New-ish, and back again!

[bellydancefae]

Hey all! I've been a long-time lurker here over the years as I've gone back and forth on hair lengths. Growing up, I had hair waist-length to tailbone-lenth up until high school. I started donating my hair 10-13" at a time every other year or so until by 2005 I had it chin length. After that, I tried to grow it back out again, but every time it reached the no-man's-land between shoulder & armpit length, I'd give up in frustration and chop it all off to chin length again. I've been growing it out now more regularly since 2010 and my last major chop was a year ago when I donated another 10". I'm back in no-man's-land again and trying to drum up the patience to get back to at least waist-length once more. Hopefully I'll get some pics up soonish.

As far as typing, I'm around a 1b/f/i-ii. I've always had baby-fine hair, but I have a decent amount of it so my scalp does not appear thin. However, due to oily scalp and humid weather here in the south, I'm constantly struggling to find easy, no-fuss ways of getting body in my hair. I'm now about 80% natural with my personal hygiene routine, with hair styling products being one of the only things I haven't yet found natural alternatives that work well enough for me. I'm usually very low maintenance, wash-comb-and-go type of gal and usually can't be bothered to actually style my hair. It lives in a ponytail, twist, or bun 90% of the time.

I've just ordered a bunch of CV shampoo bar samples after all of the rave reviews here, but I'd love some suggestions of natural styling products and/or techniques that are time/effort efficient for getting some body in this hair type!

Thank you all for providing so much awesome information and inspiration on this site!

-Anja

[Nimia]

LOL, I was going to ask you what drove you nutty about having hair between shoulder and arm-pit-length, but then I sat and thought about the last time mine was that length and I understood. It's not long, it's not short, you're distressed you can't do the elaborate up-dos with it that you see on Pinterest (even though if your hair was long enough you wouldn't bother to do them anyway…), and it seems to take forever to grow any longer. Photos taken a year apart look the same, it seems: vaguely down to about, er, somewhere on the upper chest.

Wishing you patience and long locks,

Nimia

[bellydancefae]

Haha, yes, exactly! Because my hair is so fine, it's hard enough to get it to stay in a braid without it slipping out. It's just gotten long enough I can french braid it a bit, but still long pieces fall out and make me look a mess because there's not enough weight to hold them in yet. But then my hair is too long to just leave down because it gets hot and in my face. I've finally trimmed off all the damaged ends from previous double process dyes, so hoping to have no more cuts until I reach my goal.

Thanks so much, Nimia!