Grow African Hair Long GAHL: Gahl

I ended my long-term transition to natural at 17 months post relaxer; this was back in June 2014. I would be lying if I said that it was a challenge to deal with my natural hair immediately because it was not. My biggest challenge was Knots and tangles! I had these bad guys literally everywhere! There were hundreds of them all over my hair and it was just frustrating. Seeing that this was an issue for me I shared a post explaining my ordeal with knots and you ladies were so awesome in giving me tips which really helped me to reduce those knots. With the tips I got as well as my own research and experiences I managed to reduce the knots by 90%.

1. Wash and go´s

Before going natural I always dreamt of wearing a wash and go and of course after going natural this was the first hairstyle I tried out and truly loved, however I came to realise that with this hairstyle my hair also developed countless knots. Due to the serious shrinkage that occurs as the hair dries up, kinky hair tends to curl up in itself and loop around itself causing knots.

I decided to avoid this hairstyle until recently when I discovered that a wash and go could be kept knot and tangle free by doing conditioner washes every other day and properly detangling the hair. The only problem with this is that the process is time consuming and because of this I will continue to avoid wash and go´s.

2. Split ends.

Stubborn knots should be cut with a pair of scissors and not pulled out or snapped at simply because this will lead to split ends. I had to learn this the hard way.

3. Detangling, moisturizing and sealing

Moisturized hair keeps the hair soft and manageable which makes it easier to detangle. Detangled hair is less like to knot.

4. Stretching natural hair.

Keeping natural hair stretched will keep knots away and will definitely help with length retention because you will not need to trim your hair often. There are several ways to get stretched hair which include, twisting, African threading, braid outs, all sorts of rod sets and blow drying. My technique of choice is twisting. After washing and conditioning my hair I keep my hair in twists and eventually moisturize, seal in the moisture with an oil then I proceed to finger detangle my hair carefully smoothing it out and stretching out the curls with my finger. If you would like a video tutorial on this technique please leave a comment below.

5. Sectioning hair.

I don’t always section my hair but I know that working in smaller sections make detangling much easier than working with a huge section at once.

6. Combing

Combing or finger detangling your hair from the roots towards the ends is a sure way of creating tangles and knots. Avoid this at all costs.

7. Protective styling and low manipulation

Protective styles that keep your hair stretched are a great way to avoid knots and tangles. Braids and cornrows are great for this but you need to make sure that they are done correctly and not too tight.

About a year and a half ago I stopped relaxing the bottom half of my hair and the edges because I felt that the texture of my hair on these areas was almost the same as my texlaxed hair. I was transitioning to texlaxed hair at the time. (Incase you do not know what it means to texlax, this is simply underprocessing the hair purposely while applying relaxer this technique is also called texturizing.) After six months of learning to deal with my different textures I realised that i could actually do without the relaxer and realised that I just loved the coils and curls coming out of my scalp, I literaly could not keep my fingers off them and was actually shocked by them because I had never noticed them before. This gave me even more reason to start my transition to natural. The picture below shows my starting and current length at my nape.

This part of my hair is completely natural and this is one and a half years of hair growth. It does not look like much growth in it's curly state, but stretched out it is past shoulder length.

The front of my hair and my crown area are currently one year post relaxer. I have to admit that it is very hard to tell the difference between my texlaxed hair and my natural hair in the front section. The fully relaxed areas are much easier to spot because they are super straight compared to my natural hair which is curly. I also discovered that I have three different textures on my natural hair! My crown has curls that are a lot tighter than those at the front. And the back and edges have very loose curls. Which makes me say that I do not have one specific hairtype.

I will be sharing a few things that have really helped me over the past year in the next blog. But for now I will just mention one of the most important ones which is protective styling. I like to leave my hair alone but at the same time I always want to have access to it. This is the reason why I don't braid or weave my hair. For me bunning is the best protective style because it is easy to do and requires very little manipulation.

Bun on a failed bantu knot out!

Wash and go bun!

High bun on straight hair!

Since I am transitioning to natural, length retention is not really a big priority for me right now. I have been cutting off my relaxed ends every other month because they look thinner than my natural hair.

If you are on a longterm transition too or are thinking of starting one what are some of the challenges you are facing?