The reason our hair often doesn't seem like it's growing is because it's breaking off at the same rate it's growing in. The solution to this is to pinpoint what things you are doing to it that may still be hurting it.

If you've damaged your hair it will seem like your hair isn't growing. If you wanted, you could trim your hair about an inch every two months (that's the average rate our hair grows), until the damaged hair is gone. Then, if you follow these techniques closely, you won't be doing any more damage to your hair. Once all the damaged parts are gone, your hair will grow and grow.

I strongly believe any hair can grow to any length, so long as the person is healthy. What keeps tightly curled hair from growing long is damage. Very curly hair like ours is way way more fragile than straighter hair, so it can be hurt easily.

Unfortunately, we are raised to feel that the only way we can take care of our hair is in damaging ways. This causes our hair to break off, and then we think our hair doesn't grow. It really is growing, it's just being broken and damaged at the same rate it's growing.

If your hair is breaking off, that means either it has been damaged, or is being damaged. The only way to get it to grow longer is to find out what is damaging it, and stop doing it completely. Things like dry combing our hair, combing it roughly, treating it roughly, any heat, and chemicals will cause breakage. Even if you stop all of those things but one, because our hair is so fragile, it will still break.

If your hair is damaged, the damaged parts will always be damaged. Chemicals, blow drying, combing roughly, or combing your curls when they are dry causes damage. Unfortunately, once your hair has been damaged, the damaged part will continue to split and break, even after you solve the problem.

So all you can do is keep trimming until all the damaged parts are gone. And if you stopped the damage, at some point, you will see that your hair isn't splitting any more. Then you don't need to trim until you see split ends again (which means there's still damage being done).

Back in the old days when I was relaxing my hair, my hair was so damaged that it broke off before my ends had a chance to split! I tried every product under the sun to stop my permed hair from breaking, and nothing worked. Now that I'm not damaging my hair anymore, I don't get split ends or breakage. Because of this, I don't trim my hair anymore.

Some tips I've discovered to help minimize breakage are on The Rules page.