Real Advice. Real Curls. Real Results.
Struggling to find a curly hair routine that actually works? Tired of wasting money on products that don’t deliver? I’ve been there.
That’s why I created HONESTLIZ – a place for no-nonsense curl education, styling techniques, and product recommendations that actually make a difference.
I’m a curly hair stylist with years of hands-on experience. I don’t follow fads. I test everything so you don’t have to. And yes, I’m the creator of the #123Gel method – a game-changer for defined, long-lasting curls.
Special thanks to Trevor Coelho for his editorial guidance in shaping this piece.
I gave three full years of my life to my babies. They were born – as you may have guessed – a short time apart from each other. By God’s grace we had two daughters before I was 30. But it was when my second daughter had just turned 1 that I realized I had spent no time at all on myself in three whole years.
If you’ve had kids of your own at any point, you probably know what I’m talking about. So after being on nipple and nappy duties 24/7 for such a long time, I decided I needed to refocus a little.
I wanted to start taking care of myself again. First, because I had two tiny people who were entirely dependent on me for literally everything and I needed to be in good shape for them. And second, simply because I wanted to start looking better for my husband. When I started thinking about myself once more, one of the first things that came to mind was my hair. After all, my husband fell in love with my long curly hair first!
Growing up, in school and in college, everyone loved my hair. Looking back now – after having learned a few things about proper curly hair care – it probably looked great because of my young-girl-hormones.
I had great hair while I was pregnant, too. While the buns were cooking in their oven, I was tanked up on vitamins – so my hair was growing, it was thick, it was lush (but it was never all that it could be and certainly not all it is now).
Then, after the babies, postpartum hair fall hit. I went through it twice in two years, so you can imagine how rough it was. I wasn’t going bald, thank goodness, but my hair was dropping; the texture changed dramatically since my hormones were all over the place; and my hair just wasn’t me.
It may seem weird to you that I associate my hair so strongly with my sense of identity, but over the years, better hair has given me better confidence. But it’s also worth noting that to a lot of people over the years, myself included, my defining characteristic was my hair.
My curls helped me stand out of the crowd, get noticed, conversations came easily, I received compliments from strangers every single day! At one point I wanted to see if there was more to me than my hair. I cut everything out and immediately looked 19-going-on-14. So immature.
The compliments came to an abrupt halt. I felt invisible. It was a difficult transition but this experiment taught me that my curly hair was God’s gift for me, a clever design to make me unique. It was so much easier to accept it the way it was and nurture it the way it deserved to be treated.
At the end of the day, curly was me and I was curly and I needed to find my way back to that. And that was when, three years after my babies were born, that I began my curly journey in earnest.
Before I conceived my first child, I had already created an Instagram account, and I started following curly hair bloggers pretty early on. YouTube became my first connection to the curly world. Curly mega bloggers I loved and followed at the time were CurlyPenny (now PennyTovar), SunkissedAlba (now MrsAlbaRamos), HiFelica, Justlikejackie, and Joybeforeher.
The problem at the time was that all the bloggers I was following were from the USA, and the products they were using were obscenely expensive to ship to India just to experiment with. At that point in my life, I had just quit my corporate career to look after my children and my husband was the sole breadwinner. I started freelance writing to be able to support him – but that also meant curly hair products were a luxury I simply couldn’t indulge in.
So, as I imagine a lot of women do, I turned to professional – and I use the term loosely, here – help. I went to a fancy looking local L’oreal salon.
My mother and I walked into this fancy salon and asked for the best treatment for dry, frizzy hair. My mental picture was of all the fancy international bloggers whose hair I was drooling over; that’s what I told the stylist I wanted, and that’s what they promised I’d get.
I wound up opting for a Moroccan oil hair spa treatment, which left my hair frizzier than it was when this mess began. (I later learned that it was a protein overload; since then I’ve enthusiastically advocated a protein-moisture balance, because I know first-hand how badly an excess of either will devastate your hair.)
If the protein overload was the beginning and end of my troubles, it would be – somewhat – acceptable. But the good folks at the salon – no sarcasm intended – also didn’t know how to diffuse my hair. They attempted to blow dry it, and since my hair was already so dry I had to stop them from going further.
By the time the treatment was over, not only was my hair frizzier, but it was also brittle. I was afraid to touch it for fear of breaking it. And it broke my heart that a service that I had thought I could count on had ultimately let me down. I also realized that if I was going to have the sort of hair that I wanted, I was going to have to find a way to do it myself.
Even with the loveliest of curly bloggers, YouTube wasn’t a big help. Every product I saw wouldn’ ship to India or had a waiting period of 3 to 4 weeks. I need something right now!! My mother saw what I was going through, wanted to help, and suggested a homemade coconut milk DIY recipe. A google search about how to Deep condition with coconut milk (because my mother and I had a difficult relationship at the time and I wouldn’t trust her).
I mixed two tablespoons of coconut milk with honey, kept it in my hair for 10 minutes. After rinsing out the way my curls clumped together and felt bouncy was so dramatic! I was so pleased and excited to deep dive into more Youtube videos around curly hair.
After falling down the YouTube rabbit hole, I started learning and practicing new techniques. Every wash day was different but visibly evolving into a better version than the previous wash. To share my results, and learning I joined a popular Indian facebook group for curly hair.
I quickly became the most engaged person there, asking questions, answering queries. I was hooked! So hooked that before the admins saw new queries, I was there responding to each one in wonderous detail.
At some point I was blocked, without warning. I am grateful for that experience because everything that happened, it led me here. But just like that a platform where I spent all waking hours of my day was suddenly inaccessible to me. It was heavy. That feeling of great loss; I took two weeks to mourn. Then refocused my hyperfixation of curly hair into my blog, and Instagram. I never again went back to Facebook after this episode.
I posted a lot about everything on instagram but saw more enthusiasm on my curly hair shenanigans. So it fueled me even more to share more of my curly hair experiments. I did this for 5 years. Constantly accumulating knowledge and applying curly hair wisdom paved the way for private coaching sessions. The natural progression of that was becoming the curly hair stylist that I am today.
Over the years I have shared product reviews, techniques, tutorials, and insights so other people wouldn’t have to spend time on this, struggling alone with their journeys the way I did. My Toolkit, a Curly Hair Course is an extension of that idea. A way for me to reach out to all the people starting or continuing their curly journeys, or those who are struggling to keep going.
No more second-guessing your curls. Let’s get them thriving.
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