The Little Princess Trust!

I mentioned in this post last week that I've been trying my best to keep my hair in good condition whilst it grows out again, and I thought now might be a good time to do a post explaining why I decided to cut my hair off in the first place!

When I was about 13 years old, I discovered a charity - and I can't remember what it was called - that accepted donations of hair to be turned into wigs for people who had lost their hair due to illnesses such as cancer, but the one flaw was that they were insistent that the hair had to be free of any chemicals like hair dye or perms etc. At the time, I had highlighted hair and I was gutted that I couldn't donate it, as it was something that really interested me! 

It always stuck in the back of my mind as something that I wanted to do but at the end of the day, I didn't have the patience to wait for my hair to grow out long enough to be able to cut it off without dying it, as I was determined to be a blonde for a very long time.

Earlier last summer, I was reading an article online about a young girl who had decided to cut off her hair for charity and after being so inspired by it, I couldn't help but go out and hunt down a charity that would accept my hair - no matter what the colour!

In the end, I found The Little Princess Trust and decided that I would give myself a week to raise as much money as I could before cutting my hair off - but I didn't want to wait too long and chicken out!

In order to be eligible to donate your hair, it must fall within these guidelines:

- Clean, dry hair in good condition from males and females, and of any natural colour

- Straight, wavy, curly, permed or chemically straightened (in good condition)

- Containing the odd grey (less than 10%)

- Dyed, bleached/highlighted (any dyes must be of a natural colour)

- Layered (shortest layer must be at least 7”/17cm)

- Plaits/ponytails, cut a long time ago, preserved in good condition

After my hair was cut, we measured the lengths of the plaits that were cut off (there's actually a 2 minute long video of the actual cutting ceremony on my mum's Facebook, but I can't figure out a way to get that embedded on here!) to be roughly 11", which means the actual hair must've been longer as hair seems shorter when it's braided. My hair is so thick that we were able to cut off two plaits that were about normal thickness of a whole head of hair - hopefully to be made into two wigs! (That's a picture of me and the lovely lady who cut off my hair, before she'd shaped it etc!)

I was fortunate enough to have an amazing group of friends and family who wanted to support me with my decision to cut off my hair, and also with helping out such a brilliant charity, so in the end I managed to raise £500 directly for The Little Princess Trust through my justgiving page! 

According to their website, The Little Princess Trust have an agreement with their manufacturers that any wigs made from hair that is donated will be made free of charge, but they still need to buy more to keep up with demand, which usually costs around £300 each. This means that not only did I manage to donate 2 wigs from my own hair, but I allowed them to buy another as well!

I learnt so much about myself by deciding to do this, as it shows that I have spent far too much of my life hiding behind my long hair as a security blanket, and that hair is certainly not the most important thing in life! However, I know that it took me 17 years to come to this conclusion, and that the little boys and girls who will receive these wigs should not have to be making realisations like this until they are much older - especially if they are ill. To think that providing someone with hair may have brought upon them a little bit of confidence, a smile or even a bit of strength that someone out there is thinking about them really warms my heart and makes me so, so glad that I decided to do it.