Blonde

Lately, I’ve been all about challenging myself, taking risks, and seeing myself succeed. I want to stop burrowing in my shell when opportunities for growth arise. I’m still very far away from the girl I want to be. I don’t seek out opportunities and more often than not, I turn down exciting adventures that will help me grow as a person.

But then sometimes, I put my mind to something and I achieve it. Sure, maybe to you a hair cut and color job isn’t a big deal. Maybe it’s something you think is a little cheesy and self-promoting. But to me, this signifies something big. I didn’t have a lot of people supporting this decision and it was really something that I had to do for me. To show myself that I can take a risk and it can pay off. Or maybe it can’t, but at least I took the risk.

Locks of Love is a charity that I fully support and feel a passion for. With this charity, people donate their hair which will then be made into wigs for kids with cancer or other diseases that cause hair loss. The main criteria is that it’s unbleached and at least 10 inches long. Ever since I was little, I’ve wanted to donate my hair to this charity. But my hair doesn’t grow very fast and I would always get annoyed with my hair length and cut it off before I could grow it out to be long enough.

But I made a decision to cut my hair off. Donate it to Locks of Love. And do something good for a change.

And let me tell you, it was not easy to keep growing it out, especially as it got hotter and hotter outside. Long hair is not conducive to Florida summers. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail more than ever in these past few weeks. But I did it.

And then I decided to do something absolutely crazy with my hair. I was going to dye it blonde. While I had been blonde as a child, it slowly grew darker and darker in middle and high school, until it was this weird blondish-brownish color. The first time I colored my hair was when I was 19 years old. My mom didn’t want me coloring my hair until I was at least 16 and by then, I was at this weird stage of Wanting To Be Different. So while all the girls around me were dying their hair and doing kooky things to it, I kept it long and my natural hair color.

I’ve been coloring my hair the same color for the past 3 years. I felt like it was time for a change. Something drastic. Something I would either hate or love. And I decided to go blonde. Even if I hated it, I wanted to try out being a blonde for a season. (And much love to Mandy for telling me “It’s just hair!” whenever I expressed doubts.)

Today, I did it. I chopped off close to 13 inches of hair in total (11 of it going to LoL). And I can now be classified as a blonde.

Some before pictures:

And now…the new Stephany