Hair Loss Deserves Respect

by Y on February 7, 2024

Growing up you hear, how a “bad hair day” just RUINS the day… a bad hair day? How bout irreversible progressive loss with no end in sight. You hear how a woman is revamped by a new cut and color, brought to life again….. all those things are things, but somehow all this is missed and lost when it comes to understanding the person actually losing a fundamental part of themselves, a body part, their frame, their image.

It’s not just hair, it never was “just hair,” not to me, and not to millions of other women and men experiencing hair loss.

I write to share and spread awareness, look around on tv, movies, “he’s got great hair” “she’s got great hair.” If these weren’t things that mattered why mention them? They matter. I liken my hair to a body part and losing it I lost a body part and a huge part of myself, and I had to learn to rebuild myself up from that, but it is sad how often people minimize this devastating loss.

I’ve heard women tell me their hair loss was worse than cancer, worse than back / spine surgery…worse than XYZ, some really difficult things, and yet hair loss is still looked at as meh, it’s not Meh, it’s a part of who we are and for many contributes to our ability to function in this world and our mental well being.

Read comments shared on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3EwFmhONTf/?igsh=ZDE1MWVjZGVmZQ==

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To my hair loss sisters who woke up today and are struggling in their loss, where it feels the tears just fall with no end in sight, where you wonder if there can be anything else other than this…. Where your heart aches from the loss but it aches from also being misunderstood, and you just wish someone could get it, for 2 seconds.

I want you to know. I get it. Fully. I’m on he 25th year of hair loss and I know how hard this journey as been at many points, but have faith in that things CAN get better, you don’t even need to know the how or when, but you need to believe it can, with the evolution of yourself, your strength, it’s all possible. This I know. This I’ve lived. From my heart to yours, Sending you much love.

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A Life Misunderstood

by Y on January 30, 2024

I think I’ve spent my whole life wanting to be understood, this was before hair loss. But with hair loss that became impossible. Still to this day. 

Everyone’s hair loss situation is different, everyone’s situation is unique, but some people assume they know what someone else is going through, exactly what they are going thorough,as though we all have spent our time from birth walking the same path in all ways, from our childhood environment to how we popped into this world with our own “Ism’s.” To just the random life challenges life tossed to us along the way. 

People forget to see the person, people forget to listen. Hence why I’ve stated I spent most of my earlier years just wanting to be understood, outside hair loss, but in hair loss, universally across the board, every woman just wants to be seen, and respected and have her feeling validated and not dismissed. 

That whole “hurt people hurt people thing,” doesn’t fly, that is not excuse to hurt someone else. It IS a reason for inward reflection and getting help, but not an excuse to hurt someone else. 

To any woman dealing with hair loss today, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. Your hair can be the same amount as my wig, present day, and your feelings are valid, Every. Single one. The quantity of perceived loss from others doesn’t define the right to your feelings. 

There is no road map to “loss of self,” just follow this way…. To find yourself again. That, I’m afraid doesn’t exist, but what hinders so many along the way is that the people around them offline and on, ignore, dismiss, insult… rinse, repeat. Not everyone. But it happens plenty. 

Hair loss has life altering devastating effects to the person dealing with it, be kind. It literally costs you nothing to be kind, you don’t have to fully understand all the ABC’s of hair loss to have empathy for another. Healing often begins when we feel seen, be that person in the life of someone you care about, help them heal.

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How do we get comfortable in a life with hair loss?  How to we accept the unacceptable ? How do we get comfortable with our hair loss with the choices we make to live with hair loss, including treatment and / or wigs.

How do we move forward and let go of what holds us back, which often times is the options of others. 

It has taken me a long time to learn to accept this, accept less, accept change, and learn to accept this was my reality. Fighting it only hurt me, denial stole years of my life, it didn’t help me.

The ability to be okay, exists, it doesn’t happen overnight, but it does involve being honest with ourselves, it does involve US evolving, and learning all we can to make empowered and educated decisions for ourselves. No one can tell you how to live your hair loss life, the right way is the way that works for you. 

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There is a lot of confusion on hair loss treatments, what works, what doesn’t. In this video I discuss the value of legitimate treatments and the importance of a proper diagnosis.

This video also discusses the importance of understanding the risks of ANY hair loss treatment and being careful in what you choose to do. I go over the treatments that have proven to be effective for *some* women (some women don’t respond to anything, and some respond to some things and not others, and for some the limited results don’t warrant continuing the treatment).

