We Donated Our Hair to Charity!

Over the weekend kiddo and I donated our ponytails to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program which gives our ponies to the American Cancer Society for wigs.

In January 2006 I lost my grandfather to cancer. A year later, in 2007, I lost my grandmother. In 2008 I lost my best friend and my cousins 4 year-old daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer. This is a battle that she is still fighting (she has to be tumor free for one more year before they declare her ‘remission’ and at that point she’ll only have to have an MRI every few years instead of every  6 months.) She is the reason I did my first donation in April 2008. In 2012 I lost my beloved boxer, Cain to brain cancer which had spread through his body. I know what some of you are thinking, but he was my baby, not just a pet. Now, my husband’s aunt is battling cancer and going through chemo as I sit to write this. This year we did it in her honor.

I was able to donate  in October 2009, this time I did it in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month and all of those in my life who have battled any sort of cancer.

Summer of 2010 saw my next donation, which would be my last for a while. In 2011 I had decided to bleach and color my hair – fuchsia. While the wild color is not a problem for the program, the fact that I double bleached my hair due to my own stupidity, my hair had to be chopped. Once 2012 rolled around and it had grown out some, I had to keep trimming off the garbage.

Once my hair gets to the middle of my back, this wavy mess has a mind of its own and I know its time to cut it. I had planned on waiting until summer so that kiddo would be ready to shed her own heavy hair during the hotter months.

Well, over the weekend we had a meltdown of epic proportions when her hair was so matted it took me 45 minutes to comb it out. This has always been a problem and she has a hard time brushing her own hair. So, she all for going at getting it cut when I joked about having to chop my way through the knots. Poor girl, it breaks my heart to see her cry, especially when I comb it. Having curly hair myself it seems like I am the only one who uses care when brushing it because I know how it feels.

Our hair is gone. She could not be happier and I for one thinks she’s super cute with her hair shorter. With the curls and the thickness it stacks so nicely. She just kept running her fingers and brushes through it running around the house ‘tangle free’ and showing us how she was so happy to brush her hair without any tangles after she woke up from sleeping.

Makes me happy.

While I am not a big fan of having my hair short when my face is fuller due to the weight, I know that my hair is going to a good cause.

I get asked a lot why I donate to Pantene and not Locks of Love and I have a very simple answer for that. Locks of Love is sliding-scale. That means they will charge for a wig if a child doesn’t meet their freebie requirements. At Pantene they work directly with the American Cancer Society to create free wigs for women. LoL requires 10 inches whereas Pantene only requires 8. Whichever you choose, you can be sure you are going to help someone out in need.