My mother-in-law CUT OFF my daughter’s CURLY HAIR to make her “MATCH BETTER”

Ruth is at least acknowledging the differential treatment and admitting to prejudice, which is more than many grandparents in similar situations ever manage. But the therapist recommends waiting to see if Ruth’s behavior changes before allowing any contact.

She warns us that many people can write good apologies but struggle to actually modify their behavior long-term. The real test will be whether Ruth can sustain this awareness and translate it into different actions, not just words on paper.

The therapist suggests we maintain the current boundaries for now and see if Ruth continues working on herself or if this letter was just an attempt to regain access to the family. Tom and I agree to keep waiting.

I’m not ready to expose Zoe to Ruth again based on one better letter. I post a general update on the Grandmas Who Play Favorites account, explaining that we’re maintaining boundaries while the person involved does work to address their favoritism.

I don’t share specific details about Ruth’s letter, but I talk about the importance of watching for changed behavior rather than just accepting apologies. The post gets hundreds of comments within hours.

People share their own experiences with family members who apologized beautifully but then went right back to the same harmful patterns. Others talk about the pressure they faced to forgive and reconnect before the person had actually changed.

Several commenters thank me for prioritizing my daughter’s well-being over family pressure to keep the peace. One woman writes “that she wishes her parents had protected her this way instead of forcing her to keep seeing a grandmother who favored her brother.”

Reading these comments reminds me why I started the account in the first place. Four months after the hair cutting, Tom gets a call from his aunt saying the family held a meeting without us present.

She tells Tom they confronted Ruth about her pattern of favoritism and the damage it caused to all three granddaughters. According to his aunt, Ruth finally broke down and admitted she was wrong.

She cried and said she never meant to hurt anyone, but she realizes now that her actions did cause harm. Tom’s aunt sounds hopeful on the phone, like this breakthrough means everything can go back to normal soon.

But then she mentions that Ruth is struggling to understand why her preference for blonde hair became such a problem. She apparently kept asking “why it mattered that she connected more easily with Olivia and Chloe” and “why she couldn’t just be closer to some grandchildren than others.”

Tom’s aunt tried to explain, but Ruth didn’t seem to fully grasp it. Tom thanks his aunt for the update but tells her we’re not ready to reconnect yet.

The fact that Ruth still doesn’t fully grasp why favoring children based on appearance is harmful tells me she has a long way to go. Tom agrees when we talk about it that night.

He says his mother might never completely understand because she’d have to confront some ugly truths about herself and her values. We decide to maintain the no contact boundary for now while Ruth works with her own therapist.

Tom says his aunt mentioned that the family is insisting Ruth get professional help, which is more than I expected from them. At least they’re not just sweeping this under the rug anymore.

Two weeks later Camila calls with more news. She tells me Ruth has started therapy at the family’s insistence.

Her therapist is apparently working with her on understanding implicit bias and how her preferences hurt Zoe. Camila says Ruth has been going twice a week and actually doing the homework her therapist assigns.

She’s been journaling about her feelings and reactions to the different granddaughters and trying to identify where her prejudices came from. This is more progress than I expected, but I remain cautious about whether Ruth can truly change.

Camila admits she’s skeptical too but says it’s at least something. I tell Camila “I appreciate her keeping us updated and that we’ll consider contact again if Ruth shows sustained change over several more months.”

For now, protecting Zoe has to come first. Five months after the haircut, I held Zoe in front of the bathroom mirror while she touched the little spiral curls growing back around her ears.

She kept giggling and pulling them straight to watch them bounce back into shape. The pixie cut had finally grown out enough that her natural texture was returning, thick and beautiful, just like before Ruth destroyed it.

Zoe pointed at her reflection. She said “her hair was getting pretty again” and I had to blink back tears because for months she’d been saying her hair was ugly.

The therapist called this progress during our next session. She explained “that Zoe was starting to reclaim her self-image after Ruth’s attack.”

She said children Zoe’s age formed their sense of beauty from how adults treat them. She said the fact that Zoe could feel excited about her curls again meant she was healing from the message that her natural hair made her less worthy.

I took a photo of Zoe’s growing curls that afternoon, carefully angling it so her face stayed hidden but the beautiful spirals showed clearly against my hand. I posted it to the Grandmas Who Play Favorites account with a caption about small victories and reclaiming what was almost destroyed.

Within an hour the post had 2,000 likes and hundreds of comments celebrating Zoe’s hair coming back. People wrote “that they hoped Ruth saw the post and understood what she’d tried to take away.”

Someone commented that Zoe’s curls looked like they were growing back even more beautiful than before, like her hair was making a statement. Others shared their own photos of children’s hair growing back after similar incidents, creating this whole thread of recovery and resilience.

The support felt overwhelming in the best way. All these strangers genuinely caring about my daughter’s healing.

Tom got a call from Camila three days later while we were eating dinner. He stepped into the other room to talk, but I could hear his surprised tone through the wall.

When he came back, he sat down slowly and told me Ruth had apparently been doing her therapy homework consistently for weeks now. Camila said Ruth’s therapist had her journaling about each granddaughter and identifying where her different feelings came from.

Ruth was starting to understand that her favoritism wasn’t just preference but actual emotional abuse towards Zoe. Tom looked skeptical. He said “he wanted to believe his mother could change but didn’t trust it yet.”

Camila had also mentioned that Ruth asked if she could write another letter taking full responsibility this time. She wanted to acknowledge the entire pattern of favoritism, not just apologize for the haircut.

Tom and I looked at each other across the dinner table. Both of us were weighing whether we were ready to read another letter after the previous ones had been so centered on Ruth’s feelings.

I finally said “we’d read it but weren’t making any promises about what would happen after.”

The letter arrived four days later in a plain envelope with Ruth’s handwriting that looked less steady than usual, like she’d been nervous writing it. I made Tom read it first while I finished putting Zoe to bed, needing him to tell me if it was worth my time or just more excuses.

He came into Zoe’s room twenty minutes later with the letter in his hand. He said “I should read it that it was different from the others.”

I sat on the couch and opened the two pages of Ruth’s handwriting. I immediately noticed that she’d crossed out and rewritten several sentences like she’d struggled with getting the words right.

The letter started by naming what she’d done as wrong without any qualifications or excuses. Ruth wrote that she had treated Zoe as less important than her other granddaughters because of Zoe’s appearance and that this was racism and favoritism and emotional abuse.

She didn’t say she hadn’t meant to hurt anyone or that her intentions were good. She just said she was wrong and that she’d damaged her relationship with her granddaughter in ways that might never fully heal.

The second page outlined specific changes Ruth said she was committed to making, like examining her reactions to the girls before speaking and catching herself when she started to compare them. She wrote that she understood we had no reason to trust her and that she needed to earn back trust through consistent, changed behavior over a long period of time.

The letter ended without asking for forgiveness or requesting contact. She just said she understood she’d broken something that might not be fixable and that she accepted responsibility for that.

I read it twice, looking for the usual self-centered language or victim mentality, but couldn’t find it. Tom sat next to me and asked what I thought. I said “it was better but that words on paper didn’t mean Ruth had actually changed how she felt about Zoe.”

We decided to show the letter to Zoe’s therapist at our next appointment to get her professional opinion on whether it showed real progress or just better apologizing skills. The therapist read Ruth’s letter carefully during our session while Zoe played with toys in the corner.

She looked up and said “it showed genuine progress in Ruth’s understanding of her behavior.”