Hair Journey Highlights, Triumps & Failures !

[DivineNapps1728]

I've been natural for a while & I realized that a lot has changed over the years; my hair journey is no longer centered around a quest for holy grail products, the adoption of a hair twin or strides towards unicorn status length. I'm no longer stalking progress & chasing goals. Basically I'm relaxing, doing what I know works when I feel inclined to & being unbothered otherwise.

I don't post much because I'm not doing anything new, but I thought it'd be fun to start a thread where we share the greatest highlights, triumps & failures of our hair journey, especially those of us who've been on a healthy hair journey for a while.

Feel free to share your best & worst hair related moments, stories, and what you've learned !

 

[DivineNapps1728]

The highlight of my hair journey has been seeing friends & family members who criticized me for going natural and/or who stated they could never live without a relaxer do just that.

My greatest hair journey triumps have been kicking pjism & learning how to determine if a product will work for my hair by reading the ingredients.

My greatest hair journey failure has been heeding the hair care advice of others & jumping on bandwagons even when doing so was clearly contrary to what worked for my hair.

One of my funniest hair journey moments occurred during the early Monistat craze. I wanted to see if using Monistat would really boost growth & I remember being told that the generic version was being sold at dollar tree so I ran there & grabbed a bunch of tubes. I threw them on the conveyor belt proudly and the cashier gasped in horror and stuffed every tube in the bag so fast I'm not sure she scanned then properly. Little did she know my vag was fine, but my scalp was thirsty for greatness.

 

[CodeRed]

I'm unsure of how long I've been on my hhj... I guess it would be since I decided to join this forum, about 5 years ago. I started the journey because I wanted all natural ways to take care of my hair. Then I went natural and found out all that entailed for hair that was longer than a few inches For about the past 3 years I've been exploring products and just came to the conclusion last year that an "all natural" product regimen is not for my hair.

Highlights:

- Being natural and learning my natural hair texture. I actually like it. If being natural took less time and effort than being relaxed I'd definitely do it.
- Having family members who can use the hair stuff I'm not using. Haven't had to throw anything away yet.

Triumphs:

- Finding a simpler, quicker and more effective regimen that works for both my hair and scalp
- Finding great, inexpensive products
- Putting a limit on what/how much I buy. Decided that if I don't have an ingredient list I'm probably not purchasing it and putting price limits on products. I have to value how much they benefit my hair if I'm going to venture to more expensive stuff and I try to buy samples when possible to test it.
- Finding all the products that work for me on the ground and in multiple stores so I don't have to plan purchases
- I've always liked my hair but now I'm able to take care of it the way it was supposed to be taken care of so it can shine

Failures:

- Taking so long to figure out the obvious and stop trying to make things work that obviously don't, especially when it comes to ingredients that my hair obviously doesn't like.
- Building regimens that are a mile long. If my hair needed that, I would do it, but it doesn't and I used a lot of time and money that could've gone to other things. The good thing is I paid attention and learned a lot.
- Listening to too much advice. There are a lot of recommendations out there and I had to learn to only partake it what made sense for my hair based on what I've learned about it. There are ingredients out there that my hair has already rejected so I don't care how highly recommended a product comes... I'm probably not using it. Just like there are things out there that other people reject but my hair likes them.

 

[claud-uk]

Little did she know my vag was fine, but my scalp was thirsty for greatness.

 

[Kinky4Agirl]

Failures... Loading up on products. And moisturizing too much...
Triumps... Learning that less is more and my hair is happier with less products. It's that simple.

 

[DivineNapps1728]

View attachment 349097

I almost wrote that my scalp was itching to be great, but I felt that pun was a bit too crass lol !

 

[claud-uk]

@DivineNapps1728 - Doesn't matter which way you dress it, your post damn near caused a bedtime bustup 'tween me and my man lol, I was "reading" (code for on the forum) in bed and roared out as he was nodding off, tried to push my face into the pillow, that brought up thoughts of munching and pillow biting, man then it was ALL OVER!

 

[DivineNapps1728]

@claud-uk lmbo ! My bad

 

[DivineNapps1728]

New triump !!

I accidently achieved the best twist out of my life & when I bunned my hair it looked like I'd used a pack of Marley hair.

 

[Ajna]

I have been natural for such a long time I think it has been almost 16 years.
I started this journey because I broke up with my boyfriend who I wanted to be my husband and I felt lost like I was not sure who I was. So I did what anyone would do cut all my hair off and the only way I could figure out which pieces to cut was to get rid of the permed parts. Needless to say after I did it I thought OH MY. But it was great I spent 6 years in a short fro and in that time I figured out how to love me. I think that was my biggest highlight was learning to love what God made me without all the fillers. The second one which still blows my mind is how every man I have dated since then loves to play in my hair.

Triumphs
Being told by my young cousins they want hair just like mine
Figuring out what products my hair likes - which by the way does change with length
Feeling my hair touch my bra strap - never ever thought that would happen
Becoming a minimalist and realizing my hair like all things better when it is watered down and less is always more

Failures
Making my hair fragile by starting and stopping regimes without giving it enough time or making drastic changes
Believing since my hair was natural there was no need to trim
Believing a product that is "natural" could change my texture