Day 1 again (well, the end of it) - wash day. I'll be continuing this challenge for the foreseeable future. My hair felt so good and was so low maintenance last week that I see no point in changing anything. I blow dried my hair and braided it up. My hair is mid back length right now (a bit below bsl) - it was a little longer until I snipped about 4.5 inches in April due to thinning ends (cut about an inch above where the thinning began). Mind you - I do regular trims (like 1/4-1/2 inch) and my ends still thinned out- I do believe it was due to the improper use of water as an everyday moisturizer and detangling soaking wet hair. My ends are still full from the cut and I intend to keep them that way.
I'd also like to share how I knew for a fact that Cyn was the real deal and why I joined the group. I don't need help with hair growth - I've grown my hair to tailbone length a number of times without much effort. I've had some issues with dryness and had some bouts of breakage and/or excessive shedding over the many years but always managed to work through it and get it under control. However, I didn't know that my "healthy low maintenance" routine was slowly ruining the integrity of my hair til recently. Shortly after I began seeing the signs of water damage (hygral fatigue), I came across one of Cyn's videos discussing why it's bad to constantly allow hair to stay wet. I was like damn- why didn't I find her sooner....after years and years of air-drying/leaving hair wet for long periods of time and detangling wet hair, water damage finally presented itself to me in the form of limp curls and angry frizz - primarily on the top layers of my two front sections. My "wash and go's" (now fully diffused dry, of course) are sh*t because of it - looks awful in the front - while limp curls are somewhat workable, no amount of product (or protein which my hair does not need) takes away this type of frizz and those sections have zero curl pattern; they're just straight pieces of frizzy hair that look dry, brittle, and dusty but, oddly, feel soft and hydrated to the touch - such a contradiction. The frizz is completely smoothed out once I blow dry my hair (regular blow dry, not diffused) and my hair looks really shiny and healthy in that state (full, bouncey, bodiful, etc) but i know it's not truly healthy. Since I'm not experiencing breakage or excessive shedding, my plan is to simply chop my hair off as it grows out til I get rid of all of those damaged sections and to then take every precaution to keep it from happening again. The moral of this story: listen to Cyn and dry your hair y'all.
I joined the group to get and stay on the right track. Growing long hair is one thing - growing and maintaining healthy hair is something altogether different...
Wishing you all a great week... take care!
Ladies we are all on the same page as far as our past experiences. And to be honest with you, I got so tired of loc every night and twisting back up and sleeping on wet hair. I'm just so sorry I didn't put two and two together to figure out why my hair was so weak and breaking so easily. Duh!!! Thank God I never stopped seeking!