Remember LaNora, from my Sofistafunking with Friends post? Well, she recently started her own blog, Musings Mag, and is back to share her HairStory and how she got that fierce ‘fro!!

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A Week in the Journey

Ok, so my hair has always been a diva, but now that she is in the “big city of dreams,” she has gotten out of hand. Thanks to Doris NY hair care products, I can at least get a good grip on her. 😉

My hair story started 32 long years ago. Born with a head full of beautiful locs, within minutes I underwent my “big chop” when my head was shaven to insert needles for an emergency blood transfusion. My mom still talks about how they didn’t tell her they were cutting off all my hair and how she didn’t even get any pictures. From that point, my hair became more of a “Siamese twin,” always upstaging me. When other babies heard “awww, look at her”, I heard “awww, look at all that hair.”

Fast forward to June of this year, 2011, after decades of being a “hood star,” we move to NYC and who “gets discovered?” You guessed it, The Diva! Being the trendsetter that she is, she finds out that what came natural for her has placed her at the forefront of a movement: The Natural Hair Movement. How befitting.

Anyway, when I started wearing my hair completely natural (I used to get it pressed/flat ironed), I meant natural in the literal sense. However it wanted to look, I was cool with that. Before meeting Shelli and reading about her Hairscapades last week, PJ stood for projects … maybe private jet (Kanye), so you can understand why I gave The Diva the side-eye when she embarked on this little “hair modeling” journey.

Pre “discovery,” I had no hair routine. I would wash and condition it once a week maybe. I straddled between putting off the 45 minutes of back-breaking work combing out my unkempt do and feeling jolted by what felt like the start of locks in my kitchen.

Well, those days are over … apparently. The Diva couldn’t just show up to a job, shoot an ad and have the pictures to show her grandchildren and be done with it. No, she had to find Marlene, the daughter half of the mother-daughter team that is Doris New York. Marlene is a business woman, no doubt, but her focus is healthy hair. I was sent to her with beautiful hair, she is hell-bent on making it healthy as well. To ensure that her mission is accomplished, Marlene has inducted The Diva into her “DNY Lovelies” club and now this a typical week in a life now devoted to making The Diva’s dreams of stardom come true:

Assignment: DNY ad girls appearance for Sofistafunk trunk show.

In anticipation of the gig, I prepare myself for the instructions that I know will be coming from Marlene: condition, condition, condition. On Monday morning, I wash my hair with Doris Reconstructor shampoo and apply the extreme deep conditioner. I comb the conditioner through my strands as I separate it into 6 twists. Because I have the luxury of working from home, I keep the twists in and go about my day.

That night, I have to go to my daughter’s school for a Halloween party, so I untwist my hair but leave the conditioner in. I retwist it when I get home and untwist it again on Tuesday when I rinse the conditioner out in the shower.

At that point, I put in the Doris leave-in conditioner and re-twisted my 6 sections.

I let it dry and released the twists more and more to get my hair bigger.

Because I had a gig, I conditioned my hair again on Thursday morning, after rocking my look for two days. This time I used the DNY deep conditioner, not the extreme deep. I rinse it out and just let my hair dry naturally with the leave-in conditioner. Come Saturday morning, my hair is 2 days big and ready to work.

Of course, as this is a journey and The Diva is a work in progress, Marlene has to work her magic to combat the extreme dryness of my hair and scalp. She also reminds me that DNY Hair Oil and Olive Oil, as well as a Mineral Mud Pack, needs to be leaving home with me that night.

All’s well that ends well, as The Diva emerges from hair, makeup and styling to strut her stuff for DNY and Sofistafunk!