Growing Out Wavy Hair

I've spent nearly twenty years trying to have straight hair.  Every style I like, every haircut I admire, all for straight hair.
And mine is not.
But it's not curly, either.  It's just wavy and unruly and I've recently realized that I've been torturing it for a long time.  First, by bleaching it for too many years, until I decided at age 30 that platinum blonde was better left to the youngsters.  Then I tried red, which didn't suit me, and then grew out my  natural color.  Which, to my surprise, is a rather nice light brown with reddish highlights. 
I've been learning about being nicer to my hair, ever since I decided I wanted to grow it out again.  I started with boot-camp-short hair, the way it's been for a few years, then tried to get a style I'd seen and liked on an actress.  Naturally, that required time and effort with a hairdryer and straightening iron, and my hair let me know it was unhappy.  The ends started to split, it got dry and brittle, and it didn't matter how much conditioner I put in it, my hair was cranky. 
Then I started doing research on taking care of hair, trying to keep it in good shape for growing out, and I learned that what I've been doing to my poor hair is absolute torture.  No wonder my hair was annoyed!

To be continued....


Edited by henchperson

As I've been reading up on the care and feeding of long hair - which is what I'd like, eventually - I've learned a lot.  One of the things that I learned is that I shouldn't shampoo every day.  Now, this is something that's a new idea for me.  Taking a shower but not shampooing my hair?  There are lots of different ways  of doing this, from giving up shampoo completely to only doing it once or twice a week, but I don't know if I can do that.  I know that tomorrow morning, I'll skip the hair-washing and see how my hair looks.  The only person who will see me is my doctor, and I know he doesn't care how I look. 
I've also learned how to make an apple cider vinegar rinse and put one together tonight in a squeeze-bottle for the next time I wash my hair.  Eeeew, does that smell bad!  Still, everyone keeps raving about the results.
I'm at a stage in growing it out where anyone that looks at me can clearly see that I'm at an awkward stage of growing out my hair.  The prenatal vitamins that I'm taking (trying to get pregnant, hasn't worked out so far) seem to help with hair growth, but it seems to be going horribly slowly because I think it looks so awful like this.
I see my stylist about every five or six weeks to snip the ends and attempt to give a little shape to the mop.  I'm keeping my bangs..er, fringe, for those of you in the UK, because I'm so self-conscious of my high forehead. 
In reference to the first post, every picture I've ever brought in to my stylist has been of someone with straight hair.  So she's under the impression that I'm happy to torture my hair with heat implements as long as I get the look I want.  Not to mention that she says that the flatiron doesn't damage my hair, but I can't manage to grow my hair out, because the damaged ends have to be cut off every time I go in.  What's damaging them?  Oh, the flatiron.  Time for a new stlisht,  I think. 
My next step is to find some pictures of wavy-haired girls with cuts that I like, which is harder than you'd think.  All the pictures I find are of Meg Ryan, who's cute, but her hair and mine seem different.  You never know, though.   As she's gotten older, she's abandoned the "cutesy" short hair for medium length hair that actually looks good onher
We'll see how the lack of shampoo goes tormorrow.


Edited by henchperson

At a second glance, though, that cut is all layers.  Do I want layers?  What they keep harping about on the long hair sites is how layers are bad, but I think I might need layers - I've got really thick, wavy hair. This style might be better:



Yep, Meg Ryan again, but she and I have very similar hair, it seems.  What I'd like to do is have that medium-length layered cut to grow out to a longer layered cut. 

Also, I think I'm switching hairdressers.

