Maaaaaammmaaaaaa Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

If you’ve ever found unexpected breakage, you feel me right now. I debated posting on this. Honestly, I don’t know exactly when this breakage happened. Or really, if it’s significant. Let me start from the beginning so this will all make a little more sense.

I wore my last set of mini braids in December. I took them out on New Year’s Eve. From January until last week (end of April) I’ve been doing a number of things to my hair- braid outs, large twists, wash and goes, I think I flat ironed once and blow dried one other time…it’s been a lot of everything. When I was putting in mini twists a few days ago (see post here), I noticed the hair at my crown tapered rather severely towards the end.

I’m a stickler for blunt ends and I don’t like my hair to taper at all. I have some areas where I know my hair is shorter – I had a bald spot this one time, lol…it’s funny now but it wasn’t then. That area is about 7″ shorter than the rest of my hair. I also have tapered ends where my peek-a-boo highlights were a couple years ago. But this tapered area in the back didn’t seem familiar to me. Maybe it’s been there and feels new because I haven’t handled my hair in such small areas since last December. But if it’s always been there, I don’t think it would have worried me like it is worrying me…so it must be new.

I guess the good thing is I was able to find the breakage. I have so much hair that in any other style it would have gone unnoticed. Now that I’ve found it, I can stop it. I’m almost certain the breakage is mechanical. Since I don’t use brushes or combs hardly ever, and the breakage is concentrated at the crown, it must be from rubbing on pillows and couches. So…with that theory in mind, this is what I’m doing to stop/prevent and remedy the breakage.

• Moisturizing and sealing my ends daily. Yes, I said it…I’m now a daily moisturizer and sealer. I’d never thought I’d see the day. I’m using plain water and sealing with my shea butter mix so I don’t think I’ll risk mushy hair…plus, it’s cost effective. 
• Braiding my hair each and every night. While I’m in mini twists, I making one large french braid to keep them stretched and the ends hidden. I’m also tucking in the end of that braid.
• Covering my hair with a plastic bag to prevent rubbing and retain moisture overnight. I think the bulk of the breakage is from nights where I skipped my scarf- which isn’t often, but it happens. I also tend to let my hair stick out of the top of my scarf and just cover my edges… I’m now wearing a plastic bag under my scarf just for extra protection from dry ends and breakage.
• Wearing my hair in a top knot during the day. The second most likely cause of my crown breakage is probably from my hair rubbing on couches and fabric car seats. See people always mock my hot leather car seats but at least they don’t snatch out my hair. To remedy this, I’m wearing my hair high on my head to keep it off the seats.
• Last, but not least…I’m going to keep calm and monitor the progress. Part of me thinks it’s not a big deal. My twists are teeny tiny. There are probably 10 maximum that had tapered ends and the breakage was about 2″ of hair…so really it’s not a lot. But I don’t like fairy tale ends…as they call it, so it matters to me. I just have to focus on the big picture- I still have a huge head full of hair- and do the best I can to stop the breakage here.
• Oh, and I’m also using Jamaican Black Castor Oil…but that’s not particularly because of this.

Have you ever experienced breakage? How did you deal with it? Comment below! 🙂