, and it worked very well. 

 

The Big Chop.

One morning I woke up and randomly just thought that I wanted to cut my hair all off. When I went and told my mom she was all for it, and thought that it was a good idea. I got to a point where putting all of these harmful chemicals in my hair, and actually maintaining it started to get overwhelming. I didn't tell any of my friends, because I knew they would think it was a bad idea. Instead, I just went to my hairstylist and said "Mae I want to cut it all off" Her facial expression was priceless, she said "I LOVE the idea, I think you would look gorgeous!" I sat in the chair, and she started chopping it all off. At one point I felt like crying because I was just thinking.. "what in the hell were you thinking Essence?!" then I got over it. I looked in the mirror and fell in love with the new haircut. Cutting my hair off was the easy part, finding good natural hair products and actually getting accustomed to having very short hair was the  hard part. That was the beginning of the natural hair journey...

No Curls No Afro, Doesn't Get Anymore Natural

I guess you could say she is part of the reason why I cut my hair off..she's just a little bit of inspiration. This is my mom Antoinette, obviously bald as you can see. You can't get any more natural than this. Not many women can even pull off having short hair in general but somehow, she pulled that and some more off. My mother is bald for a few reasons but we do not have to get into that, I think this is one of the best representations of being natural, and she gave me just a little bit of courage to cut my hair off.