Tell me your hair's Life Story!

[Strawb3rryBlond]

So my hair is naturally blonde (strawberry-ish, with a bit of dirty blonde mixed in).

As a kid I had the typical kid haircut. Straight-across fringe type deal (think Lizzie McGuire) and was probably shoulder length or a little longer. For some reason my mum was always trying to convince me to get more cut off than I wanted, so I maintained at that length. When I was probably around 8-ish I grew out my fringe and let it grow in general. It was BSL and in pretty decent shape from when I was about 8-13 years old.

When I was about 14ish my 'friend' made fun of my hair, said that it was too yellow or orange or something like that, which made me really self-conscious. So i bleached it with a box dye. BIG mistake. It turned out okay-ish and from then on I went to the hairdresser a few times a year for blonde highlights. My hair was pretty crappy throughout high school. Condition-wise it was okay, but I had way too many layers so it never really grew properly, so I had choppy APL hair for a pretty long time, not to mention I straightened the living hell out of it. I was trying to achieve a certain image with my hair, but I didn't have the face shape or the hair type to pull it off. My hair is very fine but also quite thick so the only way for it to really look decent is to have enough length to weigh it down, which at that point I didn't.

Then after I graduated high school my hair somehow grew like a weed and got a lot nicer. Probably because I stopped straightening it every day and left it alone. I kept up with the highlights.

Which brings us to the last couple of years. I've been doing the whole grow the layers out, get them cut back in, grow them out, cut them again, etc.

I'm 22 now and I'm working on growing out the bleach and the layers. My hair is somewhere between BSL and waist but it seems less because of the layers. My plan is to leave it alone between now and June and hopefully by then the highlights will have grown out enough to look more ombre/balayage and I'll be able to hack the layers off and still have BSL length hair. My overall goal is to have natural one-length hair, with maybe a few layers around the face.

Now it's your turn!

[lapis_lazuli]

I made a similar post like this documenting my hair throughout the years. The pics are in my album currently :)

To sum it all up, I had the typical little girl hair up until I was 8 and got to grow the bangs and shoulder cut out. I abused my hair with flat irons for years :doh: and got highlights every couple of years. Well, a few years ago I snapped out of it and decided I wanted to grow my hair long... really long and renounced my old bad habits. I'm still paying for the highlights that cover 2/3 of my length but I'm finally beginning to fall in love with my hair and I can't wait for the day to come where I can chop off all the old damage and be completely virgin :crush:

Nothing that special, but that's my story :p

[Strawb3rryBlond]

lapis_lazuli I just had a look at your album, it's so interesting :p I've got to say that the front of your hair looks really good. I've got a massive forehead (fivehead) so my hair has never been able to sit forwards. Your 2009 picture is pretty much the same as what my hair was back then (or at least what I was aiming for) only mind was a dyed blonde wavy/frizzy mess with way too many layers lol.

[lapis_lazuli]

lapis_lazuli I just had a look at your album, it's so interesting :p I've got to say that the front of your hair looks really good. I've got a massive forehead (fivehead) so my hair has never been able to sit forwards. Your 2009 picture is pretty much the same as what my hair was back then (or at least what I was aiming for) only mind was a dyed blonde wavy/frizzy mess with way too many layers lol.

Haha I guess we all go through that phase! :laugh: I cringe looking back at those photos but if I'd never done it, I may be making those mistakes now. Lessons learned!

[Strawb3rryBlond]

^^ Oh yes, definitely. I'm finding it really difficult at the moment, because I kind of hate my hair right now. I get so impatient and I just want to do something to it. I really want to cut a bunch of it off but I know that if I do that now it'll probably never grow back. Call me crazy but I feel like whenever I've cut my hair any shorter than BSL it takes forever to do anything and it seems impossible to get it to grow again. But I'm never getting highlights again. Never EVER.

[lapis_lazuli]

^^ Oh yes, definitely. I'm finding it really difficult at the moment, because I kind of hate my hair right now. I get so impatient and I just want to do something to it. I really want to cut a bunch of it off but I know that if I do that now it'll probably never grow back. Call me crazy but I feel like whenever I've cut my hair any shorter than BSL it takes forever to do anything and it seems impossible to get it to grow again. But I'm never getting highlights again. Never EVER.

