A Brief History of My Hair

I have curly hair, and like most girls with curly hair that I've talked to, there was a point in my life where I hated it.

I straightened my hair consistently from age 11 to 23, giving it little breaks here and there. And when I say breaks, I mean that my hair was curly, and then I would proceed to use a curling iron on certain sections of my hair to give it bigger waves. Yes, I put the curling iron on my wet hair. Yes, I feel terrible about that decision now.

See those bigger curls? That's the result of a curling iron :(

Then, at 23, I randomly came across this YouTube channel. I thought to myself, I should totally let my hair go curly.

So I did. And I started a blog about my journey from heat damage to beautiful curls.

Here's a bit of what I was working with when I first stopped flat ironing my hair:

That wave though.

A little bit better. But still not great.

Day two hair. The curls are starting to take shape.

I applied minimal heat to my hair for two years, and let me tell you, it was a long two years. My hair went through some seriously awkward stages, but the curls finally started to come around.

Ahh, success. 

Then I graduated college and started teaching and really felt like I needed straight hair again because straight hair=professional?

Honestly, there are a lot of reasons that I straighten my hair, and I'm currently working on an essay about it, so more to come later on that subject.  But I will admit that when Chris Rock said, "When your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed" in Good Hair, he was totally right.

Anyways.

I started straightening my hair again pretty regularly for a few years, but luckily, I never allowed my hair to reach the level of damage that it had in previous years. Sure, it wasn't really growing, but it also didn't lose much of its curl pattern like before, thankfully.

I kept telling myself that if I had longer curly hair, I wouldn't straighten it as often.

Well, thanks to social media, I once again found myself envying another curly girl's hair, especially it's length. Imagine my surprise when I found out that her hair was actually shorter than mine and that she used extensions to fake the last few inches.

So, it was settled. I'd buy extensions.

I started looking for hair places online and made the commitment to buy them as a birthday gift to myself. We went to the store in LA last week, and even though I found a bundle that matched my curls perfectly for only $89 (a steal, honestly), I held off on buying them, telling myself that I would get them later after price checking them elsewhere.

When my Super Awesome Curly Haired Bestie told me that she thought I'd probably need two bundles, which would cost around $180, I decided not to go through with buying them at all.

What I want is longer hair, but I'm not willing to spend close to $200 to get it, especially since my hair will grow on it's own.

So instead of buying hair extensions, I've decided to invest in products and practices that will help me achieve my goal and grow my hair out.

Here's what I have on the list so far:

-Vitamins (biotin, folic acid, and iron)
-Cowashing
-Homemade hair masks (applied weekly) & Coconut Oil
-Reusable shower caps (for the masks)
-Satin pillowcase (because cotton=rotten)
-Scalp massages
-No heat
-WATER!!

All of this, let me add, is way less than $89, so it looks like I'll also be buying myself a few dresses for the unbearable California heat. I am pretty much winning at life right now.

So this is my hair today:

Selfies aren't my thing.

 I'm hoping that by following the regimen above, I'll see some growth within the year.

Thanks for reading! If you have any hair growing tricks, please comment below!

Eight Years

Today marks 8 years with my boyfriend, Eric.

The beginning, May 2008

We were 21 when we started this journey. I was working at a sandwich shop and finishing up community college and he was working full time at Staples and taking night classes.

We are certainly not the same people we were 8 years ago, but we've managed to make it work because we encourage one another to grow and celebrate our changes. Our relationship has survived college degrees, changing careers, moving to a new location, and so much more, and with each new challenge, I feel us getting stronger.

I'm grateful to have a partner who can not only love me through the good moments but also support me through the struggle.

Dealing with Anxiety

I spoke pretty openly last year about my struggles with anxiety and how it affects my daily life.

In the past year since writing that post, I think my anxiety has gotten a lot better.

Because our society encourages silence when it comes to mental health discussions, I think it's especially important to open up about tricks I use to combat these moments.


1. Keeping an "anxiety" journal.  I already write in a notebook almost daily, but it's usually about anything that is on my mind at that moment. I recently decided to start a journal specifically for my anxiety where I can talk about the thoughts I'm having, the way I'm feeling, etc. I think doing so is going to allow me to notice patterns with my thinking so that when I feel like I'm experiencing these feelings for the first time, I can open up to an old entry and see that these thoughts are in fact just the anxiety talking. I also think that I might be able to notice whether certain times of the day, week, and/or month cause me to feel more anxious.


2. Mindful activities. Cooking is a mindful activity, and it's one that I've gotten pretty into over the last 4 months. I find that when I'm cooking, I'm less focused on the emergencies that my anxiety tries to alert me to and more focused on making a delicious meal (and not cutting off my finger). Knitting is also something that I find helps me re-route my thoughts. Just a few hours ago, I was sitting in my room going out of my mind with racing thoughts when I decided to pick up a scarf that I've been working on since 2012 (no judgments). For twenty glorious minutes, I was pretty focused on just moving the yarn around the needle with almost no intruding thoughts.


3. Talking about it. I tend to let my anxiety build up until I feel like I want to sit in a corner and cry. After making my struggles public last year on my blog, I realized how unhealthy it is to keep to myself. My anxiety is like a really shitty friend who keeps a running tally of all the things that are wrong with me, and staying in the shadows with this "friend" can get pretty depressing. Creating a support system was a necessity for me. I don't always feel comfortable talking about my feelings with them, but I feel so much better after I do it. Their encouragement helps to pull me out of the shadows.



I will more than likely always have anxiety, but over the last year, I've started to see that it can be managed.  I've also started working on changing the narrative from "I am anxious" to "I have anxiety." This was a suggestion from my mom, and it has helped me see that anxiety is something I deal with, but it isn't who I am.

Happy

For the first time since I can remember, I'm happy.

I feel it in the way I interact with other people, in my own dealings with myself, and in my general outlook on life.

Happy.

And this isn't the type of happy that I used to feel after reading a bunch of essays. That feeling, as I understand now, wasn't happiness, it was relief.

Relief to be done with another assignment for a few days before diving into another stretch of chaos.

My life feels simple but worthwhile.  I wake up, I do some sort of work, whether that be editing from home or subbing, and then when my shift ends, I'm done. I've started running, going to the gym, writing, and reading for fun again.

There are aspects of my new job(s) that I don't like, for instance, reading 200+ short answer test responses for my job as a rater, but I recognize that part of working is doing things you don't always like doing. For the most part, though, I love subbing. It's been great to work in different classrooms with different types of students. This week alone I've worked as a librarian for the day, in a history class,  and in a ceramics class.

A lot of the students at the high school know me now, and I get joy out of hearing them shout "Ms. Brooks" from across the quad as they go to their next class.

So yes, I'm happy, and it's a damn good feeling.