Decision made. I'm going natural!!!

I recently made a sudden decision to stop relaxing my hair.  The reasons are a bit ridiculous so bear with me:

1. I'm to lazy to keep my relaxers up (new growth galore, always).
2. It's annoying to go through all those steps to have healthy hair, but it still doesn't stop damage.
3. Seeing all these natural girls' hair grow, because it breaks less, gives me hope.
4. All the hairstyles I wear with relaxed hair can still be worn with natural hair.
5. Curly hair is my fav (bigger ones) and with natural hair, you can "twist out" for larger curls.
6. I rarely wear my hair straight (flat ironed) as is, so why keep relaxing?

So I've been scouring the internet for transitioning advice and others at my stage and don't find many.  Most are 1-3 years old and the people are full on natural by now, so I am starting my own transitioning/natural African American hair blog.  I've calculated that my last relaxer was around Christmas 2012, during my break from school and work so between December 24-January 1.  It was likely closer to January because I know I didn't relax on Christmas.  So it will be easy for me to keep track since this was the beginning of 2013, WHOO HOO!!!

Last perm: January 2013 (about), 5 months into transitioning.

Past Straight hair (taken summer 2012):

Current hair (taken April 2013):

Future transformation:

Just kidding, this is an (badly) altered pic from the awesomely informative article, 8 Ways to Combat Dry Ends. I'm hoping for more defined curls but hey, I'll take her hair too, at least it looks full and healthy.

As you can see, when I got my hair freshly permed and cut (got bangs and layers) in the summer of 2012, my hair was pretty healthy and nice.  Currently it's crap-tastic!  This past extra super dry dry winter killed my hair!!  Since my hair was in such good shape over the summer, I figured I should continue what I was doing to continue to have healthy hair.  Too bad what I actually needed was an even more moisturizing hair routine for the winter.  Unfortunately I didn't know of the l.o.c. method until recently.  So most of my hair has broken off.  Now, since I no longer want to relax my hair, keeping it healthy should hopefully be much easier than it was while relaxed.

I have no real goal natural hair type because that is out of my control.  My main goal for this transition is to have steady hair growth and better hair health.  I will be researching hair health galore and hopefully my new knowledge will enable me to keep my hair in the summer and winter.  Stay tuned and we shall see...

***5 MONTHS, AND COUNTING***