-Topical Minoxidil (Rogaine)
-Oral Minoxidil (This one seems to be doing pretty well for both men and women, I have 2 close friends taking it and they are experiencing good results, but had side effects to get through).
-Spirolactone (Aldactone)
-Finasteride (Propecia), Massive warning for women if getting pregnant.
-PRP Therapy (I did this one for 14 years, only stopping Jan 2023 because against this second hair loss it did not work)

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On The Devastation of Hair Loss

by Y on January 21, 2024

Women with hair loss are so often dismissed, they are often told, “At least it’s not cancer,” as though the pain and trauma of losing yourself should be celebrated because you didn’t have something else, worse, something that society understands and universally deems far more traumatic… life threatening. 

The thing is, over the years I have heard from many women who did have cancer, women who experienced hair loss outside of having cancer, that shared the trauma of that in its own right. 

Part of healing involves being seen, it involves having your feelings validated, but women’s hair loss is so misunderstood and so heavily dismissed and invalidated, it creates and even more difficult path to healing. 

This was a DM message I received from KM, in reply to one of my stories, where I shared about the woman who wrote me as a 5x cancer survivor, who later in life got hair loss outside of cancer and said that, that hair loss was worse, than any of the times she had cancer and any of the hair loss associated with it at those times.

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Struggles In Hair Loss

by Y on January 12, 2024

Last year after 24 years of hair loss I had to make the painful and difficult decision to shave my head, after getting a 2nd type of hair loss, after having lived with female pattern baldness since 1999. 

With hair loss you struggle to see yourself again, find yourself in the reflection, but I reached a point I could no longer look at myself. 

While I found freedom in shaving my head, I also found judgment, I had women telling me I have a lot of hair, (based off my shaved head) and that theirs was worse, I had my head shape mocked, I was told it was the shape of a trident, and they put the emoji of a trident ? and I had to image search it to see what it was, and no joke, ever since that day, I do SEE that when I look in the mirror. That was gifted to me, by a comment on YouTube. 

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After 24 years of hair loss I had to shave my head this past May, it was weighing too much on me, and taking too much of a toll on mental health.

Something I did not account for, was that my clothes would look “off” with a shaved head, the balance thrown off. Often left feeling like just a blob, or my head looks too small, or too big depending on what I’m wearing.

In this video I show my purchases I recently made, that I think work both, with a shaved and my wig, and I show how it looks with and without hair. I need to continue to look for items of clothing that will favorably work with my shaved head, so I can have more than a bunch of the same shirt to wear 🙂 It is just something I did not anticipate when shaving my head, that my clothes would look uncomfortably different, than when I even had my short hair loss bio hair cut.

Not that it would have altered my decision to shave my head, I very much needed to do that for my mental health in dealing with hair loss, but I might have been better prepared for that if I knew ahead of time.

I had a couple things that I felt comfortable and confident in, that I felt worked with the shaved head AND my wigs, and so I bought several of the same “type” of things from Rag & Bone, not much variety, my style skills are limited anyways, so I am sticking with what I know. Living with hair loss takes time, and it does require us to evolve as our hair loss evolves, and adapt.

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I hate change, anyone that knows me knows how badly I hate change, much more than the average person. I like consistency, control, I like perfection, to a fault, to the point it actually hurts and drives my body mad, a visceral response. 

Imagine needing everything to be in order, nothing out of place, and I mean with the dumbest stuff you can think of, and then your hair falls out. Hair loss has to be ranking at the top of one of the most disordered afflictions. The only thing sure in this process is that my hair will forever fall out, my hair loss Is progressive. I cannot control this. 
I cannot control my wigs, I cannot make them perfect, because no perfect wig exists. I could never get exactly the same wig as I had the time before when I found one I loved, because each wig was different, even within the same manufacturer, even within the same line. This is not a t shirt, there is human intervention and trust me I see the differences in the same shirt or sweater I purchase from the same place, even those are sometimes never exact. 

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It’s been almost 6 months since I shaved my head due to getting a 2nd hair loss last year, which was in addition to the 24 year old female pattern baldness I have had since I was 21 years old.

I am adjusting and adapting. It still isn’t something I love, but I do love I did the thing I needed to do, to move forward in my hair loss life. In this video I share my thoughts on why I needed to shave my head, and what it has done for me, as well as some thoughts on learning to live with hair loss.

Hair loss is hard, it’s a process to learn to accept and evolve and find our way, but there is a way to live with hair loss, to not have it rule your life. This I know.

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