I always knew that I was not  going to have a long transition, since the time I made my decision to go natural. My main reasons were that I wanted to ‘see’ my hair grow from teeny weeny to wherever my goal is and secondly I missed having short hair. I last cut my hair 10 years ago and I’ve been growing it ever since. So after 30 weeks (roughly 7.5 months) I big chopped. My hair is not as short as I thought it would be. I have some length to play around with. It’s  only been a week and a bit since the big chop, so I haven’t  had time to play around much.

I wanted to write this post now before I forget how my transition was, so here are a few of my thoughts and my experiences:

I protective styled for 13 weeks of my transition, the last style was the bobx braids which I had on for 7 weeks. After those  7 weeks, I had my hair out for 3 weeks. During those 3 weeks, I struggled with my hair – it was sooo dry and getting it to retain moisture was nearly impossible.

Towards the end I did not have a lot of shedding, but the breakage was more than it should be and I think I can attribute that to the dryness.

Detangling also became a mission, I would spend about 45 minutes detangling my hair.

To be honest, my hair started to look ugly to me, on one end I had this thick natural hair on the other I had thinner chemical processed hair. I didn’t like having it out much. That’s when I did used my trusty wig in week 27, I also did hairstyles that help to blend the 2 textures, I did a perm rod set and a bantu knot out on week 28 and 29.

If you do plan to transition, I think protective styling should be your BFF. In my opinion, keeping your hair away is the best strategy, you must still carry on with moisturising routines and wash day routines though.

what are your foolproof transitioning / long stretch tips?