:laugh: Same here! No colour (especially bleach) will ever tough my hair again! You're not alone in the BSL stall though :) Many people find it hard to grow past it, the best way is just to put it up and forget about it. Then one day, you'll take it down and lo and behold! You're there!

[Strawb3rryBlond]

^^ yep. I think that's exactly what I did to make it grow, without realising it. Usually occurs during particularly busy or stressful periods of my life where I just stop caring and ignore it. Then all of a sudden you notice how much it's grown.

[endersworld]

When I was a little kid (around 3yo), my hair was pretty normal. My mom liked to stick it up in ponytails and then braid them, so I'd normally look a bit like a dinosaur with three spikes going down the middle of my head! I decided I wanted my hair to be exactly like my mom's (my mom has very short hair) so I had a bowl cut from the time I was 5 on into 2nd grade. I started to grow it out into a strange bob with bangs, then had it around APL for a while, until I cut it again so that it was shorter in the back than in the front.
In high school, I started growing it out, but still generally got a massive summer haircut. My hair is very thick, so up to this point I had been getting it thinned out every time I went to the hairdresser's. Around my senior year, I decided I was tired of dealing with constant hair trims and thinning, so I just decided to let it go and see what would happen. As of now, I get it trimmed maybe once a year, and outside of that, I let it do what it wants to do. It tends to behave as long as I don't murder it with static :)

[AmberJewel]

I had straight-ish hair with blunt bangs for most of my childhood. My mom liked keeping my hair short though she let my sister's grow quite long. My sister had a sensitive head and would cry when her hair was brushed, while I took pride in my ability to tough it out. So her hair grew to classic on more than one occasion while mine remained between shoulder and APL. When I was 8 and 9, I didn't even comb it... just broke off the big tangles with my fingers and kept going.

Of course as I got older I brushed my hair but I always thought it was a waste of time, something you just had to do to appease people who judged you by your looks. Every time it started to get longer mom said it looked bad, was too fine, "you-don't-do-anything-with-it-anyway", and would cut it back to where it "looked better". I didn't know what to do with it so I refused to do anything other than stick it in a ponytail, and a lot of the time I just left it down.

In college other girls teased me about the state of my hair so I started washing every day, but still had no idea how to care for it. I tried flat-ironing a couple times and got compliments on it, but I hated the time and effort it took, as well as the excessive heat.

I always thought I was incapable of longer hair (though I adored my sister's) until I found LHC. I lurked on the site for a few months then joined and started growing seriously and trying to take care of my hair for the first time in my life. My hair is longer and healthier than it has ever been and I have so much fun with it. One thing that's really helped is that I no longer see spending time on my hair as wasted time "getting pretty", but it's more of a long-term craft project and something I actually enjoy.

[Hopeful65]

I was born with fine thin hair. My mom always kept it very short because she said that she couldn't do anything with it. So I had home cuts with kitchen scissors. I had pixie type styles, and what she called a Paige Boy. She claims I was in style for the times, but I hated it. My sister had very long hair. Our hair is not so different, so I still don't know why things were this way. I got called a boy on occasion. (think Addie Pray in the movie Paper Moon).

As I grew up and could take control over my own hair, I still had the mindset that my hair was too fine and thin. So I started getting perms. Home perms... from my mom. And later I started bleaching it blond. By then I was married with kids and money was tight, so I did it myself. For like 18 years!

I found LHC when I was researching how to fix my bleach damaged hair. So starting in my late 40's I grew out all the damage, and now have hip length virgin hair. Yes, it is still fine and thin. But I get more compliments nowadays than I ever have in my life. And I am the happiest I have ever been with my hair.

