Full Circle

Can I be open and honest for a second? 

Closing my website and reopening it with a blog as the leading factor really brings things full circle for me.

I had to realize how and why I began to create products.

Bare with me while I explain my hair journey. It will all makes sense in the end.

Before I ever thought of creating products and Suesy Coils Care, I just wanted to document and blog my hair journey. You could say that I started with youtube in 2018, but that wasn't when I truly started recording myself and documenting my life. It all started when I got a laptop with a built-in webcam circa 2010. 

Around that time I was watching a lot of people on YouTube and I wanted to start my own channel- but didn’t because it just didn’t seem like something a “normal, regular person” like me would do.

You know what?

It actually started long before 2010. I can’t remember the year, but my dad brought home a camcorder lol. Yes, I said a camcorder. He used to record us all the time just doing regular family stuff. He used to always tell my me and my sister that we needed to do the  “Brittany and Bird Show”. To this day, that isn't a bad idea because I think my sister and I are hilarious.

But back to the point...

I’ve always had a love hate relationship with my hair. I had been getting it flat ironed every 2 weeks since like the 8th grade. I rarely wore it any other way, because I feared that “my hair would look short”. I would get the stankiest attitude when my dad would suggest I wear it natural. I don’t even know where the hate/ fear came from because at that time, I had no clue what my curl type was or what my curl even looked like.

Sometime before high school my mom let me get Chinese bangs lol.

She almost didn’t let me, but I really pleaded my case. Like “it’s MY hair ma’am”.

Over the next year my bangs grew out of course, and I was still getting it straightened all the time. Once my hair got oily I'd throw it in a ponytail, my ponytails would get wet in the shower and that's the first time I noticed the slightest bit of a curl. I kinda liked it, but I still feared that my hair would look short if it was all the way curled up.

 

Now I’m at the age where I’m doing my own hair in between the times i'm going to get it flat ironed. Because I liked the way my ponytail looked kinda curl up, I used to wet my pony tail and wear the defined, crinkly ponytail. That had me in a chokehold for a while.

That was my introduction into “styling”  my own hair. 

By the time high school was over I was wearing full on braid outs.

But my hair was so heat-damaged from the consistent silk presses throughout the years, that my the braid out wasn't really defined and I still had my length. That's the only reason I was comfortable with that style- because my hair didn't look short. I guess I can thank heat damage for my gradual transition to wearing my hair more natural.

For prom, I asked my sister to color my hair and she gave me a semi permanent dye.

It was a cute light brown. Not much of a huge difference form my regular color though.

When I left for college my hair was the longest it had ever been, but just a few short months into college my hair started to break off.

My diet was trash, I had no clue on how to care for my hair for real, I was using Tresemme shampoo and barely conditioning my hair with Cantu. I had 1 cream based product that I never used. It was the Cantu Coconut Curling Cream. 

Deep conditioning was not in my vocabulary. 

Twist outs? Didn't know what those were lol. 

It was all bad. So I turned to box braids.

That was my first set of box braids ever. My sister did them and took 4 days. Yes she took 4 days, and no- she never braided my hair ever again after that LOL.

I’ll never forget freshman year towards the end of the school year. My friend, Tia, (shout out to Tia) gave me my first set of bantu knots ever, and I fell in love with that style.

She used the Cantu Coconut Curling Cream that I never used. It was defined and it was what I considered short. Surprisingly, that didn’t bother me at all.

 Those bantu knots had me in a chokehold my entire sophomore year of college.

I used to style them in different ways. I also still had braid outs in rotation. I was loving the natural look on me and was curious what my curl pattern really was.

So, the summer before my junior year, I did a big chop. 

I cut off all my heat-damaged hair. This was the shortest my hair had ever been in my life.

My new goal: to not get heat damage.

So I looked to protective styles. I bought the first and only set of bundles in my life, and got my first sew in. I think the bundles were 22 inches.

I was under the impression that I could turn the bundles in to a U-part wig, but that was a fail because I have a tiny head and the wig looked big and bunched up in the back of my head.

Since that didn't work, I turned to learning my hair and getting comfortable with it. Shrinkage was real. I didn’t know what products to use but that journey wasn't bad at all.

Looking back I didn't have the best products for my hair, because there wasn't much education available about different porosities and things like that, but my hair was actually healthy. 

Now it’s 2018, my super senior year of college. I decide that i'm going to bite the bullet and start my youtube fr.

It went well, but I was under the impression that my hair was damaged because it didn't curl or behave like the girls I saw on Instagram and YouTube. I got too in my bag and thought I could trim my own hair. I was trying to trim off what I thought was damaged. 

That was horrible. My hair was so choppy. I tried to cut it on wet hair. I had no plan. No nothing. Just scissors and blind misdirected hope. 

Since I butchered my hair, I decided in December 2018 to get my hair cut into a bob.

My sister's friend cut my hair and she was trying to warn me that when I wet my hair and it curled back up, it would be reeeeaaallly short.

I was like “naw it’s gone be ok”.

I loved my bob, even though that was really the shortest my hair had ever been. I was ok with that... until I wasn't lol.

 That lasted for about 3 weeks. I couldn't do anything with my hair when it was curled up. It was too short for a pony tail, and since it was cut into a bob, my fro looked weird. With that, I was trying a lot of different products so that I could slick my hair back and make it look presentable.

Those products caused so many allergic reactions. I had no clue I had sensitive skin until I started trying all those products.

My forehead would break out, I’d get severe headaches, and sneeze uncontrollably from all the fragrance.

I got tired of dealing with that so I started DIY’ing it up. 

Now this is when I started to create products.

I was trying to grow my hair back and save myself from the irritants in the store bought products, and I did. My two products at the time were successful at getting my hair back to a length where I could get it into a makeshift ponytail. 

I started making products because that’s what I needed.

Making products lead to me sharing things that I would make for myself with friends and family, and they’d request to buy it-  encouraging me to sell my products.

That's how and why Suesy Coils Care was born. I was on my own journey, creating things to help me and those around me out, and started selling my products. 

So hopefully, now it makes sense why I’m going back to my roots.

 Everything that I’ve created or shared through Suesy Coils Care has helped me on my journey, and I plan on sticking to that.

I’m sharing my experiences through blogs and sharing the things I learn through video courses and digital downloads.

I’m uplifting and encouraging other people on their journey using community, and providing safe products for people with sensitive scalp, skin and hair like mine. 

I am so relieved and so happy to be in this place. I can't wait to bring forward new ideas and continue to reshape the way we view and love on ourselves- as we love on our hair.