My Hair Care Story

One of you kindly asked me to share my hair routine and story. Wheeewwwww buckle up my friends because this is going to be a long one! My curly story is multi-faceted but you asked for it, so get ready! I’m going to start with my story and then end with my current hair routine :).

Growing up, I had extremely long hair and my mom took charge of it. I was a HUGE tomboy so I never wore it down - ever. I refused to wear it down until EIGHTH GRADE. I wore these awful slicked back pony tails every single day then, ew. She used a variety of products and my hair was actually really healthy which was surprising considering I gelled it back into a ponytail every day.

Rocking my ponytail for second grade rec soccer!

I think this was sixth grade travel soccer, still wearing the ponytail!

In eighth grade, I was slowly getting comfortable with wearing my hair down due to a lot of pressure from my family to wear it, but I was SO self-conscious that I put in an obscene amount of gel to make it as flat as possible. I used to purposely go to gatherings with completely soaking wet hair because that was my ideal style… cringe.

This was my “best” hair at an event in eighth grade… oof.

However this is from the same year and if I used less gel, this is what it looked like!

During high school, I was finally coming into my own. I changed up my products, incorporated a mousse, and started loving my hair with more volume. I didn’t know that the curly girl method (CGM) existed, so I did what worked for my hair through trial and error. I used products that aren’t CGM friendly, but even still my hair was long and healthy!

That is until my hair stylist at the time convinced me to cut it extremely short during the beginning of my junior year of high school when I went without my mom present. She of course cut it EVEN SHORTER than I said she could. We’re talking it was barely shoulder length here… to say I hated it would be an understatement. I cried for a week! I refused to go to school that way so I straightened my hair every single day for the entire school year until it grew back out. It was laborious and a rough hair year for me, but surprisingly my hair recovered!

This photo is blurry and thank goodness for that because this. is. a. disaster.

By the end of my senior year of high school and during early college, it was very long, voluminous, and healthy again! I was so relieved and went back to rarely straightening it. 

Senior graduation, most of my length was back!

Sophomore year of college, so much hair!!!

During junior year of college I discovered the powers of diffusing. I never knew my hair could have so much volume! I was absolutely blown away! It also significantly cut down on my drying time, which was a lifesaver during the winter in Boston when it was absolutely frigid outside.

I believe it was either during the winter of senior year or right after senior year of college that I dyed my hair so it’d be ombre to blonde at the ends. I didn’t want to commit to fully dying my hair because I was nervous about the damage it could potentially cause, and I didn’t want to have to deal with upkeep. I absolutely loved it! Bleaching my hair did unfortunately cause some damage and the ends were a little more dry and prone to breakage, but there were no significant side effects from it. I left it alone at that point and let it slowly grow out. The ends came back to haunt me though… As some of you might know, curly hair takes FOREVER to grow out. I still to this day have a little bit of the blonde left at my ends and it’s five years later!!

This was right after senior graduation. I was spending the summer in North Carolina. I’m from New Jersey so I had never pumped my own gas before!

I’m going to fast forward through graduate school because things remained status quo for the most part. My hair was starting to fall out and thin more due to my health declining, but curly hair is so voluminous that thankfully it wasn’t really noticeable until years later. 

First year of graduate school, this is how blonde it was!

Right after graduate school in about 2017 I switched from the hair products I had been using, to all Devacurl products except for my mousse. I was committed to taking better care of my hair. Even though the products were expensive, they helped me feel good about what I was putting on my hair.

Now we’re up to fall of 2018!

Then 2019 came around. During early 2019, everything changed. My scalp started itching, my hair was falling out in large amounts, it was brittle, dry, stringy, and kind of straight? It honestly was gross. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I looked back on pictures from that time. Later in 2019, Devacurl started getting a lot of bad press with people accusing them of damaging my hair. It was like a lightbulb went off. The entire time, I felt like something was poorly affecting my hair but I just attributed it to my health even though I felt like that wasn’t the only cause.

