So as of tomorrow I will be 8 weeks post relaxer. Officially four weeks to go…

This is the official time that I would have normally relaxed back in the day. There is clearly enough new growth at the back -1.25 inches -Front however is only 0.75 of an inch.

I’ like to go another 4 weeks, but might find that 10 weeks is my limit for walking around looking like who shot John, or just generally missing wearing my hair down.

The satin rollers are coming in handy and the olive styling mousse seems to be a good moisturiser for setting the curls as it dries quickly so don’t have to worry about it being wet in the morning.

In an ideal world I would stretch to 16 weeks but it definitely gets difficult from around 6 weeks post – my hair becomes more of a regularly nagging thought from that point onwards.

There is slightly more breakage now too – I went too far with the low manipulation and left my hair in a high pony after washing and putting leave in conditioner in for 3 days in a row, because I was only really moisturising the hair on the outside each morning, the hair on the inside became dry and knotted.

So I had to section it up and roller set it in satin rollers after the 2^nd day of moisturising and setting the hair seems to be well moisturised and therefore breaking less.

But I think as a drying method in the first place I should never have left the post washed hair for more than one night without separating the sections and moisturising.

I think deep conditioning weekly is all very well and good, but I need to think about how it dries and how I work the moisture back into it because if the hair is left dryer and more prone to breaking after washing, then it may not be worth washing weekly – Might be better to wash fortnightly to reduce the manipulation from washing.

I definitely will need to cover the ends of my hair in Vaseline when I go for a touch up as the lady seems to believe in relaxing bone straight– which could be detrimental. Ideally I’d put neutralising conditioner on the ends too – but chances are she won’t be too impressed about that step…

So one thing I have come to realise from my back to relaxer experience is that no hairstyle is without its issues be it braids, natural hair, weaves or relaxer – but I definitely prefer the effort – outcome ration from relaxers when compared to natural hair…

What’s the longest I have stretched? I think I accidentally did 10 weeks when in France back in 2002 back then my hair got quite long – I think it may have got to APL – I just remember watching my hair in the mirror and thinking wow its actually quite long and I remember Leyla saying I was acting like I had never seen hair before.