During a relaxer touch up in November 2014, I unintentionally under
processed my hair, leaving way more texture than planned as I had applied extra
virgin olive oil to my new growth prior to the touch up and had also then
covered the oil with Roux Porosity Control conditioner. Doing this step, meant
the relaxer was able to process my hair the way I wanted it to and I was left with
so much texture, I pretty much looked natural.
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| Relaxer Day - So much texture left, my roots look natural! |
My corrective
relaxer was done on 30th December 2014 which my mother in law kindly did for me;
we set the time for 18 minutes, applied the relaxer to my new growth first and
then applied relaxer to the under-processed hair for the last 5-6 minutes
before rinsing out.
Checking my hair
afterwards, I could see I was still left with a lot of texture but it seemed
fine to me and I was just happy I could finally run my fingers through my hair
without the extreme difficulty.
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| Left: Before Corrective Relaxer Right: Afetr Corrective Relaxer |
As the months
went on, I knew this section of my hair was more textured than the rest but I
had no idea the damage it would cause further down the line. I ensured to keep
my hair moist and deep conditioned and it was only as my hair grew longer that
I realised the more textured section was becoming an issue and I started to
experience breakage to the front and back of my hair which I noticed in
September 2015. The texture of my hair which was under-processed was so much
more curly and natural than the rest of my hair and looking back now,
air-drying was not beneficial to my hair as my hair was drying naturally
leaving me with 2-3 different textures and no matter how moist I kept my hair,
the textured sections would always dry out.
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| Mini Chop - March 2016 |
Between
September 2015 and March 2016, as much as I tried to baby my hair and look
after the more textured areas, I suffered from major breakage both to the front
and back of my hair. In March 2016, when doing a relaxer touch up, I decided to
give myself a mini chop and went from Bra-Strap length to Armpit-length as I
had sections to the back of my hair which was about 3-4 inches shorter than the
rest of my hair and the longer my hair got, the more noticeable it got. I
really hoped, I could grow the broken sections to meet the longer lengths but
realistically this would have meant I would be unable to wear my hair down for
at least a year whilst I played catch up. Trimming to armpit length made a
slight difference but I still needed to take off a few more inches to be level
to where the breakage was.
When I did my
mini cut, I was in the mind-set that I would grow out my hair until August and
review my hair from there but by the end of April 2016, enough was enough, I
missed not being able to wear my hair down whenever I wanted so decided to bite
the bullet and get a proper cut which ended up taking me back to neck length
which I haven't been in years.
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| Big Chop to Neck Length - April 29th 2016 |
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| September 2016 |
Neck length meant having to wear my hair down constantly and had to use heat until my hair was long enough to put into a bun which wasn't until July / August 2016. In October, I went away to Barbados for 3 weeks and it was only then that I realised my back section of my hair was still quite textured compared to the rest of my hair and was suffering from breakage yet again.
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| November 2016 |
Following my relaxer touch up on 24th December 2016, I gave myself a trim and I am now almost to armpit length but the back section has got to play catch up by about 2 inches.
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| 1 Day Post Relaxer - Blowdreid hair on cold air. Almost Armpit Length |
I will not be cutting my hair to match the length of the broken section, instead for the next 6-12 months, I will be making sure I give my hair all the attention it needs and wear low manipulation styles 99% of the time. This post is actually longer than anticipated so I will detail in my next post, the actual steps I intend to take this year to help recover from this setback.
Have you suffered any setbacks over the last year?