January 2019 my hair was losing definition and flattening, but wasn’t too bad yet.

By March, I had this flat mess.

And then by April, I lost the majority of my curl definition, it was flat, dry, brittle, and beyond frizzy.

While I had unknowingly been doing a lot of CGM prior, I fully dove into it June of 2019 and discovered that I have low porosity hair. I had switched some of my products anyway for my low porosity so when I was reading the bad press around Devacurl, I officially stopped using them. I had a lot going on at the time, so I didn’t look into what people were claiming Devacurl did to their hair or why, I just stopped using it.

The health of my hair was definitely improving, but I was still really struggling to get it to cooperate. It was getting weighed down easily, was undefined, not holding curls for very long, there were a lot of issues.

Comparison of my hair from April 2019 to January 2020. This was an incredible hair day for me! It practically never looked like this.

My hair was doing a lot better, but the thickness is significantly lower than it used to be.

One night in May 2020 I went down a Devacurl rabbit hole. I was fed up with my hair not cooperating and I was determined to find out if Devacurl contributed to that. What I found was disturbing. Nothing I’m going to share here are confirmed facts, but this is the most common theory I found which makes SO much sense. It turns out that during early 2019, Devacurl was bought out by a large company. They added a preservative to the products, specifically the no poo shampoo and the conditioner, both of which I used. The preservative isn’t supposed to affect the product, but what they failed to disclose is that this is a formaldahyde releasing preservative when it’s exposed to high heat. Theorists surmise that the products were perfect upon leaving the lab, but were sent to warehouses without climate control and exposed to high heat. The heat makes the preservative release formaldahyde changing the formulation of the entire product and essentially turning it into a RELAXER. I WAS RELAXING MY HAIR THAT ENTIRE TIME!!!! THE WORST THING I COULD DO! I. was. SHOCKED. Applying relaxants to curly hair can make it dry, brittle, stringy, lose curl definition, and more… everything that had happened to me. I couldn’t believe what I was reading! I’m so disgusted that this company let this happen and still refuses to take responsibility for it.

Since finding that out, I’ve been committed to taking the best care of my hair that I possibly can. It’s still been challenging, but I’m slowly improving the health of my hair and figuring out what works. So here we are to today! 

February 2020. This was considered a good hair day for me and while it’s shiny and there’s some definition there, it’s clear that I don’t have very much hair.

This was a great hair day in April 2020!

Now onto my current routine…

Wash Day

Organigrowhairco Pre-Poo for low porosity hair overnight and sealed in with Thermal Haircare Hot Head for 30 minutes.

I shampoo once weekly using Shea Moisture Low Porosity Shampoo. I only shampoo and massage my scalp, then I let the shampoo rinse through the rest of my hair.

I then drench my hair in Mielle Organics Rosemary Mint Masque and twist my clumps for curl training. I secure them to the top of my head, and use the Hot Head again for another 30 minutes.

Rinse out, massage Mielle Organics Sweet Almond and Mint oil into scalp as well as Organigrowhairco’s Scalp Beverage for low porosity hair.

I seal the ends (just the ends!!!!) using just a little bit of argan oil.

After that, I mix Shea Moisture’s Low Porosity Leave-In Conditioner with water in my hands and apply it to my hair using praying hands, then scrunching it in.

I microplop with a cotton T-Shirt to remove some of the excess moisture before lastly mixing Kinky Curly Custard with water in my hands and also applying this with praying hands and then scrunching.

Finally, I microplop out the remaining excess water and fully air dry (this takes 3+ hours) before scrunching out my gel cast.

Refresh

I use a spray bottle with a little of my leave-in conditioner mixed in to fully saturate my hair. I scrunch it in, and then use the same technique as wash day to apply a little more of the gel to my hair. I again microplop out the excess moisture with the T-Shirt, and wait for it to fully air dry before scrunching out the gel cast!

And FINALLY, that’s it!!! You asked for my hair story… and I’d say you got it! That’s all that you ever wanted to know and more about my hair!