I went from a short, almost pixie-style haircut to just over shoulder-length locs in 3 years! Ájá is healthy, thick, and has a personality all on her own. She’s still doing her own thing, and I’m so happy with my hair! Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
A Photo Montage of Some of My Favorite Moments Rocking Ájá. Video Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
natural hair journey three-year anniversary Ájá’s still thriving
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December 11, 2022, Ájá was born, and she’s thriving!
Ájá’s Beginning:2022 – 2023
Ájá’s Changes in the Middle: 2023 – 2024
Ájá’s Present: 2025
On Saturday, January 04, 2025, I ventured to my loctician’s place for her to wash and retighten my hair. For those of you who have followed me on my locs journey since December 2022, thank you for still being here. I am so in love with my hair, it’s not even funny. I do not know how to describe this feeling I get every time I look at Ájá’s progress. Fromthe very first postI shared about this journey to the last one before today, I have grown right along with my hair, and it has been such an amazing time for both of us!
Because I am a curious person, and I wanted to know how many locs I have managed to grow from the roots–I asked my loctician if she would count them. And count them, she did! As of yesterday, I have 186 locs! Y’all, wOW! I told my co-worker this past Friday I wanted to know exactly how many I have, and she looked at me, smiled, and said, “A LOT!” And we both giggled like two little school girls watching our crushes push words together to shoot at some other little girls who aren’t pennies to our dimes. Knowing this number gives me an idea of just how much hair is on my head. Knowing this number catapults my love for Ájá to even higher heights. It signifies G R O W T H, literally.
And with all of this happiness about my hair, I fell into sadness when I realized I could not share any of this withChrissy. Try as I might, I failed miserably when the tears started to fall. I do not have my cousin around to run to with the details of these milestones. I can’t hear her smile through the phone–see her well up with joy over my excitement–listen to her congratulatory words of appreciation and wisdom . . . It has been hard these last two years and eleven months, and February will be three years she has been gone. I still have her number saved in my phone. I won’t delete it. I have so many of her old text messages as screenshots and I pull them up from time to time and reread them.
I am grateful for the many memories we created. What hurts the most is when I see some of my family members back home or I share photos of me with them and they say, “Ooh, you look just like Chrissy,” and I have to smile and nod–nod and smile, and say, “Yes, I am told this often.” It feels like raising a mirror up to one’s face only to be saddened by what is reflected back to you. It’s grief, I know, and I also know it comes in waves. It never gives up. It lingers in the shadows, simply waiting for the right time to strike again.
But I sat with my feelings. I sit with my feelings of sadness when they come. I acknowledge them. I allow them to have their say in the matter. I pull out a chair for their company and when they have finished expressing themselves, I breathe a heavy sigh of relief, and I try my best to move on. They will always be here and grief will pop up occasionally to remind me I am still a living, breathing, and feeling human being. And I can’t be mad at that.
It’s the Little Things, as India Arie says, that gets me through every single day. And something as simple yet magnificent as the growth of my hair lights up my life.
Above is Ájá’s growth in phases. From 2022 to 2023, and 2023 to 2024. Then, finally, from 2024 to present day in 2025. It stupefies me on so many levels that something as strong as hair can go from 3 inches to 6 inches to 8 inches, and that it will continue to grow as long as one cares for it and maintains its health.
Isn’t that us, too, though? We will continue to grow as long as we or someone else nourishes, cares for, and maintains our heart, mind, body, and soul? The wondrous thing about being alive is knowing your chances of changing and blooming into who you want to be comes along when you awaken to another day. And every day I am gifted, I will use to continue to bloom. I have been planted in this place to shoot through the dirt and share who I am with other living, breathing human beings.
And really, why would I not want to do just that? I began this journey with microlocs, however, some of my locs have matted and combined to become one and are bigger than microlocs, so I have begun simply saying, “locs.” At first, I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was as if my hair decided to morph without my permission, and then I said to myself, “Love, your hair is doing what it is meant to do.” And now, I welcome whatever it is doing as it continues along this winding path of ours.
Whatever Ájá has in store for us, I am here for it–all of it! This . . . this place she has led me to is a place I love and every bone in my body has no intention of moving at all. This is where we will be until the party becomes the after-party.
And even then . . . we’ll still be around somewhere. You’ll just have to look for us. But you won’t have to search long. And on that, I give you my word.
Why are we here with this topic? Well because, I am sick and tired of seeing young women well past the baby stage with baby hairs casually laid across their forehead and edges in almost every hairstyle dreamt up by current and trending stylists who want to keep this God-forsaken look alive when it should be dead, eulogized, buried, and left ALONE!
I said to my best friend and cousin in a text message the other day: “I really, really hate those stinking fake baby hairs these young women have in their hairstyles. I cringe every time I see it. *Sighs*” My cousin, ever the optimistic, responded, “It’s a fad. This too, shall pass.” It’s a fad that doesn’t need to be a fad that makes absolutely no sense.
