I think it was about November, 2006. For some reason my stylist, Roseanne's, words stuck with me..."You have a LOT of hair!!" and her other memorable quote "It's JUST hair!!!". I decided to work toward donating my hair to women who have experienced hair loss due to cancer and other disease. I began checking out donation sites, and found that the most common hair donations are to Locks of Love - making wigs for children who are fighting cancer.Locks of Love has some pretty stringent guidelines, and I'd heard reports that hair that didn't meet those guidelines was thrown out. I certainly didn't want my (mumble mumble)-year old hair being thrown out, so I did more research.
I was happy to find that Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program accepts hair that has some grey (yeah, okay, so I have "natural" highlights...) and a little shorter (8") pony tail. So I kept growing my hair out. It grows fast (about 1" a month) but with trims to keep it healthy, it was still going to take a while!!!
About 3 weeks ago, I thought to myself that this long hair wasn't so bad...it looked good, and wasn't all that much work. I was growing attached to it, and maybe I wanted to just keep it.
But there was a greater force working. A few days later, I was ready to take a chain saw to it myself. I was walking through the bank and ZING! there went my hair clip. My hair was just "too big" to stay in a clip. Pony tail holders were not even keeping the mop in place. Something was working at me to say CUT IT and let someone else enjoy it.
On Tuesday, April 9, I went to my new stylist, Tammy (Roseanne, my old stylist had retired). We measured the length, and there was enough to donate. As she cut off the first chunk (so much darn hair that she had to do two sections!!!), I felt a pang of grief. Looking at the tails of hair on her table, I almost felt like I'd had a limb amputated.BUT. I love my new style. I went out Tuesday night with girlfriends and was told that I tossed my hair all night (I didn't realize I did it LOL!). I went to work the next day and felt more professional, and (true story!) I got a promotion.
Long story short (hahahaha), I don't consider myself to be an altruistic person. I had a commodity that I could take care of for a while, and I wanted to let someone else maybe feel pretty while they were going through one of the most horrific and courageous fights I can imagine. I sincerely hope that by donating my hair, I'm giving someone else a gift that helps them get through the day...to be able to go to the grocery store, day care, or work and appear "normal".
So that's me this week. Yes, I'm working on some jewelry projects (and will share them with you in a bit ;-) ), but this just seemed a little more important at this point. :-)
Labels: charity, donations, haircut, not jewelry, pantene