For years, I went to someone who was good with color and bad with cuts and who gave me great blond hair and a bob with straight bangs that was okay to manage.  I could straighten the hair or not, it was up to me, but everything was one length and she was never very good at thinning my hair.  And since chin-length hair that's really thick needs thinning out, it didn't always look great.  But I'm lazy.  I stayed with Brandy.
Then, after I went to a short haircut that was absolutely disastrous with Brandy - how can a stylist at an expensive salon not be able to handle layers? - and left me with a friend and a pair of scissors out on my desk trying to even things out, I switched to Carrie.  She has pink and black hair and is into the Goth community and let me try a bunch of colors that she probably shouldn't have let me try.  Still, my hair was really short, so colors grew out fast.  After the dark red/maroon that looked awful on me, I decided to try my natural color.
Surprise!  Turns out I'm a brunette - with grey streaks.
I wanted to grow my hair out.  I told Carrie that.  Carrie kept cutting my hair short.  She's a bigwig in the Redken Hair Shows and travels a lot, so it was hard to get an appointment with her, plus she kept returning me to the same damn haircut. 
I went back to the expensive salon, to Karinna.  She's from Brazil and speaks with a heavy accent - interestingly, she's Chinese, as apparently many people in Brazil are.  The difficulty I've had with Karinna is that she's not willing to tell me what my hair will and will not do in order for it to remain healthy.  As far as she was concerned, I could blowdry and flatiron every day, if that acheived the look I wanted.  And since I wanted straight hair, the cuts she gave me were for straight hair and looked awful with the natural waves.  She also talked me into highlights, which I don't think really did anything.  I have a few streaks of lighter color.  Whooopee.  A little lemonjuice and time in the sun will get me the same thing. 

I need a hairdresser who is going to tell me what kind of hair I have - right now, it's allegedly "normal" rather than "dry" because I haven't been dying it.  I want someone who's willing to tell me no.  No, I can't have Kathryn Erbe's haircut, because her hair is straight.  No, I can't have Kathryn Morris' haircut, because her hair is straight and mine is not.  I need someone who is willing to cut the hair I actually have right now - not the hair I'd have after processing and straightening.
Karinna - the hairdresser I have now - talked me into highlights.  They're okay.  Nothing amazing.  But the parts of my hair that are colored are so much more fried and fragile than the rest of my hair.  The highlights look nice, but I don't think they're worth it.  I also don't think Karinna really understands that I don't want to straighten my hair every day.  Admtitedly, there's a language barrier of sorts.  And she's eager to please.  But I think she's so eager to please that she's cutting my hair into the style I want regardless of A) if it will look good on me or B) if my hair can handle it without a lot of styling products.

So next Wednesday I see a "senior stylist" named jessica at J. Gordon Designs for a consultation.  She'll look at my hair and scalp and I'll make sure shes not a pushover.
I don't mind paying $50 for a haircut.  I just want to like what I'm getting.

Took a shower last night - no shampoo, just an ACV rinse.  And then I scrunched my hair a little and let it dry curly.
WOW, do I have big hair when it's curly.  Remember how I said above that I couldn't have a certain hairstyle because it was curly?  I think I was wrong.  I don't have ringlets, but left to its own devices, my hair is wild.  Tousled doesn't even begin to describe it.  Here's a pic of my head, after my hair dried naturally without pins or any restrictions:
Front:


Left Side:


Right Side:



No wonder I pin it back when it dries, huh?  It's crazy-wild-wavy-curly.  Which, I'm told, is very in, but I'm not interested in that.
Just a few more inches and I'll be able to just let it be curly and not have to go through this routine of sectioning it out and pinning it back.  I still haven't decided on the fringe - that's one of the questions I"ll as the stylist this week when I see her.  Fringe or no fringe?  I have such a high forehead, and I hate the pictures of me with no fringe,  The problem is -  can I have there rest of my hair curly and my long, side-part fringe straight without using the heat products?
Have to see what the stylist says. 

Oh dear.
I've just discovered that I could get hair extensions for under $200 that would last up to 6 months. 
Eeep. 

