Demetris Anderson Walker: Just Keep Living!

For as long as she’d been wearing her hair natural, Demetris Anderson Walker openly longed to have marvelous, beautifully defined curls, just like those of her mother. And for as long as she’d been expressing that desire, her mom, channeling the true essence of maternal wisdom, would simply tell her “just keep living.”

For a while, that seemed like that may be Demetris’ only option. A naturalista for over twenty-five years, she first made the decision to go natural after realizing that maintaining a perm was not only time-consuming, but markedly ineffective.

“Dealing with those chemicals, people assume it’s easy. But to me, it was just a bunch of time that wasn’t being spent wisely,” she shared.

To remedy, Demetris did the only thing that she saw fit — the vaunted Big Chop.

“[My hair] was past my shoulders. I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and said ‘You know what? This is a lot of work.’ So I went to the barbershop, sat in the chair and told him to cut it off.”

The chop immediately left Demetris ensconced in a new, thorough sense of freedom. But her natural journey was far from finished. From that point on, she labored tirelessly, in between her career as an administrative coordinator for the Fulton County prosecutor’s office and the full-time job that is raising a son, trying to find a product that could truly produce the results she was looking for. And just as she reached the point where it felt like she’d tried everything, she found Uncle Funky’s Daughter by chance, during an old airing of a television feature.

“I immediately got up and went to my computer and said ‘Let me read about this. Let me see what’s going on’,” Demetris recalled. “I just started reading, reading, reading. I read the natural ingredients, watched the videos, and took it all in like ‘wow.’ ”

Being intrigued by the prospects of a product you haven’t yet tried is one thing, of course. But seeing, feeling and experiencing the results is a completely different entity altogether. And for Demetris, the proof was very much in practice; her first foray with Curly Magic yielded magnificent results, and she hasn’t looked back since.

“It elongates my curl pattern, and it makes it more defined. It gives me what I’m looking for,” she explained. “I just follow the instructions – take my shower, wet my hair, put my Curly Magic in and let it air dry. I love it!”

So much so, in fact, that she’s hardly shy about singing Curly Magic’s praises to any and everyone who’ll listen.

“Yesterday I was in Target buying some more, and this young lady standing next to me said, ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of that brand,’ Demetris recounted. “And I said, ‘Well honey, let me tell you something!’ She walked right away from the register and went got some Uncle Funky’s Daughter.”

And yet, the most satisfying facet of Demetris’ discovery is that through all of her trials, she was finally able to attain the one thing she sought most.

“When my father – who never really has much to say – when he’s the one to say, ‘Your hair is really pretty. It looks just like your mother’s,’ all I can say is ‘YES!’ ”