My Hair Story – Irene

1. Introduce yourself . . .
Hello,i’m Irene, i live in the south east of France. I’m a wife and a mother. I work as an Auxiliary Aid for the elderly, the sick and the handicapped.

2. Are you relaxed, natural, texturized or texlaxed?
I am natural since i big chopped about 6 and 1/2 months ago.

3. What’s your story, how did you get to where you are?
To begin with I had locs for about 3 years while still in my homeland. But when I came to France I couldn’t keep up with the maintenance of the dreads.

Where I lived there were no salons for Africans, and to get my hair products I had to wait for them to be sent by post which became so expensive and tiresome. I got fed up and I chopped it all off.

I kept my natural hair for quite a long time, but I never used to see any growth. My friends had the same issues, complaining that it was the water that was different.

I decided to relax it but still no growth. The relaxer made the situation worse because my already fine hair became even thinner. My edges were all gone.

I also used to braid all the time and never let my hair breath. With the natural hair movement, I became aware of protective stylings and how to take care of my hair underneath. I’m also very pleased to learn about conditioning and deep conditioning* the hair. These are all new vocabularies to me but I am happy I discovered them.

4. What is your typical weekly regimen?
I use the indian powders to clean and condition my hair.I wash my hair once a week with my homemade solid soap(“melt and pour soap”+ shikakai). Before washing my hair, I do a hot oil treatment at night then cover with a cellophane paper, sleep over and wash in the…