My last relaxer was September 17, 2004. At the time, I had been getting relaxers and a trim every six weeks. When I decided to stop getting relaxers, I still got my ends trimmed every six weeks. That way, my relaxed hair gradually became shorter as my au naturale hair became longer. I cut all of my relaxed ends off in October of 2005. These pictures were taken towards the end of my transition before the "big chop":
You can see the straight ends. I was doing twistouts and setting the ends on perm rods.
The only thing I missed about my relaxed hair was my hair color. Relaxers would turn my hair a pretty golden chestnut "Bena Brown" as my mom called it, especially in the summer (you can see it on the ends). My au naturale hair color is a dull, mousy "Loser Brown" as LKY calls it. :-( (she didn't really say my hair was Loser Brown--I was trying to come up with the words to describe how I felt about it and she summed it up for me pretty well).
These pictures were taken after my big chop:
Most of the straight ends were gone.
I decided to get my hair colored to get rid of the Loser Brown color the same day I got the big chop. The hair colorist talked me out of getting all over color. She said that it would be more maintenance, and that I would have to get the color touched up every eight weeks or my roots would look weird against my colored hair. She said that highlights would grow out naturally and would be less maintenance. I think they looked good, but I regretted not getting the all over color.
As you can see, I was able to pull it into a puff, even back then:
