Before I began my journey to natural hair, I embarked on several researches and a lot of mind prepping because girl, it ain't an easy decision to make to putting scissors to mane I tell you!
One important discovery was that black girls hair in particular is water greedy for the most part. I was for a while very skeptical about spritzing water or any relevant liquid on my painstakingly styled natural hair because I didn't want the shrink at all(shrinkage is THE nightmare).
I must confess that as my hair grew out, showed more length and became a bit more manageable, the worry of spraying a little bit of water almost on a daily basis seemed to vanish because shrink or not, hair became easier to manage.
Nowadays, I have become quite comfortable with spritzing water in my hair just before my morning bath to give the water some time to saturate my hair before styling. You know, even neck length hair without stretching of course, is easy to quickly put in a bun or any other quick to do style just before stepping out of the house.
Now I do not have to get scared about wash days anymore (Oh yes, used to be scary for me when my protective style was taken out). I try to regularly make chunky twists or braids (either in two or four sections) before bedtime so it is usually still in twists or braids when I spritz water in the morning and so the shrink is not much.
However, when I have on twist outs or braid outs, I style before spritzing water lightly because manipulating moist hair will certainly ruin your twist or braid outs. This is particularly the case for 4C naturals who do not normally have naturally defined curls.
I have unconsciously gathered quite a small pile of spray bottles of various designs, from large to medium to small travel sizes. I must confess that the designs available these days are so cute looking that a girl can't just not have to have one or two of each. Sounds silly I know but if you normally like cute, this won't really come as silly to you.
I realize that as my hair adds a bit more length, I am less hassled about styling like I used to be. Truth be told, I still have a whole lot of styles I would love to try out but a nine to five job from Monday to Friday does not exactly allow for much time. However, I am determined that 2018 should see me better managing my time and slaying in all sorts of protective styles. Of course I know to not revert to the sew-ins, braids and weaves so much because the receding hair line war I have had to embark on came as a result of too much strain on my edges from such. You might want to read my post Oh, My Edges!.
I am three years post relaxer now and two years 100% natural because I transitioned for about nine to ten months. In these three years, I have seen my hair grow thicker than I had thought possible. My hair had grown so thin while I used relaxers that I had concluded that my hair had always been that way. Mind you, my big chop in 2015 is the first time I had ever cut my hair! True that I had lost patches of hair up to the scalp at the different times while using relaxers and this usually happened when I used a relaxer different than the one I had used for a long time. When this happened, rather than cut off the whole hair, I just continued with my weaves, braids and what not until those bald patches grew back out.
My relaxed hair never seemed to want to grow out past a certain length but one interesting observation was that for every time that I decided to leave in a braid, weave or faux locks for a long period of time, I would see good length added and this from the undergrowth that had accumulated as a result.
This was an important lesson because, it simply meant that the relaxer free part of my hair grew out faster than my relaxed ends. With this theory in mind, I concluded that my hair would grow out much longer if I just stopped the relaxer. It also showed to me that relaxer may be stunting my hair growth. This may not be far from the truth judging from the fact that a lot of black girls' hair ceases to grow beyond a certain point while they still were on relaxers. I used to imagine that I probably would have hit tail bone length a long time ago if I had stayed away from the relaxer earlier or not have used the relaxer at all. I say this because in about three years, my hair that seems to be slow growing had been able to reach well past my shoulder blades when lightly stretched. A feat that I had concluded almost impossible with my relaxed hair of over 20 years and more. The longest my hair had ever reached relaxed was on top of my shoulders for all those years! I am quite positive that my hair length goal of tail bone is attainable now. Such a goal I would never have dreamt achieving with relaxed hair. Yes I have always favored long hair. I am positive that you would have guessed by now anyway.
Though I have never expected too much speedy growth for my hair in particular, with the length I now have, I am expecting to have attained bra length by the time my natural hair is five years old. I am keeping my fingers crossed.
I have not done a lot of manipulating other than the periodic weaves or braids (no more micro braids for me now) and then putting my hair in twists to stretch it or do the African threading. For a lazy natural like myself, twists are much easier to handle but with longer hair any of the no heat stretch method is not a big problem because you can easily section hair into large portions. Something that would not be easy to do with shorter hair.
Anyway, that being said, having dry hair like I used to is gradually becoming a thing of the past as I spritz water on a daily basis these days. My hair is more moisturized now and so snapping and breaking doesn't occur much any more.
I still try to do a little dusting of my tips once in a while unlike previously where I trimmed off bigger sections of hair.
These days, once I notice that my hair tips are no longer thick as I want them, I do the dusting just so I have neat and beautiful ends.
Of course unlike relaxed hair, natural hair tips do not need very regular trims if they are healthy, but it is still a good idea to do so once in a while. Every month would be too often so I suggest after three to four months is a good spread.
Do you subscribe to water for your hair? Let us know what you think in the comments section.