Before I dive in, I just want to remind you that this is your journey, sis. Have fun with it, and your crown! Your hair is a God-given gift packed with meticulously crafted curls, coils, and kinks placed into your care. My initial start to this journey was pretty rough because of predetermined beauty standards for Black women set by White cultural norms. When my hair didn’t live up to those expectations, I became depressed and quit early. You, yes, YOU, little Black girl, grown Black woman, are God’s definition of beauty. You are a living embodiment of his artistic skills. Skin oozing with just enough melanin to absorb and exude heavenly radiance and adorned with a delicate crown. A crown that tells your journey as a woman, where you are now, where you have yet to go, and if you look hard enough, you’ll see the imprints of generations of previous crowns before you. Love your curls, and they’ll love you right back!

Tip #1 Get Familiar with Your Hair Before Buying Products

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I started my natural hair journey around 2017, in eighth grade. At this time, I had rarely seen my hair in its natural state, save my mom hurriedly washing it to get it back pressed again. At this point, my exposure to the natural hair community’s biggest influencers consisted of girls with looser curl textures and patterns (3a, 2c in some cases) who would recommend products (God bless their hearts) to fit that particular hair type. Unfortunately for me, as an overzealous middle school African American girl with 3c-4a hair, using their knowledge of their hair type to buy products for MY hair, resulted in utter disaster. What works best for someone else might not work for you and vice versa. Over time, as I got more familiar with my curl pattern and texture, I was able to find products that gave my hair what it needed. I also found YouTubers who were better able to speak to, and identify with, my hair as a girl with a kinkier hair type. You can see some of my favorite hair products for girls with 3c-4a hair later on in this post.

Tip #2 Know Your Hair’s Porosity

This coincides with tip #1 in that it involves getting familiar with your hair. Hair porosity is the hair’s ability or lack thereof to allow moisture into the hair shaft. This knowledge is especially important because it will enable you to navigate your wash days better. For example, my hair is low porosity, which means my shaft has a harder time opening up to allow water and moisture from products and creams inside. Based on this information, I know that deep conditioning, steam treatments, and heat from a hot cap are necessary tools to restore and retain moisture into my hair strands. In a way, I can make my hair accept the moisture because these methods essentially force the hair shaft open to allow the products to soak in. You can test your hair’s porosity by taking a strand of shed hair and placing it in a cup of water and observing if it sinks or floats. If your hair strand floats or sits on top of the water, it’s an indication of low porosity, and if it sinks, then your hair is of higher porosity. If your hair neither sinks nor floats and rests inside the water, your hair is of regular porosity.

Tip #3 Sis…TRIM. YOUR. HAIR.

This is the most important thing that you need to do to ensure the health of your hair. Regularly trimming helps retain hair length, contrary to popular belief, as you’ll experience less breakage with healthy ends. Leaving split, dry and dead ends to live on for another couple months causes more harm than good. Split ends can and will continue to split and travel up the hair strand if left unchecked. This can cause excessive breakage and shedding, and the recurring “My hair isn’t growing!” thought. I still struggle to grasp this concept because I hate seeing my hair go. When I first started, I always waited to trim because I wanted my hair to look long. As a result, I’d have to cut off way more than usual when it came time to trim. I promise half an inch to an inch every 3-4 months will save you plenty of time and tears.

Tip #4 Do Not Obsess Over Length

Your hair is growing sis, constantly, I can assure you. Every girl goes through the length check phase, consisting of randomly stretching your hair out of your head to see if it grew in the past 5 minutes. Like my mom always says, it’s ok to be in that state of mind for a while -everyone has- but do not stay there. Your main priority should be your hair strands’ health, and in turn, taking steps to ensure that happens. If you start to obsess over how long your hair is or how long you think it should be then you will let the straggly split ends remain, and ignore all of the signals that your hair may be sending your way. Also, when you continuously pull and tug at your hair every single day, it can cause unnecessary breakage and shedding. Which leads me to my next tip…

Tip #5 Low Manipulation/Protective Styles

Two words: Low. Manipulation. As stated above, always being in your hair from length checks to styling can damage and thin out your hair. Tuck it away once in a while with some moisturizing mini twists, flat twists, or cornrows. If you are dead set on wearing cute hairstyles in your hair, pick one that you really like that Sunday, stick to it, and leave that hair alone. Do whatever you need to do to make it last the week. There are many benefits to protective stylings, such as length retention, moisture retention (with the right products), and overall thicker and fuller hair. Protective styling is typically done in the colder, drier months of the year, where moisture is less available to your hair. You can still choose when and where to use these styles depending upon your surrounding geography and climate. Some of my favorite styles are box braids, mini braids, mini twists, flat twists, low buns, faux locs, passion twists, etc. The main focus of these hairstyles should be to maintain your hair’s health while in the style. For instance, if you’re rocking some box braids or passion twists, after about 4-5 days, start oiling your scalp every other day and massaging it. Invest in some leave-in conditioners with spray bottles to use in conjunction with your oils. Don’t just get a style, thinking it will do the work for you! Develop a hair regimen specific to protective styling to ensure that your hair is tucked away and moisturized. If you want to challenge yourself, try protective styling for a whole year with breaks between each style, and see how long your hair gets! There are so many more styles that you can look elegant in and keep that hair growing, and you might as well start now sis, you’re in quarantine, you ain’t goin’ nowhere!!

Tip #6 Hair Oils

This is another crucial ingredient to the growth of your hair. Natural oils help to stimulate hair growth, combat dry scalp and dandruff, and remedy heat damage. Some effective methods for using these oils are hot oil treatments, scalp massages, and to seal in the moisture from leave-ins or creams. Hot oil treatments are typically used to encase the hair strand protectively before shampooing with clarifying shampoos that can strip the hair. These can also be used in place of a deep conditioner if need be. When scalp massaging, you can gently heat the oil to some extent and then use that to massage your hair with your head flipped upside down. Not only are you getting the benefits of the heated stimulating hair oil, but with your head in an inverted position, it allows for increased blood flow to your head. Just don’t remain in that position longer than 3-5 minutes, or you’ll start feeling dizzy! 

Tip #7 Sis…LOVE. YOUR. HAIR. It’s BEAUTIFUL!

You’ve embarked on a life long journey with your God-given hair, not anyone else’s. Create a stable regimen to cater to your crown, eat right, drink lots of water, and don’t get frustrated when your half up half down don’t look like the girls on T.V. Regardless of where you start on your journey, be it long or short hair, remember that your hair was chosen specifically to crown you, daughter of the Most High. God knew what He was doing.

Yazzy’s Picks: Recommended Products

Yazzy’s Picks: Recommended YouTubers

The following YouTubers (to name a few) have inspired me through my natural hair journey. Their channels are highly informative, and can help to guide you on your journey as well: Bri Hall, Halfrican Beaute, Jenn Jackson, eVaniwithaV, Hannah Mussete, Nikki Bruner, Crowned K, Queeny Kaay, Naptural 85, Natural Reign, Safiya Bae, and The Curly Bev Show.

 

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