Back in the day when this style was IN, circa the 70s, 80s, and 90s, little girls and young women actually had baby hair or slick hair with which to lay their edges and forehead. These young women are creating curly Qs and baby hairs where they just aren’t supposed to be and doing so in such a way that requires calculation and geometrical tactics, and I just have to shake my head. Exhibit A: feast your eyes on this YouTube short of someone teaching her audience how to apply baby hair to a hairstyle:
I should have prefaced this by saying if this is your thing . . . do you, boo. Please, do you. There are a ton of other things I could be soapboxing about, but this here is the hill I chose today, so here is where I stand. I love people expressing themselves in every way they choose, but what I do not like are folks grabbing hold of something they think is new and running that thing into the ground without being keenly aware of why that thing existed in the first place.
The crush’s daughter loves this baby hair trend. I told the crush how I felt about it and she is in agreement. Her response was, “You know these kids gotta do what they see others do. Makes no sense to me, but that’s how it is now.” And yes, that is HOW it is now. There is no originality, no uniqueness, no want to build and create something that may not have happened before or to at least put such a spin on that thing that folks believe it has never occurred before.
I am going to segue briefly to the fact that I encountered a clerk at The UPS Store a few days ago while mailing a package who could not read cursive. I spelled my name, my mother’s name, the addresses, etc. And she still did not type the info correctly into the system. I finally had to pull out my driver’s license, hand it to her, and say, “Please just look at my license and get my information. I’ll repeat the recipient’s info momentarily.” I was so frustrated with this child that I had to take several deep breaths when exiting the store. This is what happens when cursive and penmanship are removed from schools.
The younger generation has a foreign language before them when one writes in cursive. It’s perplexing to me, and I will never understand it!
Back to the baby hair issue. My godsister had a style with baby hairs when I went home to Savannah, GA to visit this past April, and it took everything in me not to word-vomit all over our brunch every time I looked at her. She’s in her 30s. WHY, boo?! WHY? LOL. She asked me a few times, “You okay,” and mildly, each time, I’d say, “Yeah, I am good.” Because my food was too good to allow the likes of someone else’s hair to ruin it and the mood was far too great for me to actually dampen it with something over which I have no control. I wasn’t going to rain on everyone’s parade. I know when to reel it in and act accordingly. But boy was it hard!
It is becoming evident that my generation is old and bold and the younger generations behind us are young and shunned. We can survive with little to nothing, display ingenuity when it most requires it, have lived through getting home before the streetlights came on, know what VHS and cassette tapes are, and can probably quote 75% of the movie The Color Purple (1985) without hesitating or flinching.
If you are a habitual baby hair applier, I wish you peace. I hope you find the hairstyle that fits perfectly with your face and head, and that you do not continue to beat a dead horse that should have never been resurrected. And if you intend to carry this trend deep into 2025, at least, use gels and spritzes that won’t push your hairline back five years from now. Think of your forehead, children . . . think of your edges. What have they ever done to you to deserve this?
*No baby hair was harmed, maimed, or brutally criticized outside of this post. Don’t come for me, please.*
HAPPY NEW YEAR, beautiful people! If you can’t laugh, you can’t live. Peace and blessings. And may the new year be most kind to all of you.
Yesterday, I spent about 6 hours and 30 minutes at my cousin’s place getting my hair washed, and then, retwisted. The last time I had it done was Saturday, August 18, 2023, so it was well overdue. But allowing that much time before a retwist/retie afforded me a ton of new growth, so my locs also have a good length to them and bounce & body.
I am still so thrilled with this journey! My cousin will do my hair for me one more time (which will probably be in mid to late January of 2024), and I will transition to her loctician who will take over regarding the care of my hair. December 10, 2023, will be my one-year anniversary of having locs and I am VERY excited about that upcoming date!
I am a bit anxious about the transition from my cousin to her loctician, but my cousin gave me her word, “I will do your hair for one year and then hand you off to my loctician.” And, she has kept it. I’ll get one more sitting with her and then move forward. I do not know her loctician–we have never met. But if my cousin trusts her enough with her hair (and it’s gorgeous), I will lend her my mane to take care of as well. I am sure Aja will be in good hands.
And now, for a few pictures:
Aja, just after I took her out of the protective style she was in to prepare to get her washed. I love my locs! Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
Nothing feels as good as a clean head of hair. LOL! Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
Aja has a little hangtime now. My hair has gotten longer and thicker over these last 11 months and I am so happy with this journey! Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
A glimpse of the side-back and a view of how long my hair has gotten! Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
And finally, a full look at the back. Aja’s so fresh & so clean again. Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
Now that my hair is back to a place of freshness and is clean, I can focus on giving The Little Monster a haircut and a bath later today. Be on the lookout for photos of her tomorrow.
Many of you may ask, how I feel about my locs journey now that I am nearing its one-year anniversary, and to that, I will say: I do not think I can pinpoint a time in which I’ve been happier with and about my hair, and I am so excited with every new turn that comes along with it. I stand back and look at myself in actual wonder . . . this is my hair and it’s doing something miraculously inexplicable.
A Cornered Gurl 
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