Hi Curlies

Ever experienced a natural hair set back? Have you ever been running your fingers through your hair and noticed some breakage along the crown, along the edges or in the back of your head? Have you ever had heat damage after straightening your curls?

Well this is all part of the natural hair experience.! Since I’ve been natural I’ve had my fair share of setbacks which would be all of the aforementioned.

The first thing to do is to definitely not beat yourself up about it and the last thing you want to do is panic . I mean most women who have natural hair do their hair them selves. Therefore it should be no surprise when you do have a setback because technically we are not trained cosmetologist. Honestly most of the information that we’ve learned about natural hair, especially for myself, has totally come from the Internet, other naturalistas, etc!

The next thing to do is to figure out what has been causing the setback! Let’s step back, and define a natural hair setback . Typically most naturalistas have a common goal being that we want long flowing luscious  thick beautiful natural hair! A set back is anything that stops our hair growth! There are a number of things that could be causing you to have the setback. See the list here. I recently did a blog post about things that could be causing natural hair breakage.

After you’ve narrowed down what has been causing the setback then find a solution. My current setback involves breakage in the back of my head from bobby pins that were too tight. I honestly didn’t even notice it until my sister told me that my twist out did not look as full in the back as it normally does. I grabbed the mirror and saw what she was talking about and totally went into panic mode! At first I totally started throwing away products thinking that that was what was causing it.  I realized panicking wasn’t working and I needed to get to the bottom of what was causing it especially after seeing all of my money going down the drain and in the trash. And so I started the process of elimination and realized that many of my products have great ingredients so it couldn’t be any of my products. I noticed that I did start doing more wash and go styles recently (taking a break from my staple twist out) and would pin my hair on the 3rd 4th 5th and 6th days until the next wash day. That was it! I was totally manipulating my hair everyday when I was pinning my wash and go and pinning it in the same spot rather tightly!

My solution right now is to continue to do wash and go styles because I can hide the breakage with the shrinkage that comes with the style. Instead of pinning my hair what I’ve discovered is that if I use my Original Moxie Shape Shifter in the morning on my dry hair then it refreshes my wash and go. I pretty much stumbled upon this one Wednesday morning when I was struggling with my hair and slathered the product on since i was running late for work. I got to work and my wash and go was like new (it was poppin lol)!!! I typically use tgr product mostly for my twist outs.

SOLUTION: Basically if I wash my hair on Sunday and have a good wash and go for 2 to 3 days and midweek use this product to refresh my wash and go then  there is no need too pin my hair up with bobby pins. I can literally just put a satin bonnet over two low ponies secured by satin scrunchies (versus doing maintenance twists which requires nightly manipulation). Ding dong! I can’t believe it took me this long to realize this.

Just remember that hair grows back at a rate of 6 inches per year or half an inch per month. So stick in there cougar ( where do you want me to say champ? Tiger? Lol)  The setback will be over before you know it and your hair will be back to where it was in no time. 🙂

Have you had any natural hair setbacks and what have you done to overcome it?

Ginny
Embrace the Natural You