[NagChampa]

I have a very strange and unusual hair story. When I was born I had lots of jet black hair like my parents which slowly as I began experiencing my first summers went so blonde it looked albino transparent like. Once winter started to kick in however my hair darkened and settled for the longest at an ash mousey brown. I mainly wore my hair down as a child but occasionally my mum would do intricate braiding for me, once I joined my first school however I wore my hair in a low ponytail right at the nape of my neck every single day. I regularly had it cut and so BSL was the furthest I think I let it grew. Around age 10 my dad put my first henna treatment on my hair and god damn did that vibrant red take years to go away!! After that I was about 14 and was ruining my hair on a daily basis through straightening, consistent shop-bought dyes and bad self trimming. I left my hair and about two years later decided to bleach my hair resulting in an awful artificial copper/ginger tone which I dyed over almost immediately. I then permed my hair at home (what was I thinking) which resulted in curls that lasted for about a day due to my hair being naturally pin straight. Despite the fact I know I should cut off a large portion of my hair and start again I'm being very resilient and stubborn and deciding to keep it. I am now a hendigo and have hip length hair which has minimal split ends and is in pretty good quality considering the turmoil I have taken it through which I regret deeply. I can honestly say I haven't used heat (straighteners or blow dryers) in years, air dry my hair after washing once every week or so and I treat my hair like gold. It's in a bun held with a hair stick practically every day and then I braid it at night and my hair has never felt healthier. Thankyou LHC!!

[TaraDanina]

As a child, I had long ashy blonde hair that turned platinum from the sun. When I was 10, my big sister cut hers into a fabulous short bob and I wanted short hair too. I cut my hair and was devastated. I developed trichotillomania around this time. Two years later, my mom started taking me to get highlights done because she said my natural color (an ashy blonde color) made me "disappear."
So my hair was bleached throughout high school, until I rebelled and dyed it red. Then I bleached it back to blonde. Then manic panic pink and red ombre sort of thing. Then dark brown to cover that. Dark brown for two years. Had a salon try to take me back to blonde and turned orange. Frustrated, I dyed it dark again, until I was 25. I had used clarifying shampoo and hot oil treatment to pull a lot of color out. Then, I got a bleach kit and lightened it. My roots turned back to my childhood color but the rest was a mess. Dyed it honey blonde for about a year. Decided when I was 26 that I wanted to stop dyeing it. Went a about nine months before I had to do highlights to blend a demarcation line.
Hoping that I can some day pass BSL! I am such a creep- I just texted a friend with virgin hair to ask if I can touch it, because she is literally the only person with virgin hair I know. I'm hoping the texture will inspire me to stay strong, and help me return to my ashy locks.

[TaraDanina]

Oh my goodness we are hair twins right now! Swearing off highlights and praying that the hair gods will push our hair to waist!

[kendraf]

(see my album for photo timeline)

My hair has naturally darkened from blonde to light ash brown and has always been fine and kinda limp. When I was younger, I had a lot of shoulder-length blunt cuts once my hair got "too long and stringy looking" according to my mom. I always blow dried my hair straight and had no idea what my natural texture looked like. I would just get annoyed that it wouldn't stay straight all day :D

I started highlighting it and straightening the life out of it in middle school/high school. I tried out every natural color I could except black but mostly stuck to brown or highlighted blonde. It was between chin and APL and always layered all throughout high school and college.

I grew out all of my color during my senior year of college in 2009 and played with my natural texture, then dabbled with blonde highlights and straightening again from 2010-2013. During that time, I found LHC and dabbled in no-poo methods, air drying and growing out my layers. I reached BSL in 2013, but my length was still very blonde and damaged. I maintained near BSL to trim out the blonde in 2013 and had it all trimmed out by mid-2015. I no longer owned a hair dryer and only occasionally used a curling iron to spruce up my waves.

I finally achieved BSL in December 2015. I got bored in early August 2015 and put Pravana Vivids Red on my virgin ends, which didn't come out after months of attempting to fade it. So in late November, I went to the hairdresser to try to lift the red, but after 2 bleachings of my ends the color just turned pink. I now have copper balayage highlights that blend my natural roots down to my reddish ends.

For 2016, I will grow to waist with a few small trims to chip away at the bottom 4 inches of hair that was lifted twice. I actually like the balayage highlights and may plan to have it redone once a year just to brighten up my natural color a bit.

