Growing Afro hair.

Healthy hair, Image from wix.

There’s a common misconception that black people’s hair simply doesn’t grow, which I once believed in as well, until a friend (hey Sagal!) shared pictures of black girls with back length natural hair with me; I questioned whether it was actually possible for us to grow our hair that long and with a little research I found out it was .The average person’s hair grows 6 -4 inches a year and at a minimum of 3 inches a year (this depends on several factors, such as your overall health, genetics ,etc).

I had been growing out my hair for 15 years . According to a rough estimate, with 15 years of not cutting your hair and it growing at a minimum of 3 inches, you should have 45 inches of hair (beyond butt length hair),mine was SHOULDER LENGTH. Was my hair simply not growing?

It turns out it was. I simply was not retaining the new length, when your hair breaks at the ends faster than it’s growing, your hair will appear to remain the same length for years, if not appear to be getting shorter.

My hair has always been natural but I was making a lot of mistakes that we often do pertaining to African hair care (such as excessive heat use,ineffective moisturising .. ).

So in October 2015 I decided to cut off the lifeless ends of my hair and grow it out the proper way, I went from shoulder length to ear length hair. As I was still adjusting to a new natural hair care regimen I made a lot of mistakes that I believe stunted my hair growth, I still however managed to experience a lot more hair growth than I had before. I have learned that only healthy hair grows, and in working towards healthy hair, I noticed a substantial change in not only the length but the volume as well.

I will shortly put up the second part of this post, on how I managed to nurse my hair back to health.

That is it for now ! Thank you for checking out my post and see you on my next one !

xoxo -Alexandra.