Hello,
My hair is as coarse as they come too. coarse and full and it can be a handful sometimes. The drier your drier your hair, the more difficult it is to manage, so moisture is key to managing our kind of hair. I deep condition as often as i wash, i never miss it, and if you use a good deep conditoner that moisturizes, you can always tell the difference in how your hair feels aftwewards.
The weather right now is very hair friendly, you can add vegetable glycerin into whatever you use for your hair, be it your oil mix or your spray bottle mix, it draws moisture from the atmosphere into your hair making it less dry.
Make sure you lock in moisture in your hair, use a good leave in conditioner and heavy oil like castor oil or our very common shea butter and a good moisturising cream after you wash. This has helped my hair a great deal, making it a lot more manageable and less of a comb-breaker.

I'm not an expert on natural hair but from my personal experience I can say these:
I transitioned for over a year and even though you will hear there is no right or wrong way to go natural, the only con to the big chop is the fear or the fact that we are not comfortable rocking our hair short. Besides that, I feel that would have been the better route i would have taken.
But i took the transitioning route and i must say, due to the coarse nature of my hair, i struggled through wash days during the first few months but it got easier. These are the things i learned:
- Wash your hair in sections, 4 at least depending on the length and fullness of your hair
- Do hot oil treatments a few hours or overnigtht before wash day - warm a little olive or coconut oil and apply to your scalp and hair and leave it in till you wash
- Wash with a sulphate free shampoo
- Conditioners are your new besties, condition afterwards, detangle with thr conditoner in your hair and for healthier and more manageable hair, use a deep conditioner, leave in for the stipulated time(about 20-40 mins) with or without heat and rinse
- use a leave in conditioner afterwards and a light oil or butter, shea butter is our most available and cheap option and its a wonder especially for coarse hair, apply a cream to seal everything in.
- Protective styling is very much recommended to protect your hair from breaking and if you are transitioning, you hair will be very prone to breakage, so do protective styles often. I mostly cornrowed my hair and wore wigs.
As for products, I used Giovanni shampoo, herbal essence hello hydration conditioner and elasta QP deep conditioner, cantu leave in conditioner, olive oil, coconut oil and shea butter. i used shea moisture curl enhancing smoothie as my cream even though it is for styling. New naturals have found some of these products quite pricey but we are having new local based products that are inexpensive and are getting good reviews. i havent tried any myself though but i could get you a contact if u need it.
Good luck to you and i hope the journey be for you as fulfilling and fun as it is for all of us.