Simplicity is key in retaining length
Simplicity. There is something so obvious about this word yet so easy to miss. Simplicity in everything is the key to getting the results you desire.
I was reminded of this while I was looking though a black woman’s online photo album (as many do when looking for inspiration). It was the album of a natural headed 4b sister. Her shrunken tresses were just past her shoulders and nearly waist length when straightened!
In one of her albums she mentioned that she had been growing her hair for 5 years from when she had cut her relaxer off. An excellent achievement by anyone’s standards.
One of the ladies who commented on her photos had asked her how she had done it as she too had been growing her natural hair for 5 years but was barely at shoulder length when shrunken and only slightly past when straightened.
Now here is the ideal situation where one would conclude that it was genes that made one person’s hair longer than the other in spite of similar grow out periods. But let’s look closer at their regimens.
Luckily enough both had put down what their regimens were and how they looked after their hair in general from month to month. It was then that the differences literally popped out of the screen.
This is a summary of the long haired lady’s regimen:
On Saturday’s she would wash, deep condition and detangle her hair then braid it up. The braids would be taken down for work on Monday morning for a defined braid out and she would sleep in 2 large twists nightly just fluffing out her hair with her hands in the morning.
By Thursday when the curl definition was gone, she would pull her hair into a huge afro puff or ponytail and wear it like that for the rest of the week.
Thank you for this. I have a habit of pulling/playing on my hair and then it breaks. And I only moisturize when I feel to , which is once a week. I think im going to stick with wash and go and wigs for now and see how that goes
Good luck!
GREAT article! ♡♥ 🙂
Thank you so much for this article. It’s August 2020 but this article for our natural hair still applies. Simple has always been okay with me mostly. My problem has been I love ponytails but learned if I wore them to move them around so I want put too much strain on my hair. However, I need to do them a lot less because I get lazy. I’ve always been a little tomboyish at times and just would put my hair in a ponytail and roll. I do love different styles too but I prefer my hair more than using any extensions rarely. Lately, I’m been refocusing to do better. One thing is my hair is stuck at my armpits. Now I see why. Need to take a page from the lady with the simple hair routine. Definitely increase my hairs daily moisture, use protein occasionally, create a wash day routine, deep conditioning weekly, and so on. I think I will make me a hair routine calendar or use a notebook to keep up with how I want to do it. ????????