[CoveredByLove]

My hair was straight and black when I was born. I had just enough of it for them to put a bow in it. That soon fell out and it grew back dark blonde/light brown. The longest I remember my hair getting as a child was TBL. It was never cut until my teens. It stayed that that color and straight until the wonderful puberty years (sarcasm) when it began to darken and turned curly! That was the best gift ever, because since I was very young I always wanted curly hair. My mom let me get a spiral perm when I was eight years old, because I wanted curly hair so bad. Lol Little did I know, around sixteen my hair would be that way naturally. So, for a few years my hair was very odd- straight ends and curly roots. :p I trimmed it ever so often to eventually have curls all the way down. It was somewhere around waist curly in my late teens-early twenties. When the Chi flat irons first became popular, my friend flat ironed my hair. I remember sitting there in shock of how long my hair really was! It was touching my butt! After that,I got into heat styling it in different ways, which caused lots of damage and much more trimming. This was devastating to me, since I love my long curls...I was just having too much fun and not paying attention to what all that was doing to my hair! My hair hovered around BSL for past several years due to breakage and postpartum hair loss. I'm FINALLY getting back to where it once was- healthy and growing strong. :) Since my hair can grow to TBL even with abuse, I'm pretty sure I can grow it to TBL again and hopefully longer...so the story continues! :D

[lapis_lazuli]

These are all so interesting to read. Great idea for a thread, Strawb3rryBlond :thumbsup:

[nalgena]

As a preschooler, my hair was cut in a one length bob. I don't remember how, when and why it happened, but my hair was cut into a boyish style when I started school, so I looked like a boy until I was about 11. I remember my mom, who has even finer hair than mine (and processed), saying that if a girl wants to have long hair, it should be thick and strong. So I kept my hair short until well into my 20s. I never once wore a pony tail or a braid until I was almost 30!

As most girls from my generation, I started dyeing my hair in my late teens. I was blond, red, violet and then dark brown for over a decade. I did grow my hair a bit longer and at some point I think it might even have reached BSL, but it was cut into a V shape and it had way too many layers, which made my fine hair look flat and thin. So I cut it back to a chin length bob which was my go to style for the next few years.

When I was 29 I slowly grew my hair a bit longer again. I didn't like how it looked, so a year later I stopped dyeing it and started taking better care of it. A few months afterwards I lost about a quarter of my hair due to a shed, so it was a major set back. But it's growing back now and I recently cut off a majority of dyed, processed ends. I also finally grew out all the layers and now my hair looks better and thicker it ever has. It's not very long yet, but I'm finally fulfilling a childhood dream of having long hair :o.

[Ve]

I am the youngest of 5 kids. After 3 boys in a row mom was determined to have a girl (that boy was wearing pink no matter what) so I came along a light blondie and mom loved my hair and never cut it. I ran around in pigtails. Every Sunday she washed and detangled with Toni detangler(I think late 70s) OUCH OUCH... anyway and into sponge rollers to sleep in, then brushed into ringlet curls. I was her princess doll and I never really minded. Then at 8 or 9 I discovered fashion magazines and off went the long hair, my poor mother was crying in the salon chair behind me, I now feel bad about that. So next came page boy cuts, a curly perm (my father shook his head about that one forever because I had curly hair already) but no coloring.

In my teens I went natural and was going to grow it long but I never really knew why it never got longer than APL must have seen a style and cut it and in high school I took a hairdressing course and became a hairdresser. It was ash blonde at this point.

At 24 I started going gray/white and started putting highlights in so no one noticed always at APL because I believed if I grew longer I would lose the curls and it would be harder to take care of, where I got this idea I don't know. I somewhere lost my goal to grow very long hair.

At 37 I let my hair be white until my teenage daughter's friend said I looked old and back to blond colouring and damaged hair at APL still.

At 42 went to Cassia for colouring blond(having a hard time letting go of this addiction). Now at 46 I have natural cassia hair it no longer feels like straw and at APL. Thankfully with LHC I am learning so much more about the care of my hair and I truly hope to finally reach my goal and grow to Classic at least.

