"It's Like Wool"

I have two beautiful sisters, both of which have beautiful, shiny, straight hair. They can leave their houses with their perfect hair in a messy ponytail and look like one of those girls from Tumblr with an infinity scarf on and like, knee-high boots - you know the pictures. I've always been envious of my sister's hair, because I was born with a thick, knotted head of curly hair.

Things I have heard about my curly hair over the years:

"It's like wool." - the title of this post was a quote from a dear former boyfriend of mine. He said it with his British accent so I wasn't even mad.

One time I found a pube on a hotel bed, and my friend said, "Are you sure it wasn't from your head?"

"You could scrub pots and pans with that hair."

I really could go on but it's starting to bum me out and I love my joy so I'm going to continue.

So for the first half of my life, my curly hair was a bane. Then I moved to Daytona Beach for college and if you're completely unfamiliar with Florida, to say that it's "humid" would be like saying that Madonna is "talented, I guess" or that coffee "is just okay." No. Massive understatement. Florida did to my curls what Kevin Federline did to Britney. Just ruined them. So, about six months into my life as a Floridian, I started chemically straightening my hair. And I loved it.

Finally I had hair like my sister's! It was soft, it was straight, I could brush it, and I could walk out of my door without looking like a Troll doll. But there was a downside to this magic, I had to keep it up. I had to do my roots every three months. The process was time-consuming and smelly. And there was always the lingering fear that I would screw up and all my hair would break off (which actually happened once and I looked ridiculous for like a year).

After I turned 30, I started to realize that my time was way too precious to keep touching up this straightening, and it was only a matter of time before my hair got so damaged from this process that it would turn to straw. So, abruptly, I stopped, and just let my hair grow out naturally. I kept it up in a pony tail for a while to ease the weird transition from straight to curly, and after about six months, I cut all the damaged straight hair off. I now had a fresh head of curly hair. I knew there was no way that I was going back to the hit-or-miss Bon Jovi curls I had when I was in high school. I found Reddit's Curly Hair page and had my eyes opened to the wonderful world that is Curly Girl: The Handbook.

I went from looking like this

This is not actually me

To looking like this

This is actually me

Here's how I did it. NOTE - these tips are great for anyone with hair, really. Dry hair, heat-styled hair, anyone who likes having soft, healthy hair.

1) I stopped washing my hair. I'm not joking and no don't judge me. Sulfates are super bad for your hair and your skin. You get suds and a squeaky-clean feeling but that's not a good thing. Your body needs oil to stay, you know, not raisin. So the first step was to stop using any product that has sodium laurel sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate in it. To clean my hair, I do what's called co-washing, which is using a conditioner to cleanse your hair. I apply it the same way I applied shampoo, and rub it into my scalp. Then I rinse it out. Blam.

2) I started doing what's called "squish to condish." I tried to find a good YouTube to illustrate this process but every single one was way longer than it needed to be and I just can't do that to you lovely people. Here's the gist of squish to condish. You put conditioner in your hair like you normally would. I leave mine in long enough to wash my body. When it's time to rinse, I dip my head under the water for a SECOND. Then I come out of the stream, and I squeeze my hair like I was scrunching it. It's going to feel very squishy because of all that conditioner. Then I go back under the water for another second, come out, and do the same thing. I do this until most of the conditioner is out. I say "most" because I actually leave this last little trace of conditioner in my hair. You might think that this would make my hair look like when you were little and would wash your Barbie's hair with a bar of soap but negative, Ghostrider. It leaves just enough in to keep my hair moisturized.

3) When I get out of the shower, I take a microfiber cloth and squeeze the excess moisture out of my hair. In the curly days of my youth, I would squeeze every drop of water out of my hair, and I suffered the frizz penalty for my actions. Now I've seen the light and just squeeze out the drippy saturation of water from my hair.

4) While my hair is wet, I apply my product. I use Carol's Daughter Hair Milk but you could use anything that you wanted so long as it doesn't contain alcohol or silicones. A lot of people love AG Hair Re Coil Curl Activator, Shea Moisture Curl & Style Milk, Deva Curl Light Defining Gel, or Briogeo Curl Charisma. Unfortunately, this part of the routine will end up being trial-and-error for you. Get travel sized bottles if you can, or ask a friend with hair you love if you can use their bottle for a day. Yes I know that's kind of a weird thing to ask a friend but let's make it not weird so that the world can have pleasant hair. Whatever you do, DO NOT. DO NOT. DO NOT BRUSH YOUR HAIR. Do not comb it. Leave it alone. Let your natural curls form You're going to apply your product by squeezing it onto your hair, again, like you were scrunching it.

5) Product applied, I now plop my hair. I put a clean Turbie Twist down on the lid of my toilet, I bend over (shut up), and I plop my hair down into the towel. I squish it all up in there, then I twist the towel up and secure it. I leave this on for thirty minutes, give or take, because I always get distracted before I can really time it.

6) After thirty minutes, I take the Turbie Twist off. At this point I have to really, really drill this next step into you - DO NOT TOUCH YOUR HAIR. Don't touch it. It will be wet, and it might look really frizzy, but do not be tempted to add more product, don't be tempted to style it, don't be tempted to do ANYTHING TO IT AT ALL. Leave it alone.

7) When your hair has mostly air dried without you touching it, of course, flip your head over and shake your hair to give it a little more volume. At this point, once your hair is mostly dry, you can add a serum (I love Carol's Daughter Sacred Tiare). But continue to not really otherwise mess with your hair.

If you trust the process, with enough trial and error to see what works for you, you too can have miraculous curls like mine. Of course, you straight-haired people don't understand how hit-and-miss the world of curls can be. So if you have an off curl day, throw those bad boys up into a high pony tail. Nothing is more cute. Besides a quokka.

This is a real creature that exists on this planet and I need to put my face in its belly immediately

For curl maintenance:

You can't sleep on these bad boys like you would with any other normal hair. I'm sorry but you're going to have to make some changes. Hopefully you have someone in your life that loves you even when you look like this

Because what she's doing there is exactly what you'll have to do every night. It's called pineappling because you're making your head look like a pineapple. Listen, no one said beauty was easy. So do this at night and keep your beautiful curls safe for the world to enjoy for another day.

Most curly girls only wash their hair once or twice a week. You would think that's super gross but do you really think I would allow myself to be greasy and smelly? Please. I won't even sit on my own couch if I haven't showered because I don't want my furniture to smell of sweat and nasty. Once you stop using sulfates, your body stops overproducing oils to compensate from your ruthless stripping of them. I wash my hair on Wednesdays and Saturdays and keep it in a pony tail the rest of the days. The days I don't wash, I refresh my curls with homemade lavender water (just skip ahead to 0:33) and squish. If one of my curls calls in sick that day, I'll soak that strand, coil it around my finger, unslip it from my hand, and clip it to my scalp with a curl clip.

The most important thing to remember is that curly hair is, by nature, far more dry than hair like my sister's. You want to treat your hair like you would treat a cashmere sweater and take a great deal of care with it. The night before I wash, I cover my hair with a hair mask, coil it into a bun, and sleep on it. That way my hair has a head start with the conditioning.

I'm like 90% sure I covered everything here. Is there anything I forgot? Anything you wanted to know in particular?