Ciao from Italy!

[CatsAndCoffee]

Hi!

I'm not super great at intros, so I'll just jump into it! I'm Claire, I live in Italy with my husband and our cats. I love to read, travel (mostly because of the food!), crochet, bake and cook. I also love to doodle, but I'm not much of an artist. I'm still very much a novice, but I've started running and hope to do my first 5k soon.

My hair type is 1b/f/m/ii. About 3 years ago I cut it into a very short pixie. After roughly a year of keeping in short, I got my last pixie (a longer shaggier one than the original, Google Whippycake's hair for a general idea) in late April 2013. I started growing it from there. By December 2014, it was BSL and so healthy it shined in dim lighting. I decided in February 2015 to get highlights, as I was tired of having a colour much darker than my natural 7.5A hair. My intention was to just brighten around the face, and then maybe gradually lighten more over time, if I wanted. Unfortunately, what I got was a head full of brassy, burnt hay and runny mascara. After about a month of living with it, I went to another stylist, who was very kind and supportive as he took me to a dark brown, and hacked off about 5 inches on hair. He was amazing, giving me a pretty (albeit darker than I wanted) colour, and working in a lot of the horrid breakage as "layers".

Now, about 3-ish months later, my hair is kind of awkwardly hanging just below my shoulders (sort of not a bob, not long). I still have dry ends, some breakage, and a little tangling, but I cant bring myself to do another chop. It's kind of crazy sometimes, but I grew very attached to my hair after having it BSL (longest it had been in my entire life).

So there's my sob-story ... Onto my goals! I am currently about 3" away from BSL, so I guess that's goal number one. My eventual goal is waist length hair, but I would be fine with maintaining BSL to get some of the damage gone. I joined the forum to help get tips on caring for it, ideas for styling without killing it, and support for the days I want to take the "easy" way and just hack it off.

[Aderyn]

Welcome to the forums!

When thinking about chopping off a decent amount of hair, it's always a good idea to invoke the 2 week rule. That is, to wait for two weeks to see how you feel about it then. Good luck with getting healthy hair.

Spend too much time here and that goal of waist length might grow to hip or tailbone or classic - it's a documented condition that happens often here.

[Arctic]

Welcome! Sounds like you have started on the right foot! And good luck with both your hair, and running goals!