Newbie, recovering from bleach/heat

Hi from Australia!
I've been a lurker for some time now but decided to finally make an account.
a bit about my hair history:
In around 2015-2017, I was obsessed with growing out long mermaid hair. I used tons of different products, stuff from Woolies and random ingredients I would find in the kitchen (eggs, coconut oil). My hair was really soft, shiny, with pretty uniform waves. The lengths were healthy but the ends were quite thin because I rarely cut it. I think at its longest it was maybe just reaching WL or was between MBL and WL.
In 2018 I discovered heat tools and began religiously using my straightener most days. Obviously this created some damage, I lost my wave definition and my lengths were a lot drier. I ended up cutting back a bit on heat but would still straighten my hair fairly regularly from 2019-2020. However, in 2019 I had given up on having long hair and cut it to APL. I regretted doing so and have been trying to grow it out since. In 2021 I first began bleaching my hair and looking back it was suuuuuch a mistake cause I have very fine hair which was easily damaged by the bleach. I would constantly have ends snapping off, and they would cover the floor every time I brushed my hair. By this point I had returned to near daily straightening, and kept bleaching my hair until Feb 2023 which was the last time bleach will ever touch my hair!!!!
Around the end of 2022 I began using more natural products/oils and reducing my use of heat, until we get to now, where I will very rarely use the straightener and might lightly blow dry once every couple of weeks.
In an effort to hack off some of my split ends, I began getting regular trims in Jul 2023 every 6-8 weeks or so. While my hair is soooo much healthier now, my growth keeps being reversed and I have been stuck at MBL for some time now.
Now in 2024, my goal is to reduce the amount of damage to my hair and take care of my scalp/reduce shedding so I can hopefully grow to hip/tailbone in the future!
Thanks for reading this long post!! :p

Welcome :)

Welcome to the Community!

Welcome to LHC. It will take you some time to grow out all that bleach/straightening damage but you can do it! You may want to look into S&D to get rid of some of the splits that will be in your length.

Welcome! I too, have been stuck in the MBL abyss for some time due to constant trimming of bleach damaged hair.

Here's to long, healthy hair this year! :cheer:

Yes thankfully in exploring this forum I've discovered S&D! It's been a huge help in reducing the damage from my 'hair picking problem' as I call it (not sure if anyone else has this, but previously when I would find splits on the ends/white breakage spots on the lengths I would just pull off the broken bits with my fingers, and obsessively sort through all my hair looking for splits to pull off... oops)

ETJ Curls the MBL abyss sucks hey?? I want to reach my goal of HL but know that based on the damage, it will be better in the long run to keep trimming the ends regularly. We'll get there in the end!!