Newly natural? Avoid these 3 hair care myths

When you make the decision to step over to the natural side, you’ll have to face some trial and error before you perfect your hair care regimen. “You’re not going to know what works on your hair until you actually experiment with your own hair and see how it happens,” Annisa LiMara Mitchell, a natural hair and beauty vlogger, told 4c Hair Chick in an interview.

But it’s important to keep an open mind during your hair experimentation phase(s). Don’t get frustrated because your hair doesn’t resemble that YouTube tutorial you watched or Instagram post you saw.

“We kind of get caught up on idolizing other naturals that we see on social media and we forget to look in the mirror,” Mitchell said.

Continue reading my feature on 4c Hair Chick.

How Having a Supportive Community Helped Me as a Blogger

There’s one thing – barring extraordinary circumstances – I absolutely must have in order to create. SupportThat one thing is solitude.

Although I love being alone, it’s fulfilling when I realize that once I’ve poured my words onto the page for public consumption, someone other than me is engaging with the content I produce.

Here are three ways having a supportive community has helped me as a blogger.

Continue reading my guest post on Brown Girl Bloggers.

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I’m On MY Time, In Case Y’all Forgot

A few months have passed since my breakup and I’m becoming quite the optimistic. I relapse sometimes and struggle to let go of what was one of the most comfortable and familiar parts of my life, but the positives are constantly being revealed and I’m starting to accept them.

Although my heart and mind had me convinced, my world did not end. I believed that I wouldn’t be able to pull myself together enough to move forward. This thing put me on pause for sure, but I’m not wired to stop. There’s too much work to do. In the wise words of Big K.R.I.T.:

“Shit, I’m too fly to be touched, too hard to be crushed.”

My inner cheerleader is working overtime right now to keep me lifted, but that in no way means I’m not allowed to cry, hurt and cry some more. I’m done being hard on myself for not bouncing back as soon as I’m supposed to. I can’t keep internalizing everyone else’s expectations for my healing process.

I know my loved ones mean well when they constantly encourage me to go out and mingle and whatever else a conventional 20-something single does. But when I express my frustrations about figuring out my next move, I’m not always looking for an answer. More than likely, I just need an ear.

TimeI don’t need to be reminded of the myriad online dating sites that are jammed down everyone’s throats as a Band-Aid for the bruised and brokenhearted. I don’t need to be instructed to flock to OkCupid or Tinder or any other app to fix my “situation.” Some good, old-fashioned listening will suffice.

Not every problem has a clear-cut solution.

Society requires us to believe that single people are undesirable and should all be on a mission to be cuffed, but I don’t need to jump on the shallow validation bandwagon.

I’m on the pursuit to find and enjoy the glorious parts of single life. Like not having to give two fucks about what a person I’m romantically involved with is doing when we’re apart. Not concerning myself with another person’s problems and making them my own. Not having conniptions about calls and texts going unreturned.

I lost myself in someone else for years. To the point that living any other way was foreign to me. To the point that change was knocking but I was too resistant to let it in. It’s time to recoup my losses.

Being single has freed up so much of the time, energy and love I have to give. But before I let another guy come into my space and receive those things, they are being funneled straight to me.

And as I move on, everything I choose to do will be done on my time – not a second sooner.

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