Why can't my hair grow?

On many groups and fotki albums we hear about women who after one year of being napptural (natural) have had great hair growth, but some of us wait and wait for that to happen to us but it hasn't happened yet. What do we do?
I have been natural for, I really don't know. I never counted, it wasn't really a big decision until after I started trying to style my natural hair. It's probably been about 3 years. I still don't even have shoulder length hair and I'm ok with that now because I realize where my problem lies.

1. I pull on my knots and rip them sometimes and I tug on my hair when I'm nervous (usually during class or a test).
2. I don't eat vegetables that much. I don't even eat the recommended servings for a day in a week.
3. I used to wash my hair with harsh products and/or use many different products week to week.
4. Washed my hair too infrequently.
5. Daily life was very stressful.
6. Don't ever get enough sleep.
7. Ate high in fat foods
8. Didn't moisturize hair as much in the week.
9. Trimmed it a lot in the beginning.

Wow, that's a lot. I take responsibility for my hair not growing enough and so should all of you out there who look up to those women who have beautiful, growing, natural hair because they take responsibility and do something about it.

Curly Girl

I'm reading Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey and while I enjoy the tips and insight into how to properly care for curly hair and the different types, the chapter on African American curly hair was only 5 pages long excluding the Curly Girl Confessions while other chapters were a bit longer.

The book is very simple and the first step to being a curly girl is to throw out your shampoo! Which most of already do with the no-poo hair washing method. I love the way Lorraine Massey writes because it's very conversational, like a friend-to-friend conversation that most of us appreciate.

I have been using the lavender mist spray that Lorraine talks about in the chapter titled Lorraine's Lotions and potions. It's very simple to do, just get pure/essential lavender oil, a spray bottle and water and remember don't put all of the lavender oil in there.

A Lesson Learned

I realized that I have to have patience with my hair. Reading Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey made me think about my detangling routine. Usually I get so aggravated/frustrated when I untwist my hair and start combing my hair. Everything hurts because I start tugging and pulling and eventually knots are gone but I'm left with split ends. This probably happens to those of us with lack of patience but that can deeply hinder our ability for hair growth.

update on hair regimen

I did a twist out today and my hair looked so good that people noticed. :) I also put a little bit of baking soda in the spray bottle. Today I sprayed my hair with my special concoction and used the tips of my fingers to massage my scalp. i purposefully scratched my scalp after doing this to see if there was any residue left over. There was none and it smelled nice!

My hair regimen for the first 3 weeks of May

I'm doing something different with my hair this month. Starting today, May 1st I will be leaving my twists in for 3 weeks. I have never done this before, but I read somewhere that Jill Scott does this, she, however gets her twists professionally done, but I do it myself. I will be using a spray bottle half filled with water with a quarter sized amount of Kemi MOYST No-soap shampoo for dry damaged hair with possibly a table spoon of witch hazel to clean my hair when it gets dirty or after sweating from playing tennis. Every day I will be using BB Moisturizing Growth Lotion. This is going to be hard. It's my ritual to wash my hair every Friday/Saturday and just thinking about not washing my hair makes me itchy.