I would say that my hair and I had a serious love-hate relationship. But, truth is, it was more like a hate-hate relationship. I hated the fact that my hair wouldn’t do what I wanted it to, and my hair hated me for the myriad of torture tactics that I used in my attempts to make it submit to my will. After years of over-processing, over-heating and severely damaging my hair, a new stylist helped me decide that it was time to try loving my hair. So, I started a hair care regimen that involved listening to my hair instead of trying to control it.
For me, the first step in that process was to stop blatantly over-processing my hair! At my worst, I was relaxing my hair every 6 weeks. Definitely relaxer overkill. After stretching the frequency of my relaxers to every 16 weeks, I saw a remarkable change in the body and thickness of my hair. Turns out relaxing my hair too frequently was resulting in tons of breakage, reduced shine, and generally lifeless hair. Stretching my relaxers has proven to be one of the biggest factors in making my hair healthier and stronger.
I’ve also learned that it’s important to experiment with hair care products to find the brands that works best for ME. For years, I stuck to the same brand of shampoo and conditioner even though it didn’t work for me. I stuck with it because it was the brand my mother, sister, best friends, and co-workers used. Since it made their hair fabulous, I thought that eventually I’d get a bit of that fabulousness trickling down my way. But, alas, I was wrong. After years of lackluster results, I finally began experimenting and was able to identify the products that worked best for MY hair and create my own arsenal of go-to products to get my hair healthy and strong.
Lastly, I decided to let the full sew-in weave go. Though some swear that wearing a full weave helps their hair grow, it just doesn’t work for me. So, I stopped getting full sew-in’s and opted for clip in extensions instead. This way I can have a little extra body and length while focusing on the health of my hair on a daily basis.
Since I’ve started focusing on loving my hair, I’ve seen some great changes in the way my hair looks and feels. Now don’t get me wrong, changing these things was hard and I still have to resist the urge to go back to my hair torturing ways but, I’m committed to improving my relationship with my hair one shampoo at a time. That’s why I was super excited to be part of ULTA Beauty’s “Love Your Hair” campaign.
The Love Your Hair event is a 21-day celebration of hair which is happening at ULTA Beauty from May 12 to June 1. The event includes hair events, demos, prizes, and daily Beauty Steals (hair products discounted in stores or online for just one day). ULTA is providing great deals to customers on some amazing brands in an attempt to remind us ladies to love and pamper our hair. In honor of the Love Your Hair celebration I received some great products from ULTA Beauty to try out and I’m planning on replenishing my stock of ABBA moisturizing conditioner and trying out the KENRA volumizing hairspray this go around. And, just to make sure that we’re REALLY committed to this new found hair love affair, ULTA Beauty wants us ladies to make a pledge to love our hair. Joining is simple, all you have to do is visit the ULTA Beauty Love Your Hair site, then tweet your hair pledge with the hashtag #ULTAHairPledge and you'll be entered for the chance to win free blowouts for a year. My #ULTAHairPledge is to never, and I mean ever, relax my hair every 6 weeks again. What’s yours? Take the ULTA Beauty hair pledge and come back here to let me know what you pledged in the comments, one lucky person will win a $100 ULTA Beauty gift card, courtesy of BlogHer.
Sweepstakes Rules:
- No duplicate comments.
- You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
- a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
- b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: "#SweepstakesEntry"; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
- c) Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
- d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 5/15/13 – 6/1/13.
Be sure to visit the ULTA Beauty page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!