It's in the Twists: Tracking My Hair Growth

An old song that my dad loves to listen to says, "It's in his kiss, that's where it is."  It made me think about how did I realize my hair was actually thriving and surviving, besides length checks? I do measure and try to do it monthly, although some months I have fallen short. My goal has been to measure and track my hair growth (and retention) and document my practices, so I can know what works and what doesn't. At any rate, I keep a TON of hair pics in my cellphone and I was scrolling back to some of my earlier hair pics. For my tightly curly/coily hair, a year's growth can only be seen when you look at the volume, because it doesn't look longer unless you uncoil it or heat style it to show the length. Well, I've found another way to track my hair growth: twists.

Front view- October 2012

Side view- August 2013

Yep, twists tell me A LOT about my hair practices. I can see where my hair needs to be trimmed or where it is thinning or even the volume.  When I first started as a natural the length of my unstretched twists barely reached my ears. I had NO hang time and the twists looked like little small peapods all over my head.

Then, as time went on the peapods evolved and they began to reach the back of my neck. They weren't quite hanging down yet, but they were getting there.

Today my twists hang to my collarbone, but over time between pinning them up and adding moisture, they shrink.

Back view-October 2012

Back view-August 2013

Thanks to my twists I can see that I'll be needing to trim a little off the bottom, so that when the hair grows it can thicken up a little. Also, I'm getting more length even with using bigger sections of hair. Usually I get greater length using smaller pieces to twist, but with my hair growth I can still get some "hang time" with bigger sections. That is DEFINITELY an accomplishment!

August 2013-Stretched out twist

Even though it didn't seem as though my hair was growing nicely, it turns out that it was! Just because I didn't see my monthly growth, I didn't feel my hair growth was "normal". But, when I put it all in perspective, sometimes you have to reflect before you can appreciate how far you've come.  I will continue to take a TON of pics and document, so that by this time this year, I can compare more twist pics!!!

Dear Readers, how do you track your hair growth and stay motivated?