Bleach/dye recovery inspiration?

[kateeg]

First, a horror story... I bleached my hair a few times a year ago after permanently dying it postbox red for two years, to get it back to its natural blondey-light brown colour after my controlling ex-boyfriend told me he hated the red. I dyed it blonde for about three months after that, until I decided it was time to get my personality back and dye it back to my favourite red, for the last six months. Now, i started off bleaching my roots for a while, before dyeing over the whole thing to a permanent red with semi over the top (complicated!).

Obviously, this has left my hair absolutely ruined. Although it's grown significantly from 1inch at the nape to just short of APL, the ends shred into a million pieces after only a few days. I've quit my permanent dye habit, no more bleach ever!, and have undertaken a strict intensive conditioning protein and moisture regime to try and prevent further damage.

But the worst thing is that after inflicting so much damage on my hair, I recently decided I want to continue growing my hair longer. I'm not feeling very optimistic about it though and I was wondering if anyone out there had any inspirational tales to share about how they recovered their hair or managed to grow it? I could do with a good hopeful story before I give up and chop all mine off :)

[Anlbe]

I had a disastrous bleaching incident a few years ago. An evil hair dresser re-bleached my length. I was tempted to cut it all off but resisted and instead intensively conditioned. It's only just started getting longer (I was at BSL) but at least I managed to maintain the length in some sort of decent condition and now it's finally starting to get longer.

[halo_tightens]

You should definitely look in the Articles section-- there's an article by Nightshade about growing out damaged hair. I think the advice in that particular article would be very helpful to you and your hair! :)

Here's (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/vbjournal.php?do=article&articleid=79) a link to make things easier.

[JenniferNoel]

Not to worry. My hair has been through three times as much as yours, and I've recovered many, many times from bleach (and heat damage as well). It just takes will power to stay away from the evil stuff, and lots of careful conditioning and handling. At APL you should be able to do a couple nice protective up-dos, like the peacock twist and gibson tuck.
All I had to do to save my hair was quit the damaging activities and condition more thoroughly. Frequent tiny trims may also be necessary, like, say, less than a half inch every few months. The best thing to do is leave it alone. :cool:
Anything is possible. Even growing out deep fried hair.

[Katze]

not one bad bleach episode, but decades of feeling like I 'needed' to bleach my hair, then dyeing it black, blue, purple, then going 'natural', then bleaching again when I was shocked at how dark my roots were...

from about 1985 until 2005, my hair was never its natural color. Now, after several years at LHC, it is mostly virgin and is finally soft and shiny for the first time since I was a child. You can look in my album for pictures.

It takes a great deal of patience to get off the dye and bleach bandwagon. But IMO it is worth it - having healthy LONG hair for the first time ever really makes me happy, and I don't care if other people don't notice it because it is 'only' mid back length, or because the ends are thin, or because light brown is a 'boring' color. I feel like I am being more honest and kinder to myself by treating my hair with respect, if that makes sense.

[Hana]

look at elareas thread in the henna forum!

heres the link, everytime i look at it I'm astonished at how beautiful her hair is now.

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=40608
:D

[Maddy25]

I used to have severly damaged hair from being colour stripped and bleached multiple times. The way I found it was easier to deal with and looked nicest is when I worked with its natural texture, no more heat products and straightening, and did a lot of conditioning and moisture treatments. It made a world of a difference.