Carla-Marie Norton’s slick ponytail kept her naturally afro-textured hair out of her face a little too well.

The ‘do gave the British mother of two a condition called traction alopecia, straining her hair follicles and causing hairline recession. As a result, she says she faced years of insecurity caused by brutal childhood bullying over the size of her forehead.

“I got called ‘slaphead’ and ‘fivehead,'” by classmates, the 37-year-old recalls to The Mirror. “By the time I was 15 or 16, I began to feel really self-conscious.”

The Andover, England, native was particularly traumatized by a photo of her in the school swimming pool where “the sun was literally reflecting off my forehead to the point that it looked like a solar panel.”

After that, she became afraid of swimming, having her photo taken and even the wind — because she was scared it would further expose her forehead.

Now those fears are a thing of the past for Norton, who recently had her hairline surgically “lowered” by roughly an inch at UK clinic London Bridge Plastic Surgery.

“It’s made such a huge difference to my life,” says Norton, who works in human resources at makeup company Huda Beauty. Her employer wrote a blog post about Norton’s experience, noting that the surgery costs roughly $8,000 and required Norton to have a drain in her head post-op.

Although Norton reports no repercussions, possible complications for the procedure include infection, skin necrosis and facial-muscle weakness.

Post-surgery, she finally felt confident enough to go on a roller coaster with her 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. “That’s something I would never have done before the operation, because it would have risked exposing my forehead,” she says. “The ride was going fast, the wind was blowing my hair back, and I literally did not have a care in the world.”