Quarantine life is not that great. However, I’ve been trying to look on the bright side, in what seems like the gloomiest of times, and turn my lemons to lemonade. I’ve been taking it upon myself to take care of my mental health, but I’ve also been trying to put an emphasis on taking care of my natural hair.
We know that natural hair needs a lot of TLC… and the T stands for TIME. I love my natural hair, but she is often raging on me. My hair is kinky, tightly coiled, highly porous, and fine…. None (I repeat NONE) of these are bad, but each and everyone of them makes my hair more prone to breakage for one reason or another. Because of these things, leaving my hair alone has been exactly what the natural hair Doctor ordered.
With this lull period in daily styling and no rush wash days, I’ve decided to put that extra love into caring for my hair and I’ve already seen amazing results!
Below are 4 things that I’ve been doing to my natural hair during this (seemingly never ending) quarantine.
How to Grow Long, Healthy Natural Hair During Quarantine
1.Leaving My Hair Alone
This has been extremely easy, and one of the best things I’ve been doing for my hair, Because of the nature of my natural hair, almost everything can cause damage if not done correctly. So if I put my hair in a bun… it may or may not stay in a bun for a few days. Or if I’ve washed my hair and braided it for a braid out only to leave those braids in until the next wash day… so what! This low manipulation and protection has helped to reduce breakage and aid in moisture retention.
2.Trying Out New Protective Styles
I love the idea of beautiful protective styles. Some of my favorite Youtubers (linked below) create some of the most gorgeous protective style, but protective styles (long-term protective styles in particular) can take a decent amount of time to install. And if you’re like me, you usually end up looking absolutely nothing like the tutorial. Luckily for us, now we can try out these protective styles without fear because, if it’s an epic fail, it doesn’t matter because no one will see it!
3.Conditioning Like Crazy
This quarantine has allowed me to truly slow down and give my hair exactly what it needs. As a busy woman, I’m guilty of skipping certain steps in my hair care routine (that I KNOW are necessary) solely because I’m trying to cut back on time. One of those steps it deep conditioning (I know, I know…) which my high porosity hair absolutely needs regularly to maintain it’s moisture levels. Something else I’ve been guilty of neglecting are my henna treatments. My hair is fine and highly porous, so henna has complete upgraded the health of my hair. I usually like to do a henna treatments monthly, but that just hasn’t been happening… for a year now. Once again the fast pace of my life made me leave out a crucial part of my hair care routine because it’s (very) time consuming. But with the quarantine, I’ve been able to henna my hair more consistently because I can now henna whenever I have time. Even in the middle of the day…
4.Search and Destroying Split Ends
Speaking of time consuming, this quarantine has also allowed me to spend more time analyzing my ends, and realizing that they needed to be tended to. To do that, I decided I should go back to doing the most time consuming method of slit end clipping- Search and Destroying. As someone with Fine, type 4, highly textured hair, my ends are easily split in halves, fourths, and tenths and (luck me!) not just on the ends, but all the way up the hair shaft! Because of this, traditional end clipping doesn’t really serve me well. In order to really get most of my split ends, I would have to give my hair a serious chop, but in doing so I would also lose lots of length unnecessarily.
In comes the search and destroy method!
With this method, I don’t typically get to do this as thoroughly as I need to because, let’s face it, it’s tedious as hell! But it’s what works best for me to have healthy ends and retain as much length as possible. This quarantine has forced me into the house, so when I have down time, but I don’t necessarily be too idle, this is my go-to activity
Conclusion
Take this time for yourself and your hair… healthy hearts, and health heads of beautiful natural hair.
What are you doing to your hair during this pandemic?
-Sea
