After coming back from vacation and facing the dry/brittle nightmare that my hair had become, due to a combination of constantly wearing wigs and complete neglect, I made it a mission to revive my dying tresses by any means necessary. For a while now my poor edges have virtually become non-existent, my left side more than the right, and I knew that the time would come where I would have to either do a second big chop or even out both sides with a cut – I chose the second out of the two. I’ve never been attached to length so that wasn’t an issue for me, but trying to find a salon that I could trust enough to cut my hair was causing me serious anxiety.
I was doing research one night on
natural hair salons in Toronto and I ended up on NaturallyCurly.com which is a
US based haircare site. To my surprise they
offer a list of salons by country, state, and city with honest customer reviews. I felt like I hit jackpot and all my hair cut
worries went out the window. Based on
the reviews and creeping all their social media platforms, I decided to book my
appointment with Karlene Valentine at the Curl Bar Beauty Salon.
Located in the heart of downtown
Toronto, I made my journey to the Curl Bar bright and early Friday morning. I was greeted by both Karlene Valentine and
her associate Dixi. Once Karlene was
ready to begin she asked me a few questions about my hair and what it was that
I was looking to get done that day. I
explained to her that my hairline has become severely damaged because I’ve been
so dependent on wigs that I have neglected my hair. Like I said previously I didn’t want to do
another big chop so I figured a nice tapered cut would do the trick to camouflage
my hair loss and also provide a nice shape when it grows out. To my disappointment however, Karlene felt
that the extent of the hair loss would not permit her to do a tapered cut but
rather a Mohawk to balance out both side – and if you know me, you know that’s
not my style so I passed on that one.
We both were a bit stumped as to
what to do, so we decided that the best option would be to clean up my ends and
focus on growth and keeping my hair hydrated.
Karlene’s recommendation was to do weekly deep treatments and to use
Castor Oil every night on my edges, even when I wear my wigs, to prevent
breakage. After she washed, conditioned
and treated my hair with the Deva Curl line my hair felt amazingly soft I must
admit, but I was still bummed out that I went all that way to leave pretty much
the exact same way I came.
Although my experience at the
Curl Bar Beauty Salon was good, I felt as though more could have been done to
my hair. To be honest, I could have achieved
exactly what she did in the care of my own home without the cost. I’m pretty knowledgeable when it comes to my
own hair, we have a history. So what she
said/did was nothing that I didn’t already know that I needed to do, I was just
being lazy about it. I also feel like my
hair could have been cut in somewhat of a tapered style but maybe it was just
too much for her to tackle with my broken edges. But like I said, my hair felt great and I had
a good experience. Since then I have
been on my A game with massaging my roots daily with castor oil and
moisturizing my hair when it tells me to. I’m going to hold off on cutting my hair until
it grows some more, but I will be doing Senegalese twist in the next few days
as a protective style rather than the wigs.
My hair definitely hates me right now for the lack of TLC, but I know
with time it’ll be happy again and looking Fab!