The problem with the avacado oil is that it doesn't want to come out of my hair.
Seriously.
It took three shampooings before all the oil was out today.
Instead of going with one of the usual (Aubrey Organics, California Baby) conditioners, I tried a sample of this conditioner from Lush.  I'm wary of them, because I've heard some very bad things about their shampoo bars.  Of course, anyone can say anything on the intenet, but the descriptions of what happened to hair after being washed with a solid/bar shampoo  were all fairly similar, and none were good.  The conditioner is paraben free, but there's some cones in it.  I decided to give it a try anyway, and had to use so much of it that I'm convinced that Lush makes their money from forcing people to use a lot of product. 
My hair isn't nearly as soft today as it has been in the past, when I was using the Aubrey products. 
Speaking of Aubrey, I found out that rather than buying them direct from the website (Whole Foods doesn't carry everything I want), I can get things through the Vitaminshoppe Aubrey Organics section.
And it's at a discount, so that's definitely a plus.  I ordered a different Moisturizer, one that I heard recommened for curly hair, called "Island Natural Conditioner."  We'll see how it works.  The great thing about Aubrey is I don't think they have it in Canada, and my best friend is a big fan of organic shampoo.  I also ordered their brand of hairspray, as well as both kinds of spray-in conditioner. 
As a complete departure from the real topic of this blog, I was able to find what I needed and buy it at Vitaminshoppe much more quickly than through Aubrey because of the way their websites are designed.  Aubrey is very self-consciously "designed" and every type of product is in it's own little section.  Until I got to the Vitaminshoppe section, I didn't even know they made soap, and I've ordered direct from the Aubrey website.  That's bad web design, right there, speaking as a professional.
I'm reading through the posts at NaturallyCurly.com, finding out about curl activators and how you can get curls without killing your hair.  Since the waves really look more like curls, at this opint, maybe I'll give that a try.   I've always been a product whore.  Now I'll just be a hair-product whore, and I can always pass the stuff off to other people.  No one dislikes free shampoo and conditioner, especially expensive organic shampoo and conditioer.

No wash today.  Just a rinse with cold water.
Scalp is not itchy.  Hair looks a little greasy, but that could be because I'm interpreting "properly balanced with natural oils" as "greasy."

Due to my husband watching a DVD of a television show called "Robot Chicken" that, despite his best efforts, I do not enjoy, I played in the kitchen tonight with hair stuff.
See, over at Natuarally Curly, people make up their own recipes.  And since anything curl-enhancing without horrid alcohol and smelly chemicals interested me, I tried making it.  The inventor of this recipe is a girl called music_al whose hair is much curlier than mine.  I don't know if it will work on me - I don't know if it will work on me, but it was fun to mix up my own batch of hair treatment.
Here's the recipe:
1 cup hot water
2 Tbsp. Conditioner
¼ tsp. Honey
2 tsp. Epsom Salt
1 Tbsp. Herbal Oil (or any oil)
1/3 cup gel

Put in spray bottle, shake well, and refrigerate.
----

I used the Aubrey Organics conditioner, since I have a second bottle of that, and it wouldn't dissolve fully in the water.  I finally ended up scooping clumps of it out of the mixture with a spoon.  So I have to admit that I don't have really high hopes for the mixture in my fridge, but that's due to my conditioner not being right, rather than the fault of the inventor.  I've written a note on that forum asking if anyone uses a certain conditioner and, if not, to make a note that Aubrey does not like to dissolve and doesn't work well in this mixture.

Part of my interest in leave-in sprays is that my skin is so sensistive to the sun that my scalp burns.  And let me tell you, a burned scalp is no fun, even if it's mild.  I've found some 45+  liquid sunblock that I think I could use in the mixture to protect my hair and scalp, which would be fantastic.

Normally I'd wash and condition tomorrow, because of yoga class.  However, due to the fact that I fell off a bench I was standing on and bent my ankle in a direction God never intended ankles to bend.  I was a bit worried at first that it was broken, but upon futher reflection, it appears to be a bad sprain.  So as I an barely walk, I'm not going to try to do yoga, and I'm fairly sure I'm not going to be doing much of anything else, either.
Muscle relaxants kicking in....must sleep....zzzzzz.

So yesterday I took some pictures of my hair - how it looked in the evening, after a day of x-rays and limping and misery.  I used the spray-on product three times.

Front view:


Left side:


Right side:


The front fringe:




Funny that my hair looks a lot more red these days - and no  chemicals or henna has been added.  Could just be the camera, who knows.

But it's not too bad, really.  Not crazy-wavy in every direction, mostly under control, and easy to handle. So that's a plus.

What's not a plus is an air splint for four weeks and crutches for a week.  That SUCKS.