I wanted more.

As a child I wanted a safe place to live. As an adult I wanted the hair I used to have, but healthy. Finding what had made my hair so long in the first place turned out to be more of a conundrum than it initially seemed.

You see, I had once had over 30 inches of hair, years ago, by the time I was a pre-teen. The only reason it had not been any longer is because it kept getting trimmed off. However, due to reasons that were out of my control, I had not had access to basic needs consistently and so what was very long hair was inevitably damaged long hair. The header image is right after a trim; it had been past tailbone length but those final inches were incredibly scraggly and hard to keep detangled, and so they had to go. I still can’t find a photo of my hair at its longest, but suffice to say in either instance, the hair was sad.

That all changed in grad school. In undergrad I had tried taking steps to learning how to take care of myself, but it wasn’t until post-graduation and my move to another state that I really got my chance at a fresh start. In the new time and safe space, I got into the hobbies I had always wanted to do: model horses, an indoor plant jungle, learning to play a harp, cooking, ink wash drawings, fountain pens, keeping a few small pets, and probably my favorite of course, growing my hair back out to where it used to be. This time, healthy.

But how had my hair gotten to such lengths, albeit dry, split, and scraggly? The lack of hygiene was double-edged. On the one hand, it left me with scalp and skin problems, too much shedding, and lots of stinkiness. On the other hand, it afforded me something that regularly using shampoo years later destroyed. I get into this in additional posts, but the main reason I had long hair is because the oils that my scalp produced (which aren’t gross, in moderation) weren’t being stripped from my hair. As dry as the ends were, they were still long. Just enough oil to reach the ends to keep them 30 inches worth of hair.

That got me thinking. There’s got to be a way to keep the oils, mitigate how much is produced, all while being clean and fresh, right? I started looking into historical haircare (shoutout to Katherine Haircare!) across many videos and blogs and found that all these women from around the world weren’t at all buying into the modern American shampoo industry. They were instead oiling and powdering their hair (not in that order XD), using boars hair brushes much more frequently than they ever used detangling brushes, and had a very different mindset about the use and purpose of their hair on the daily.

This blog became a space for me to talk about my journey through these thoughts and challenges, as well as each of the things I regularly enjoy. I hope that you find it helpful and inspiring. I have a lot to share about how to get literal Rapunzel hair and have it look and feel truly dense, silky, and strong. 🙂

I know there might be pressure from internet algorithms and search engine metrics for me to make this into an influencer-style blog, lest this writing reach literally no one. I tried that once and it is more work than I find worth it, and I also find the focus on post-production hype tends to take the focus from my joy of these hobbies and make it less enjoyable. Being an influencer is not something I have the interest to keep up with right now so, for the meantime I will just write this blog and try to keep it straightforward. Sometimes a quieter blog is easier to read through than an overstimulating social feed.

I appreciate you being here alongside me. Enjoy the nice cool weather!