How I Got My Eyebrows to Grow

Most of us have been there. Teenagers. Tweezers at the ready, plucking away at our eyebrows, until there’s way too little hair left. Years pass and we start to regret plucking them so thin, mourning the brows we once had. Fret not, my dear, it is possible to get those luscious thick brows of yours back! Here’s How I Got my Eyebrows to Grow.

If I could, I’d go back in time and pry the tweezers out of the hands of my teenage self before I could do any more damage to my poor eyebrows. For years, I’ve had what I consider to be pretty badly shaped eyebrows. They’ve been the same on both sides (well, at least that’s something), only a little bit too thin from about the middle of the brow, to the outer corners of my eyes. I don’t know what my teenage self was going for when she plucked them like that but they’ve been like that ever since.

I figured I was just doomed to live with these half-too-thin eyebrows as a punishment for my earlier days of plucking hysteria. I was convinced they’d never grow because once you’ve been plucking them for so long, surely the hair follicles are ruined and won’t allow hair to grow back?

How I Got My Eyebrows to Grow | http://BananaBloom.com — On the left was about a year and a half ago, and on the right was December 2017 after not touching my eyebrows for 4 months.

Then, a couple of months ago, I was given new hope!

I spoke to my boyfriend’s sister who works for a leading eyebrow company (yes, a company that specializes in helping you grow your eyebrows back, and get them looking fabulous again). She told me that so many of their customers think just like me, that it’s impossible to get your eyebrows to grow back after you’ve been plucking them consistently for several years. She asked me if I pluck a hair away as soon as a rogue one grows in, and I conceded that this is what I do.

That’s apparently often the case, we pluck here and there, one little hair at a time as it appears. The hairs grow back splotchy, and we’re so quick to pluck as soon as a straggler appears. Not wanting to look unkempt. But, the good news is, eyebrows can grow back, and they do! You just have to have patience, and be willing to be a little bit uncomfortable with the unkempt look of your eyebrows for a while.

With new determination, I stopped plucking my eyebrows cold turkey in September 2017. As an initial little boost for my brows I got an eyebrow serum, however I can’t really say if that made much of a difference in my brow growth. Still, I continued to leave my brows alone and slowly but surely more and more hairs started growing back. For several months I had to put up with the bushy, wild, uneven mess my brows were forming. I’ve been filling in my eyebrows with Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade so doing that helped cover up the worst of the mess while my brows were growing out.

In early December 2017, my eyebrows had grown enough that I felt like it was finally time to go and have them threaded. I made sure to tell the artist that I was growing my eyebrows out and only wanted her to shape them a bit and even them out, not take too much off. Since I hadn’t touched my eyebrows for several months, it was shockingly painful to have my eyebrows threaded. My skin had become so sensitive!

My brows still have a ways to go so I’m continuing to leave them alone. I’ve stopped plucking them completely.

Here are my top tips for growing your eyebrows

Stop plucking, threading or waxing immediately.
Try an eyebrow serum as a little boost, if you’d like (you can also use home remedies like coconut oil or castor oil).
If you’re uncomfortable with the splotchy way the hairs are growing back, fill your brows in with an eyebrow pencil or pomade.
Have patience and willpower. It takes months for the hairs to grow back. I expect my eyebrows to take several more months, perhaps a year in total, to get back to the shape I want.
Once you’ve allowed your brows to grow enough (at least 4-5 months), have them professionally shaped at a salon to avoid ending up with too thin brows again and having to start the whole process all over again.