“Ella a des belles boucles!"

Somehow with all the work insanity that’s come my way as of late, I totally forgot.

It's my one year Hair-iversary!

That’s right folks, it’s been more than a year since I did TBC (The Big Chop). I guess I’d just kinda forgotten about it since ya know…it’s just my hair, but in the last month or so my hair has had a sudden growth spurt and it seems that everyone but me is taking notice. Over the past week or so not a day has gone by when I don’t get a compliment on my hair from someone. Not too long ago I walked into the Beauty supply store and I overheard one sales girl say to another “Ella a des belles boucles!” Translation: ‘She has pretty curls!”

And frankly, I think they’re swell too. The best part is, this hair is about as low maintenance as hair comes. I wake up in the morning, spritz it with leave in conditioner, give it a fluff, and “Voila”---that’s it. Gravity defying hair! It’s so weird to think about all the time and money (20 euro shampoos and 150 dollar haircuts) that I used to spend on my hair, when now my weekly hair routine consists of a few handfuls of off-label conditioner I buy by the bucket at Tati and whatever bottle of shampoo my husband happens to leave in the shower.

So let’s take a stroll down memory lane shall we?

1. Do you smell bacon?

So this was my hair on my birthday in 2006. In many ways it was quite pretty, but the constant chemical processing, blow drying, and flat ironing had taken its toll. You can’t really tell from the photo, but that hair was relaxed & pressed within an inch of it’s life. Can't you hear it crying?

2. Hat-hair.

So, since I was to chicken-shit to just shave off all the old hair all at once, while I was growing in my new hair under the old hair, I wore all kinds of hair coverings, scarves, and hats to camouflage the to-the-death battle that was going on between the new hair and the old hair. During our trip to Japan I wore a different hat almost every day. Those were dark times. There were many tragic moments. Sometimes styling my hair required the use of scissors. But I got through it.

3. Look Ma! No hair!

Taa daaa! This is my hair the very morning I cut it: April 16th 2007. Teeny Weeny Afro in full effect. Doesn’t it make me look younger? I was an emotional wreck the entire day. I think I cried like 8 times randomly throughout the day. I didn't expect to feel anything when I chopped it, but I felt....something. Relief, release, grief, fear. Also, my neck just felt nekkid!

4. I'm getting the hang of this!

Finally--Cute Hair in August 2007. I know it sounds silly, but since I'd always chemically processed my hair for the past 20 years, I really didn't know what the hell to do with it when it started to grow in natural. It was completely foreign to me. It took me until August to figure out how to actually do stuff with it.

5. The Triumphant Afro-Puff!

By this past Christmas, I had finally arrived at my dream Afro-puff. I added a few hilights to accent the texture and to really bring out the curls. And if I do say so myself, what an adorable Afro-puff it was!

6. It keeps going, and going and growing...

Ok, here’s my hair from just last month, you can see that my afro puff has grown so fluffy that it has actually over-grown my fancy hair-tie. It's more of an Afro-bush. (Wait, that doesn't sound right....) In fact I got the impression that my hair no longer wanted to be tied down. And that about brings us to present...

A hair self portrait I took yesterday…..no make-up…..dear lord, but the hair looks scrumptious!

And immediately after I took this photo I thought of this photo taken of me and my mom at Christmas when I must have been maybe 2 or 3 years old.

Aaaah. How wonderfully fitting that now, at age 33, I once again have the same hair-do that I had at age 3.

Somehow I find this fact just too lovely.