I did a 2 year transition trimming as it grew and maintaining 1 length the whole time.
This is a week after my relaxer April 2007 When I started transitioning.
This is 1 year into it. April 2008 you can see the new growth & shrinkage at the top.
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This is what I ended up chopping off all at once in April 2009/ as you can see there weren't a lot of relaxed ends left because I trimmed every other month for the whole transition.
And this shows my natural twists post chop April 2009 and how much shrinkage they have.
Shrinkage took a while to embrace. It annoyed me at first.
And this is a fresh trim in June 2009. The first time I flat ironed.
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I am a 4ab.
When transitioning long term I noticed that many (not all) of the ladies who held on to all their length and wanted to grow longer hair while transitioning had a harder time than those of us who trimmed as it grew. Hanging on to all those relaxed ends and letting them creep down your back tends to cause more detangling issues. It can be done but eventually all those relaxed ends will have to go so why let them cause more trouble then they need to.
Plus, If you keep them then the amount you'll have to chop will be more significant.
Hope this helped. I documented my entire journey in my fotki album. The link is in my sig.
There will probably be times when you're ready to give up and go back to relaxing. This is normal. And if you decide to change your mind, that's your prerogative. But try to stick it out, when you have days like that, jump over here on LHCF and let us talk you through it. It usually helps.