I applaud you for wanting to grow back your beautiful natural curls! I believe having our natural hair is a gift we give to ourselves that just gets better and better over time. However, it isn't easy to grow out our hair, and there are often some challenges along the way until we're ready to cut off all the chemical hair.

Your hair is probably breaking because the relaxed hair is damaged, and where the weak relaxed texture meets your curlier, strong and healthy new growth creates a stress point. As you comb, you might be pulling a little harder at the new growth, which may be too much for the weaker chemical hair.

This is because the relaxer works by totally changing the entire chemical structure that makes up your hair. It actually takes a double bond that puts your hair together, and breaks it apart so it's only a single bond that holds your hair together, making it much less flexible and weak. When this single bond chemically damaged hair meets up with the springy new growth with it's two bonds holding it together. This is often where the "scab" hair is formed, where these two radically different types of hair are joined it creates a mat.

Since these two textures are very different in how they behave, it's very easy to comb them differently. Generally, the chemical hair, since it's spirit has been broken (I know, my bias for natural hair is really showing), the comb goes through it easier than it does for the thicker, spirited new growth. And if you have scab hair, which is the mat that often forms where the two textures meet, you often have to tug pretty hard to get through that. The increased force needed can me enough to snap the fragile chemical hair, especially at the place where it's meeting the healthier new growth. This will often cause breakage.