Growing Out My Hair Is the Most Painful Thing I’ve Ever Done

In life, we all experience painful things. It could be as little as stubbing your toe to breaking an arm, but the most painful thing I’ve ever done was growing out my hair.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve experienced pain! I have had two babies, and one was through an emergency C-section. And while I was pregnant with the second child, I had kidney stones. And because I was pregnant, they couldn’t give me pain killers. Now that was pain.

When I was pregnant, I had alopecia. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s when your hair falls out in big chunks, which left me with these gaping bald spots. It was awful. But I’ll write about that another day.

It was a couple of years before my hair actually stopped falling out. So I really didn’t know if I could depend on having hair. But after fighting with this issue, I finally had had enough. I figured if I was going to alopecia, I was tired of trying to hide it. I was going to cut off my hair!

Long hair
Here I am happily pregnant with long hair. (Oh, and my hair’s a little lighter, too!)

I should say that while this may seem radical (and it was a little bit), I had short hair when I was in my 20s, and I absolutely loved it. So while I knew I was going to miss having long hair, I was also looking forward to shedding my fear of how I would look. So off came the locks.

Short hair is wonderful. It’s easy to manage, quick to get ready and looks great if you get the right cut. But after a while, I got bored. It was the same hair all the time. With longer hair, at least I could do something with it. And thus began my journey to growing out my mane.

ShortHair
Ah, short hair! Easy, breezy and fun 🙂

I had forgotten how much those in between stages truly suck. At one point, I told my husband just to accept the fact that I was going to look like I had stuck my finger in a electrical socket. Day after day, I looked in the mirror, only to wonder why I even bothered to look. The end goal was the only thing that kept me from chopping it back short again.

Talk about painful! Welcome to morning hair when you’re growing out your hair.
pigtail
Do you see this itty bitty pigtail of mine? It was finally long enough that I could at least get it off of my neck when it was hot.

A year is a long time to wait. But after being patient, my hair has finally reached a length I’m enjoying. And while I do love my long hair, I do have moments of wanting to chop it all off again. And then I remember the pain…

longhair2
Finally long hair again 🙂

 

8 Comments

  1. Glad you got your long hair back. 🙂 I’ve always had my hair long so don’t really know about those in-between stages.

  2. My daughter cut her hair very short (almost as short as yours was) and is now experiencing the pain of the awkward stages of letting it grow back out. It is tough!

    1. Tell her to just keep her eyes on the prize! It will make those in between stages easier.

  3. wow. your hair grew pretty fast! i chopped off my 16″ long hair and regret it. it wasn’t as short as yours but it was bob under the ears length. it took almost 20 months to grow back just below my shoulder and i still find it short!! i want my long princess hair back!

    1. Yeah. My hair has always grown pretty fast. But in general I think hair grows about an inch every two months. So it would take 20 months to get 10 inches back!

  4. My daughter just cut off 10 inches off her hair. It looks cute but it wasn’t as short as your hair. I remember getting my hair cut wrong one year when I was in elementary, it was horrible.

    1. Ugh. Bad haircuts are the worse, Christy! I’ve certainly had my fair share.

  5. Retired Hair Designer here!I helped so many of my clients
    with growing their hair out.Actually it is pretty easy if you get
    the right cut throughout the growing stage.

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