The Long and Short of It: My Hair Journey

Been Natural since I moved to LA way back in 2004 (wow!) but I started growing my hair really starting starting last year

This was one of my birthdays I believe in 2005-


I had never had color in my hair before, but I heard when you’re natural you can do things like that because you’re not putting chemicals in your hair. So I let my friend who loves dying hair, put hair color in my hair. It wasn’t that flattering on me, it was a light brown and next to my face it wasn’t that cute. As it grew out though I like it better as it just was on my tips. The one thing I noted, but didn’t give much thought was that that color was growing out, but yet my hair didn’t seem to be Growing! The color was moving back and back and back, but length? Forget about it. Ha, so In fact I did.

Miami 2007

Here I am in Miami for a friend’s graduation and birthday party (her bdays are like National holidays so that is why all the singing to the heavens going on in the pic lol) It also shows the front and back of my hair so I thought it was a good pic. I DID like my hair short with big earrings it was my style. But now that I am learning more I also never considered growing my hair out because I thought hair like mine didn’t get long, so I wonder how much was belief and how much was preference. I do look back at this particular pic though and remember how I did love it like this. It was moisturized and healthy in this particular pic, but the problem was I didn’t have ANY control over it. I didn’t know the importance of mositures and since my hair was short and gonna always BE short I didn’t know what difference it made. I probably had just washed and twisted it for this trip and that’s why it appears to be more healthy than it was.

Now in between 2007 and 2010 there were different lengths and styles happening but again I never really thought of growing my hair out and I knew “hair like mine” didn’t grow and it would be too much to manage anyway. The shorter the was the less there was. That was me still operating under the belief our hair has to be tame to be presentable.

The only time I saw growth was when I took it out of a protective style, mainly kinky twists.
It would be soft and notably longer, but the length never stayed and the softness would be gone by the next day. Had no idea what I was doing! More than that I had no idea that I HAD NO IDEA of what I was doing that made it worse!



The thing about me and a low maintenance hair style is that I take it make NO maintenance and for a really long time. So there are the twists in their prime, but I let them stay for too long and they started pulling out my edges.

This was me after taking out the kinky twist and it was the longest and softest my hair had been I Was tooooo excited


I think I was stoked because I felt like this was Teenie Weenie nor more and I had entered into another stage. This process of my hair growing a couple inches every year was Exactly what I expected so again, note the excitement, I thought I was ahead of the curve!

I could take you through the different twists, sets and setbacks! But again, I was happy enough with my hair, did it myself, always was cutting my ends and did not have a clue about moisture, washing, detangling or really anything about hair routine.

In 2009 I moved to Ecuador as Youth & Family vounteer with the Peace Corps. I had in kinky twists for as long as I could but they eventually had to come out. When they did it there was a lot to deal with. Living in a new place, new climate, different culture. Let’s just say my hair care went from modest and innocently clueless to non existence and a half. I’ll show you the the pictures I saw when I said "SOMETHING has got to give!!"

I had put my hair in these tiny braids to give it a “Break” because I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. The bad hair days were all the time, I didn’t know what to do with it and while I embrace short hair, this in between not short and sheik, and by no means long, was a nightmare. Since I had no control over my hair I didn’t know where to go how to get it to do what I wanted to do. Being in Ecuador I didn’t have someone to just cut it short and in a style, and hair for extensions didn’t look like my hair it looked like a Barbies hair (oooh but later I went there anyway!) The other thing about these tiny braids is there were a nightmare to take out and I didn’t realize that ripping away at my hair was only doing it more damage and was by no means a protective style.

This picture was taken in June 2010 and was the beginning of me asking myself “hey whats up with my hair” (also others had askED…why hasn’t my hair grown for real in over 5 years!) It was at this time my mother discovered YouTube and all of the hair divas on there. My mother being researcher, got to the bottom of what it Healthy hair really was and how to achieve it.

I still felt I had other things to worry about like learning Spanish, but she was so enthusiastic about and wanted to give workshops on it, she asked me to try to start taking care of my hair and logging it in a journal so I could be one of her before and afters. She was also educating me. It was from her I first even heard we could grow our hair…long if we wanted to. Of course my response was, I don’t want to grow long hair. Then she mentioned even if I don’t want it long, the longer I grow it the less I have to worry about shrinkage. Bingo! Shrinkage is a huge issue for me, so I was listening after that. She went on to explain how long hair means you are able to retain length because you hair isn’t suffering and breaking off. If you want it short, keep it short, but in a deliberate style, not in a broken off state of shortness.

So with that I set out to get a routine down. My mom and I swapped ideas, recipes and routines. She sent me a ton of products to try and I was just experimenting away. Earlier in the blog I have product reviews. I had planned to do SO many more and just ran out of time, and now I’m into finding a more simple routine.

I always said I wanted to log my journey, but I knew I had just started to talk about growing my hair so there wouldn’t be much to log. It wasn’t until I was going through albums tonight that I realized I guess my hair HAS Grown. I don’t know if it’s as tremendous as the YouTube Gurus’ but it has grown this past year and that is actually a first! As you’ve seen what it looked like after 3 years. So now you can note that after 1 Year there has been growth!

In the past year I wore my hair first in twist. I was blow drying my hair and STREEETCHING them out. My mom was educating me on how good water was for my hair. I was washing it regularly but I realized I was still not wetting it during the week cause that would shrink my twists!


First wet fro and SUPER Stretched out Twists.