[languagenut]

My hair's life story isn't very dramatic. I was born with thick hair, though I'm not sure about the color since it looks different in different pictures. At about 8 yrs old, my hair wasn't really long enough for its thickness; combine that with rodent-like teeth and ever-crooked glasses, and I was a pretty funny-looking kid! My mom had long hair, as did my dad until he had it cut for employment reasons. So it was only natural that my hair be allowed to grow as it would, with just a little trim every now and then; except I had bangs. Even so, my hair was always a point of conflict between me and my mom. She wanted to put it up in a ponytail, and I hated that because it was too tight and hurt my scalp. I also, as is common for children, resisted getting it brushed, because the brush pulled on the tangles. So I grew up not caring about my hair; not wanting it brushed or styled, not caring if it was tangled, not caring about the numerous split ends. At some point when I got my hair trimmed I told my mom (who does all the haircuts in our family) that I didn't want bangs, because they were always in my face (they had at that point grown to where I could tuck them behind my ears, and I wanted to keep it that way!). She went along with that, and I haven't had bangs since. That one decision I made was solely a matter of comfort; I still didn't care about my hair. But of course as I got to adolescence, I became somewhat more conscious of my appearance, and made some effort to keep my hair neat and presentable if I was going anywhere (which wasn't every day, since I was home schooled). But that usually just meant brushing it, I still didn't care about its condition any more than before. Basically I took it for granted; it grew on my head the way nails grew on my fingers and toes, and I thought about it just as little. And that was the state of things until just recently. I'd sometimes put it up or half-up for special occasions, but otherwise seldom even bothered to brush it. In the meantime it gradually grew to its current length; about hip. As a side note, I used to hairspray my styles, until some time in my teens when my mom had morning sickness (I'm 22, my sister is 6, so I was... 16? give or take a few months) and she couldn't stand the smell. After a while I found I didn't really need it, so I stopped using it.

So now we come to 2016. I had been organising some stuff in my room, and found a pair of Lilla Rose hair sticks which had been given to me for Christmas 2014. So I thought, I really should learn how to use these, so of course I paid a visit to my friend Google :google:! In the course of doing that I found this forum, and joined hoping to learn hairstyles that work for long thick hair, and also find some camaraderie among people who won't think me odd because of the length of my hair! But in the course of reading various threads, I came to realise something I had never thought of before. Somehow in all those years, it never even crossed my mind! I realised, that my hair is not just the mass of keratin on my head, that gets in my way sometimes. It is something valuable that is worth caring for. Now, I can't go buying silk pillowcases and always worrying about whether my hair will rub against something. But I can at least try to keep from ripping it out, whether with my hairbrush, or just getting caught on random objects. I can at least put it up in a quick hair stick bun when I'm going to be using things that have motor-driven rotating parts, lest it get caught in them. I can at least try to keep it from becoming an intractable rats' nest. Maybe sometime I'll look into different wash routines; maybe sometime I'll get a pair of "S&D" scissors, maybe sometime I'll research deep treatments... But for now, I just start with the basics; what I should have done all along, but was always too obsessed with something else to even think of caring. And hopefully, I'll see some corresponding basic improvement.

I hope you could follow that lengthy convoluted rambling, LOL. :)

[HeartofHaleth]

My hair grew to somewhere around my behind until I was six, at which point I asked my mother to cut it all off. She did, to a little below the chin. After that I let it grow again to around the shoulders, usually a little below, and put in bangs in 3rd grade (maybe?). As far as I remember my hair was just sort of hovering around my upper back for a while (it wasn't long before I got rid of the bangs) until it started to go wavy (my hair had always been straight and fine).

Then somewhere in between 12 and 13 I chopped it all off to jaw length, heavily layered. With my new-found texture, my head resembled a fluffy brown pompom, but I loved it! I didn't keep it, though, and I've been growing it out ever since, with a couple of minor trims along the way. Last spring I put in a wide streak of bleached silver/blonde in back, so that it only showed when my hair was up (I'm still pretty fond of that streak, but growing it out now). At the beginning of January I found LHC, and my hair is much safer for it! About a week ago I put in a wide section of red veggie dye (also in the back), and I think that's about it!