Lets start, do your own hair!
If you do your own hair, you will learn what's best for it and thus treat it the best. When others do your hair, they are not as invested in your hair's health as you are (unless they are a loving family member or someone who has a very good heart).
They'll be more focused on outcome and are therefore more likely to damage your hair.
The only ones who will be 100% invested in your hair is God and you.
You also need to shift your focus from looks to health. Don't kill your hair to look beautiful. Take care of your hair as if it is sacred and it will, in time, take care of you by beautifying you.
Love your hair and it will love you back.
Our natural hair is as fine as silk and is meant to adorn us. Treat it as such.
First Step: Proper Detangling
I first use my fingers to delicately loosen my hair because hair will break at the slightest pull. The key to longer hair is to keep the hair already on your head.
I also apply castor oil on my hair during detangling as well as for hair care after shampooing. It doesn't have the best smell, but the slip of that oil is amazing. My hair will just slip through knots even as I style through out the week.
If I encounter a tough knot, I apply a little castor oil on the knot then pull the knot out lightly. The knot will usually just unravel with the pull.
Your hair is like a flower, you have to treat it gently or it will fall apart.
After detangling, I like to treat my scalp before washing it with the body wash below (Tea tree is a mightily anti-fungal). In Trader Joes itself it's about $4.
Scalp health is very important, your hair grows from it!
I then use castile soap to wash my hair. With a little, that soap will go a long way. It will cleanse your hair supremely. I wash it many times until I can no longer feel oil on my hair and scalp. You want to make sure to clean old products off so your hair will have a fresh start for the new week! :)
Then, for my conditioner, I use the product below (the slip with this product is insane). I personally like to detangle before I wash my hair to make it easier to detangle during the conditioner stage.
Shampoo retangles the hair, so I apply a few pumps to my hair as a whole to help with slip. I then separate my hair into sections, then add additional conditioner to each section (a little goes a long way!).
I then use a comb (a wide toothed comb) to realign my hair strands. At this stage, the point is not to detangle, it is to realign your hair. Once it is aligned, it will be easy to separate into sections and style for the week.
Second Step: Use the Proper Comb
Combs styled like the one above have been a life-saver for my hair.
If you put enough slip in your hair (oil is great to add slip!), this comb will glide through your hair. This is because of its wider tooth gaps, which allows for curls to slip through. I learned that with our hair, the point isn't to 100% detangle it. It's more to realign the hair strands into one direction.
Once you get into that mindset, you'll lose much less hair.
Third Step: Put Your Hair Away When You Sleep
After you have adorned your hair with a style for the day, please put it away.
Please tuck your ends in to protect them (they are the oldest thus weakest part of your hair) and do large twists. The larger your twists, the less intertwined your hair will be. This helps to prevent retangling. Meaning, it will more easily detangled and thus cause less damage to your hair.
You don't want to comb your hair during the week.
You want to treat your hair like its fragile silk, not tough rope.
Nowadays, I do a rough version of the hairstyle above for my daytime wear. It's a style that makes my hair much more managable for hair styling.
If I did not twist my hair for the week, I tuck my ends into my roots at night.
So it looks like the image above at night.
In the morning, I unwrap my twists then redo them so it will look neat. If it's not in twists, I use my wide-toothed comb to gently tease the hair out of the night-knots. (Don't detangle, just tease it out. Remember, it doesn't need to be 100% detangled, just aligned)
When its time to wash, I detangle it as I have described in Step Uno. The less you comb your hair, the less hair you lose.
Do this over months and you'll wake up one day with a head full of poofy hair!
Fourth Step: Now that you have an abundance of hair, find elegant hairstyles that are easy and elegant.
Here's your reward for taking care of your hair:
You can now use your hair for beautiful hairstyles!
Don't be afraid to adorn your hair with accessories! Dress your hair with love <3
When styling, you want to treat your hair as gentle as when you detangle. I found that if I tussle and pull at my hair to style it, I will lose hair.
Nowadays, I gently part and maneuver my hair. It feels slower, but tangles are less likely to occur. The harder you tug at your hair, the more likely it will tangle. If you pull gently, it will slip through.
The goal is to hear no snaps/pops as you style. Treat your hair as gently as possible, as if you're arranging flowers in a vase. When you touch a flower's petals, you touch them gently so none will fall.
Same with your hair. Take your time and you'll be finished faster than you thought. If the style doesn't work out, breathe in, then out, then try again.
It takes practice and lots of love :)
Listen if white people can love their hair, we can too. If they can dress their hair with love, we. can. too.