Most of us are taught that long hair is beautiful, men prefer women with long hair, and you have to have a certain head shape to rock a short look. Many strive to meet a certain length when we began our natural hair journey. We can’t wait to reach that length. We even do length checks each month to see how far we have come. Don’t get me wrong, long hair is gorgeous, but length is not everything. Simply having long hair means absolutely nothing if it’s not healthy.
Simply having long hair means absolutely nothing if it’s not healthy.
I can definitely relate to this, because I’ve had long hair my whole life. When I had a relaxer, my hair was on the longer side, even though it was very unhealthy with a relaxer. I decided to long term transition to natural in 2009. I transitioned for two years, because I didn’t want to do the big chop; I just wasn’t ready for a short cut at that time in my life. I cut small portions of my relaxer out each time I visited my stylist, until I was fully natural two years later. It was a long process, but it was the best fit for my situation at the time. I loved my long hair and wanted to achieve the goal of waist length hair.
My big chop
Sometimes life changes and you look at things differently. This month I recently did the big chop and I am not looking back. I absolutely love my new cut that is much shorter than my hair has ever been. This time around I had to cut my hair, because it was severely damaged. I had to let that damaged length go. It wasn’t flourishing because of several reasons. I was simply holding on to my damaged hair in hopes that I could somehow repair it. Truth is I couldn’t repair it, as my ends were thinning due to stress and post-partum changes. Today, I am very much ok with the fact that my hair is no longer near waist length. People were shocked and nearly in tears that I cut my hair, but length isn’t everything. If you have long hair that is damaged and you are not taking care of it properly, there is no point in holding on to that length.
Many times we find ourselves holding on to length, because we have it embedded into our brains that length, any length, is beautiful, but it’s perfectly ok to cut your hair. You don’t need the approval of anyone. I will take healthy hair over length any day. This new journey has taught me to focus on the healthy of my hair over length.
Truth is, short hair is just as beautiful as long hair.
Truth is, short hair is just as beautiful as long hair. I see so many women with super cute short haircuts and it’s amazing! Length truly isn’t everything and you are still beautiful no matter what the length of your hair is.
How do you feel about length? How do you define beautiful hair? What’s keeping you back from letting go of damaged hair?
What’s next?
Read why @rockyorizos declared 2016 the year of letting go.
Let it go, let it go: Your heat damaged hair.
Here are 5 fixes for when your hair won’t let you be great (hint, one of them is letting go”>.
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