Growing up as a typical Nigerian girl in a Nigerian home, the topic of hair was a significant part of my life. Each season brought a new hairstyle, and there was always hair for when you were young and hair for when you got older. Natural and synthetic extensions were used to achieve these different hair experiences, regardless of the geographical location. However, natural human hair was often neglected and abandoned underneath these extensions.
It was typical for the average Nigerian girl or woman to desire beautiful, full, and long hair, but often to no avail. The cycle of covering up with extensions, weaves, and wigs had become the norm. Chemical extensions, such as relaxers and Jeri curls activator gels, were also used to alter the look of our natural hair composition to hide our discontentment with the hair we own.
This was my story. I was born into using relaxers and never really knew what my hair looked like in its natural state. All I knew were the burns on my scalp from relaxers, the lightness of my straightened hair, and the usual lack of hair front line (which I still deal with).
In 2015, I had the big chop, and that was when my natural hair journey began. The first three years were filled with stunted growth and hair breakage, but the remaining five years were spent learning what my hair needed to be healthy. The most rewarding part of the journey was when my hair grew longer and curly, the type of hair I admired but always felt like I couldn’t have.
As the good old saying goes, hair is a woman’s crown. Unfortunately, many of us have left our crowns dry, unhealthy, and abandoned for synthetic and unreal hair substitutes. While these substitutes are not necessarily inadequate, we should never abandon our first assignment, our crown.
At Your Naturale, our mission is to revive the love for your natural look. We believe that underneath that wig, braids, and sew-in wefts extensions lies an untapped gift from God that every woman must learn to enjoy and discover. We understand that many women derive pride and joy from their looks today, but we have settled for manipulated looks and lost every sense of attraction for more natural looks.
We must stop pushing the border of insecurity and the compulsive need to hide our real face or hair. Instead, we should focus on treating our bodies into health and self-obsession with natural and attainable standards of beauty.
Your Naturale is a place where you can inform yourself about where to begin in your journey towards your natural hair. It is a place where you can empower yourself to teach others about your texture, a place for partnership, mentorship, and education.
