(This post accompanies the monthly update YouTube video published in July 2026.
Watch the video here)
Seven months ago, I stopped retightening my Sisterlocks.
This month I’m zooming in on a few areas to see what, if anything, has been changing.
My crown and hairline
When I compare my crown area with how it looked before I stopped retightening, I can see some improvement. The area looks fuller to me, and I’m encouraged by the amount of coverage I’m seeing. With less manipulation (in the form of pulling and twisting), I feel that this part of my hair is in recovery.
My hairline and temples are two other areas that I want to keep an eye on. They have tended to be finer and less dense, so I’m particularly interested in how they will respond as I continue to maintain my hair without retightenings.
Something I noticed when styling my hair
I recently wore my hair in a rolled updo for a wedding, and it gave me an unexpected boost.
The style was held together with lots of pins, much like it had been three years ago at my own wedding. The style held up well, but the real difference lay in my comfort levels.
Due to the regrowth I have now, I didn’t feel a single one of those pins all day. The regrowth gave the pins something to latch onto, but at the same time, it protected my scalp. I enjoyed the pain-free updo all day long. It was great!
This may feel like an insignificant observation in the general scheme of things, but it marked a real milestone for me.
I remember feeling the pins when I last wore this type of updo (at my wedding). Coupled with the fact that I had had a fresh retie, I knew where every single one of those pins was because I could feel them digging into my scalp.
This time around, the increased fullness around my roots meant my scalp didn’t have to suffer. It was protected.
There’s more new growth now
Seven months without retightenings means there is a lot more new growth around the base of my original Sisterlocks, and the difference is increasingly visible.
Some of the new growth has been combined, while other sections are still being left alone.
I’m continuing to make combining decisions based on what feels right rather than trying to make every part of my hair follow exactly the same pattern or a fixed rota.
There are now sections that are newly combined, alongside others that have had more time to grow out as they are. My roots are now all at different stages.
The grid is changing
The Sisterlocks grid is still visible in places, but it is becoming softer as the new growth comes in, and I’m increasingly comfortable with that.
For me, letting go of the grid has become part of letting go of the idea that my hair needs to look a certain way to maintain it.
I’m much more interested in how my hair feels, how it is growing and whether I’m seeing the coverage I want.
One experiment I changed my mind about
One of the interesting things about this journey is that I’m not necessarily keeping everything I try.
Earlier on, I experimented with plaiting three Sisterlocks together from root to tip. That was, originally, how I thought I was going to combine all of my Sisterlocks.
In the end, I decided to only combine the new loose hair, rather than plait all of my Sisterlocks, but I kept that one plaited loc to see what would happen.
While it looked OK as a single loc, comprising three Sisterlocks plaited together, I didn’t want to commit to that look all over. I also know that others have tried the plaited Sisterlock approach, and in some cases the plaited locs unravelled. I was also unsure what would happen if I didn’t have the same plaiting tension across all the plaited locs. They might look different or have gaps in them. My other concern was that I wasn’t sure how I would maintain the regrowth.
It was good to try the plaited loc out for a few months, and to have the latitude to change my mind about it.
So I undid it.
Seven months without retightenings
Seven months in, I can see that my hair is changing.
There is more fullness in some areas, more new growth and less definition around the grid.
Some of the things I’ve tried have worked well, and I’ve changed my mind when I have felt the need to. It’s all part of the process.
I’m excited to see where this journey is taking me, and the not knowing is becoming one of the most interesting parts of it.
I’ve been documenting this journey on my YouTube channel.
Come and follow along over there: Love Those Locs on YouTube