I wish I would have known that you should squeeze out all water from your hair before drying, that leave-in conditioner is much better than heavy creams for me, that I need a buttload of conditioner to detangle properly, that gel is pretty awesome when you scrunch it out, co-washing is not that great for me / I need low-poos + clarifying shampoos regularly, protein is my best friend, and that blow dryers + diffuser can be used without getting heat damaged with proper use. I also wish I never had my hair relaxed and I wish I didn’t try ironing it so much. My hair looks super dead in some of my school pictures before I chopped it off. I also once ruined my hair when I used an iron on WET hair. Omg the damage 💔

I’ve written about this before but I wish I’d listened earlier to the “stop brushing your dry hair” brigade. I had really tangly hair growing up - like to the point that it was the main quality I thought my hair had. All these ladies on the old naturallycurly board kept saying to stop brushing it and I thought they were batshit crazy, or just had different hair, because mine never split, never had obvious damage of any sort just tangled with any movement at all. So I’d always detangled before washing it, to be able to actually wash it.

Well eventually I tried it and once a crop of never brushed hair had grown in, I’ll be damned it worked. My hair has not been super tangled for 20 years now. I can literally comb the shampoo through, then put down the comb and not touch it till next washday. Like magic.

@curlygirl
I think I had very unrealistic expectations about what I should be able to achieve without product. I was pretty averse to putting anything in my hair at all early on, but I’ve realized that for certain desired results it’s the most reliable solution.

I also wish someone told me early on that it was okay to lean into the way my hair settles between wash days. Right after washing it has the tightest pattern and it relaxes slightly, though not fully, over the following days.

As soon as I realized it was okay to just let it do that, I found it was much easier to manage in a way that actually looks nice consistently, but not necessarily exactly the same each day.