Cutting My Hair for the First Time in Two Years

It all started two years ago when I received a very unexpected call from my hairdresser of three years. She told me she would be returning the next day to her native country Japan due to an emergency. I wished her well and hoped that everything would be okay but also secretly worried that I wouldn't be okay. It took me forever to find her. I loved how skillful she was at giving my thick (I mean really strong and thick) hair a polished and wispy look. Let me reiterate how annoyingly strong and healthy my hair is. This is not a brag. As a teenager, I've always wanted to use boxed hair dyes to change my hair color the way my blond and brunette friends would do over a couple of hours after dinner. They would come to school the next day with a completely different look that I admired. I could never do that. My hair seemed to have this slick Teflon outer coating that prevented it from absorbing any type of dyes, natural or synthetic. When it came time to curl my hair, it was also another area of disappointment for my beauty routine. My hair could never curl take on a curl. When I asked a girlfriend why her hair could curl so easily, she told me with a bright smile that it's because it was completely damaged. Oh, okay then. I guess I will live a life of boring hairstyles forever. So can you see why it was amazing to have finally found a hairstylist who gets me and my hair.

At first, I thought I'd wait a while and see if I could get a recommendation for a new stylist but as my hair kept growing, I started to appreciate having long hair again. I haven't had hair this long in nearly a decade. I continued to let it grow some more while I procrastinated on finding a new stylist. After about nine months, I decided it was finally time to cut my hair. At that point, I thought it looked really long already and I recalled something I had read before on hair donation to the Canadian Cancer Agency. I thought it would be a great opportunity to donate these long locks to make a wig for women who have lost their own from cancer treatments. I remember witnessing firsthand my beloved aunt being nearly bald from her chemotherapy treatments and how she remarked to me in wonder that her new hair grew out like little baby hairs. In between that transitional time of gaining her health and growing her hair back, she wore a wig made from real human hair.

I was younger then and only thought of her diagnosis from my own perspective. I'm so sad or how would life be like without my aunt to be there for me? Now as an adult, I can only imagine how scary and life changing a cancer diagnosis would be for any person. She was a middle-aged woman with two dependent children still under her care. It must have been terrifying but I only remember her at that time with a very stoic and weak smile when I visited her. I'm happy to say that she has now been in remission for many years, continues to live a very healthy life and was there to attend my wedding a few years ago. We gave our guests a small box of chocolates as wedding favors and donated the rest of our favors budget to the Cancer Society in their honor.

So at nine months, I thought my hair would be long enough to donate. It surely looked long. I went onto the Canadian Cancer Society website and read the donation instructions:

Preparing your hair:

• Hair must be a minimum 8 inches in length
• Hair must be clean, dry and not swept off the floor
• Hair should not be chemically treated (bleach, color or perm)
• Hair must be no more than 5% gray

Eight inches? I thought I could surely do that. After tying my hair in an elastic band and measuring the length of the ponytail from the elastic band to the tips to make eight inches, I realized I didn't really have any hair left for myself. I would have to shave it all off (and many commendable people have) if I wanted to have as much 8-inch strands as possible since most of my locks on the sides were shorter than that. (I think I always knew layers were bad for me lol.) So from there began my official journey of my hair-growing mission.

I didn't even dare trim my hair for fear of losing another precious inch and after nearly two years in total, I finally grew enough hair to cut a 13-inch ponytail from. It sounds long but I know some pieces are probably not usable since the sides might be shorter but for the most part, the majority of the hair in the ponytail should be eight inches or more with a small center portion of hair making up the 13 inch section. I was happy to have finally reached that goal but also a bit surprised that, upon re-reading the instructions, it takes from 8 to 15 ponytails just to make one wig. My oh my, if I were to do it alone, it would take me perhaps 16 years just to make one wig. Luckily, over 70,000 ponytails have been donated from all over the country since the program began and if you're interested in donating as well. Here are the details you'll need:

As written on the Canadian Cancer Society Website

Well that concludes my crazy and scraggly long hair journey. If you've got super long hair that "you're not using", the next time you cut it you might want to consider donating it as well.

Updated: October 2018

It only took a little over a year and a half this time to grow enough hair for donation again. All thanks to a very strict directive to my hairdresser NOT to give me any layers 🙂 I guess it worked. I'm happy to discover that this year will be the last year in which the program will be accepting hair donations. It turns out that synthetic hair technology has become so much more advanced that they have become a good alternative for producing wigs. If you have been saving your hair since the last time I talked about hair donation, do send in your donation by the end of this year 🙂

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