Spring is a beautiful season. The weather is finally getting warmer, daylight is staying with us for longer and life is blooming and growing all around us.
This is a season commonly associated with newness, freshness, lightness and positive change. While our environment is showing us all of its growth and change, our bodies are following suit.
Loving ourselves, our environment and each other reveals a beauty beyond our greatest desires. Here are some tips on how you can love your curls to the length they are destined to be.
Keep it Simple
Simplicity is more difficult to achieve than it seems. Sometimes, we want a particular style, but our hair needs something different. Rather than over-manipulating your hair, preserve ends by taking care of them as if they were a baby or something you truly cherish. Your ends are the most fragile part of every strand and need to be treated delicately, which means less manipulation equals more potential growth.
Give Yourself Grace
Don't be hard on yourself. The ends of your hair are meant to deteriorate! It's part of the cycle of the life, and that part of your hair is already dead. You know how you are supposed to prune dead leaves from your plants as they grow so that the healthy parts are receiving the most nourishment possible? Your hair is very similar in that holding onto parts that have no potential to grow, only absorbs nourishment from the parts that have potential for growth.
Yes, you should pay attention to the amount of shedding that you experience regularly to determine if you are shedding more or less than your normal, but recognize that shedding is normal and necessary for the healthiest strands of hair to thrive. Just like your plants, if the dead parts are not removed, they are just absorbing all the good nutrients from the healthy strands of your scalp and hair, without yielding any beneficial result.
Moisturize as necessary
Moisturize when you need to, not necessarily on a schedule. Sometimes it's less or more frequent, but your normal is your own. Trust your curly hair instinct and take pauses with manipulation to assess.
Sometimes your hair will require more and sometimes it will require less to realize your hair's own potential and manipulation capacity. Regardless of where you land on the various spectrums, do what's right for you and love your hair enough to give it all the attention it requires, to know it as well as you want to know any other part of yourself.
Allow the newness of Spring to inhabit you and your behaviors. Allow yourself to release the old to make room for the new and what is right for you. We'll be here at The Curl Sanctuary eagerly supporting your progress through the curiosities and transitions.