When many black women think of their nat­ur­al hair, it's of­ten thought of with neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions: dry, coarse, hard to man­age, un­able to grow, etc. But ac­cord­ing to Camille Jef­fer­son, au­thor of the new book, Re­claim Nat­ur­al Beau­ty, black hair is not like this by na­ture, rather, by its con­di­tion. "I feel like the fact that we have beau­ti­ful hair and it can ac­tu­al­ly grow like oth­er cul­tures is one of the world's best-kept se­crets from a vast ma­jor­i­ty of black women,? she ex­plained.

"Many Black women get a re­lax­er in their hair at a young age, and im­me­di­ate­ly, the dam­age to our hair be­gins. We think be­cause it looks straight and shiny, our hair is healthy. But no one ever stops to won­der why our hair nev­er gets any longer than our shoul­ders, when every month, we re­lax. "New growth in­di­cates that our hair is con­stant­ly grow­ing. We're so used to the process, we don't even stop to ques­tion it," she said. The book, avail­able on pa­per­back, e-book, or Kin­dle, is geared at teach­ing black women how to grow their own, nat­ur­al hair ex­tra-long and de­fine their curl pat­tern, all with­out the aid of chem­i­cals.

"The re­al­i­ty is black hair doesn't get longer be­cause as it's grow­ing, it's al­so break­ing. We have to learn how to care for our hair, so we can main­tain growth and the hair can get longer." From the au­thor's own hair ex­pe­ri­ence, she knows how hard it is to deal with hair that is con­stant­ly break­ing due to dam­age, dry­ness, and rough treat­ment. So she de­cid­ed to forego re­lax­ers and tran­si­tion to nat­ur­al. Once she did, how­ev­er, her hair was dry, coarse, break­ing, and wasn't ap­peal­ing to the eye; and what was worse, she didn't know what to do about it.

"It was then I re­alised how un­e­d­u­cat­ed I was on how to take care of my own hair, be­cause I had a re­lax­er most of my life." Af­ter ed­u­cat­ing her­self and chang­ing the way she took care of her hair, she was able to de­fine her curls and grow her own hair past the mid­dle of her back in less than two years-longer than it's ever been her en­tire life-with no chem­i­cals. "When I first saw curls in my hair, I was amazed. It's amaz­ing to think, I had to ac­tu­al­ly stop putting chem­i­cals in my hair to see them." But go­ing nat­ur­al, for many, is no easy task.

"It's def­i­nite­ly some­thing that has to start men­tal­ly. We've been taught that straight hair is beau­ti­ful, and kinky hair is some­thing bad. Kinky hair sim­ply means hair that has tight coils. The longer your hair gets, the more your curls will hang, while the health­i­er it gets, the shinier and thick­er it be­comes. "Then if you want to wear it straight for a while, you can flat-iron it. You can't do that the oth­er way around. Once you de­stroy your hair, you have to start all over. "Many of us think the new growth that grows out of our head is what our nat­ur­al hair looks like, or some go nat­ur­al and don't know how to care it, so its hard to man­age. But it's not true. Our hair is of­ten just in a bad con­di­tion from a re­lax­er or bad groom­ing.

"Our hair needs mois­ture, gen­tle prod­ucts and soft hands in or­der to thrive. Once im­ple­ment­ed, the change in our hair is stag­ger­ing. "Healthy, nat­ur­al hair is sexy. It's fash­ion for­ward and it's beau­ti­ful. I be­lieve if every black woman knew how to take care of their own hair so it was healthy and long, many would choose this op­tion," Camille stat­ed. She has al­so start­ed HOME­GROWN ap­par­el: t-shirts geared to­ward the mes­sage that "home-grown" beau­ty is the best kind. "I am hope­ful that both the book and the ap­par­el will cre­ate a self-aware­ness that we don't need to al­ter our­selves to look beau­ti­ful. The op­tions we have with our nat­ur­al hair are end­less."

Re­claim Nat­ur­al Beau­ty is avail­able for sale on­line on pa­per­back at Ama­zon.com, Barnes and No­ble, and the e-book is avail­able for pur­chase at: re­claim­nat­u­ral­beau­ty.com