Just putting water on my hair keeping it moisturized made a difference this wet fro is as big as my first blown out straight fro I was so excited about. Once I saw my hair stretched I really loved it and understood how a little length could be okay. I had to get used to putting water on my hair so that it would stay hydrated and that weekly heat on my hair was not the answer, blowdried twists had to go. I instead needed to focus my efforts to growing my hair to get twists this length in their shrunken state.

For me the next step had to be protective style so that I wasn’t messin with my hair so much. I was so excited about a new project I was doing all kinds of things with my hair when what it needed was to be left alone! Something else my mom informed me was that a real protective style protects your ends so while twists are great, having twists with ends tucked is even better! So I got this style, with the Barbie hair (which was all that was available in Ecuador) and everything.




I kept my hair like this or a version of this for about three months. I had to undo and redo somethings, but it was in this style more or less. I think I did a pretty good job of spraying with a combo of water and coconut oil and applying castor oil occasionally as well. I was also washing it on average of 7-10 days. When I finally took my hair down I could definitely note some growth. I was a believer in “my hair could grow” and I also believed in protective styles. I was down to do protective again, but I didn’t want extensions they pull at my hair, I prefer my own natural hair AND with the options here it was the only way to go. I ambitiously thought, hey with this growth I can just duplicate the style I had with no extensions! French braids in the front and loose braids in the back!

I was so excited that I could actually put my hair into a puff! Even when I wasn’t interested in growing out my hair I ALWAYS loved a puff!!



I thought about just keeping my hair like this, but I was in protective style mode so I kept on with the mission. I knew from my past experience with doing braids with my own hair, I needed to make the braids bigger so they’d be easy to take out. That was more possible with my hair a bit longer (so okay another point for growing hair a bit longer.) I couldn’t wait for

the end result! And THIS is what I got…

Ugh! I was so disappointed. From the front was the real disaster. It just was NOT what I had envisioned! It was full enough. That could have been solved with smaller braids but I know better than that. I was stuck I had spent time to do a protective style but I really didn’t like it.
So I played with some ways to put it up but knew I could only hang with It for a week or so. I stuck with this last one because at least the ends were tucked. I think it lasted me a week or two before I took it down. But when I did I again could note a difference! This was after I took out the braids and had sprayed my hair as took them down, so it was stretched a bit from braids and shrunken a bit because of the water. I see I am always happy with a fro on my head haha! I was really pleased at how big he fro was! This was Christmas Eve 2010. I couldn’t wait to Skype my momma and show her the progress. I twisted my hair in big chunky twists and tucked the ends to have a chunky twist out.

and this was the result the next day.
Where I live is Extra humid so my hair changes throughout the day and this style did too, this was about midway through. The twist got less defined as the night went on but it was still fluffy, soft and I looked about the same even with all of the humidity. I was happy with it. I retwisted it when I got home again and pretty much wore my hair like this for the rest of the year.


Now it’s 2011. Where I moved has a pool so that has only made things crazier. I live on the beach too so salt water, chlorine, and trying to grow natural hair. Plus I am looow maintenance so I do not want to have to spend a lot of time on my hair!

Since I was swimming I tried to do some old skool hair styles my mom used to do when I was in swimming camp. Like two French braids or a connected French braid jam. It was okay but not really all that flattering. From the front. These styles are what I use though on wash to day to let my hair air dry and stretch. Got my hair in two French braids right now!
Tried a Wash n Go Puff (since I could now!) But after swimming it was a detangling nightmare. Desperate for a protective style I went back to the one that worked. The Barbie Hair. I didn’t have enough this time so it was a real make shift situation. But protective is protective. In the past when I had just done my favorite fall back style, two strained twist. They were great when I did them, but after getting wet there were stiff and unattractive. This last time I revisited my two strained twist I got a few welcomed surprises. One I did my twists after having my hair stretched from wearing two French braids for two days. This was the result. I loved these twists! I had twisted them in the morning so this was them after a long day in the humidity. I was pleased. After two weeks of the same twists being swam in and washed and wet, I was able to shake my hair out and just go. Sure they got shorter and shorter with every water activity, but I had never had been able to do that before and it was so easy and low maintenance.




These are the twists after two weeks of me letting them HAVE IT!

I have never been able to wear my shrunken twists because they would be too short and start sticking out. I loved this. I wasn’t sure it was protective enough for my ends (even thought I was spraying my hair and treating my ends with castor oil) So I decided to brave my protective hair style once again hoping that I maybe got some more length. This was the result.

I was MUCH more pleased with the result. It didn’t seem like my hair had really grown, but I guess it had. The first Protective Style Attempt was taken in December 2010. This style was done in May 2011. So 5 months. I don’t know if that’s me getting the optimal growth a little slow or what. But I do know that it is growing and it really just dawned on me.
I didn’t love how this style looked from the front at first so I wore it like this most of the time (ends tucked baby!) however, as it got worn in a little I wore it down with elastic headbands. I was trying to keep it in for a month. I lasted about 3 weeks ☺

I washed my hair today and did an Egg and Mayo Deep Conditioner in it and it was amazing for my hair. I am going to keep it in French braids all day tomorrow so it can dry (it takes forever for my hair!). Then I’m going to two strand twist for the next week or however long it lasts. Now you are up to date on my hair journey. I am revamping my routine so I will be posting that one of these days. Stay tuned!


*I tried to post as many pictures as I could but I sometimes have trouble on blogger. For a more fluid rendition of the same story check out My Tumblr