x_x
October 28th, 2016, 04:15 PM
Hi everyone, I'm having some hair problems and I'd be so grateful for a little input!
So, I've been growing my hair out from a pixie cut for about three years, and my issue from the very beginning has been that when I reached chin length, a hairdresser convinced me to cut a layer into my hair. It was a pretty big length difference between canopy and under-layer - about three or four inches. The hairdresser also heavily thinned out my canopy creating a lot of hairs with different lengths. At some point I discovered self-trimming and decided that I'd trim my bottom layer every month, keeping half my new growth, until the top and bottom layers converged. This worked, but because I was desperate to keep some of my growth at the same time, it took about a year and a half. Sometime this winter the two layers finally converged and I was so excited: Yay, I can finally braid my hair! My hair is now between APL and BSL, and I've probably taken off at least half of my overall growth just to get to this point of having a basically blunt cut.
But of course there were underlying issues with my canopy, chiefly that it had grown without trims or intensive S&D for a really long time as I didn't want to prolong this layered hair phase, so that a lot of the hairs up there had never gotten a trim. This summer I also spent a lot of time outdoors. So my hair spent a lot of time wet and acquired a lot of sun damage, and this winter, bam, I suddenly have protein issues with my hair and a ton of split ends in my canopy. Like, if I just grab a lock of hair from the very crown of my head, at least half of the hairs look like split ends to me (the "candle" type where you can see that it's thin and a lighter color at the end and a hair that should be gently wavy has a weird little curly piece at the end).
I guess I could conclude I should trim out all these split ends, but I'm not sure it's a great idea for two reasons. First, it is a lot of splits and I am still waiting for a good fraction of my canopy to reach my hemline. Imagine decently healthy hair with a very tapered canopy on top. Couldn't S&D make the process even slower? And is it worth it to do that if I'm just leaving myself with a bunch of random length hairs? And secondly, I'm not quite sure all of these are actually split ends. I have a small amount of very wiry "horse hairs" that are dark copper in contrast to my auburn-ish in the winter, strawberry blond-ish in the summer hair. They're coarse and hard to manage, and almost all of them come from the crown of my head. Also, most of them have tight little waves in their texture. I say "waves" instead of curls because these don't make a spiral around their own axis, they just kind of almost zigzag back and forth. I tried to photograph a few of them, but it didn't quite work. Anyway, I keep catching myself trimming these, but of course they are just a lot wilder if I trim them up to chin length or so.
Not sure what my options are here, just keep microtrimming the bottom of my hemline and doing S&D at the top? S&D only? Cut a layer back into my hair? Chop my hair back to where my very top canopy is thicker - this would probably be somewhere around shoulder length, though? And what is up with these weird thick hairs, should I just leave them be? It seems that I've identified just about every single one of these as a split and trimmed them, and now they just stick out in the same way but farther up.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has gotten through a phase like this without having to lose a lot of length to fix it. I'm willing to play the long game but it's just soooo disheartening sometimes to have to resolve yourself to prioritizing quality over length year after year!
So, I've been growing my hair out from a pixie cut for about three years, and my issue from the very beginning has been that when I reached chin length, a hairdresser convinced me to cut a layer into my hair. It was a pretty big length difference between canopy and under-layer - about three or four inches. The hairdresser also heavily thinned out my canopy creating a lot of hairs with different lengths. At some point I discovered self-trimming and decided that I'd trim my bottom layer every month, keeping half my new growth, until the top and bottom layers converged. This worked, but because I was desperate to keep some of my growth at the same time, it took about a year and a half. Sometime this winter the two layers finally converged and I was so excited: Yay, I can finally braid my hair! My hair is now between APL and BSL, and I've probably taken off at least half of my overall growth just to get to this point of having a basically blunt cut.
But of course there were underlying issues with my canopy, chiefly that it had grown without trims or intensive S&D for a really long time as I didn't want to prolong this layered hair phase, so that a lot of the hairs up there had never gotten a trim. This summer I also spent a lot of time outdoors. So my hair spent a lot of time wet and acquired a lot of sun damage, and this winter, bam, I suddenly have protein issues with my hair and a ton of split ends in my canopy. Like, if I just grab a lock of hair from the very crown of my head, at least half of the hairs look like split ends to me (the "candle" type where you can see that it's thin and a lighter color at the end and a hair that should be gently wavy has a weird little curly piece at the end).
I guess I could conclude I should trim out all these split ends, but I'm not sure it's a great idea for two reasons. First, it is a lot of splits and I am still waiting for a good fraction of my canopy to reach my hemline. Imagine decently healthy hair with a very tapered canopy on top. Couldn't S&D make the process even slower? And is it worth it to do that if I'm just leaving myself with a bunch of random length hairs? And secondly, I'm not quite sure all of these are actually split ends. I have a small amount of very wiry "horse hairs" that are dark copper in contrast to my auburn-ish in the winter, strawberry blond-ish in the summer hair. They're coarse and hard to manage, and almost all of them come from the crown of my head. Also, most of them have tight little waves in their texture. I say "waves" instead of curls because these don't make a spiral around their own axis, they just kind of almost zigzag back and forth. I tried to photograph a few of them, but it didn't quite work. Anyway, I keep catching myself trimming these, but of course they are just a lot wilder if I trim them up to chin length or so.
Not sure what my options are here, just keep microtrimming the bottom of my hemline and doing S&D at the top? S&D only? Cut a layer back into my hair? Chop my hair back to where my very top canopy is thicker - this would probably be somewhere around shoulder length, though? And what is up with these weird thick hairs, should I just leave them be? It seems that I've identified just about every single one of these as a split and trimmed them, and now they just stick out in the same way but farther up.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has gotten through a phase like this without having to lose a lot of length to fix it. I'm willing to play the long game but it's just soooo disheartening sometimes to have to resolve yourself to prioritizing quality over length year after year!