Women's Hair Loss Project

My whole life, I’ve been told to “smile.” Smile more. You’ll be prettier if you smile. It always made me feel bad, because this was my face naturally, how it wanted to be, how it rested. But it felt not enough.  like how I look when I’m not smiling. Pensive. I am a pensive person, that’s much different than sad. 

People assume all sorts of things in life, they assume if you aren’t grinning from ear to ear, or you face isn’t naturally resting in a smile, that something is wrong. 

They assume if you are grinning ear to ear, your life is grand. Neither is necessarily true, or both are true. 

Assumptions in hair loss. You have a wig, well you should be fine, what are you upset about? Other than the loss of our actual hair you mean? Throwing on a wig was life changing, it didn’t solve having to work to accept my evolving look as my hair thinned over the years, the knowing it was final. 

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It’s not been a good day, I managed to type just that before I start crying. From that I want people to understand how painful hair loss can be, I only wrote “It’s not been a good day,” and the tears poured out of my face, and all at once I’m flooded with emotion.

It’s been so long so long, well before 2022, that I had these feelings to contend with… like this. After I started wearing wigs in 2012, I cut my hair short to an edgy cut that looked like a choice, though it was for functional purposes to look fuller, hide the thinness, see less of the fall and it made wig wearing easier. I adapted. Fully adapted and I lived my life mostly free of hair loss for over a decade.

Getting a second hair loss last year has truly devastated me in what words probably never ever fully capture. It’s disbelief, of how lightening can strike twice, how I could have had to struggle so much in my life with this, then find my way, and then been thrown this, another type of hair loss, one that changes everything I did from the wigs that I wore, to no longer being able to have that short hair cut that I accepted and felt okay in.

Many people don’t understand I lost the frame of my face, the way my hair line used to be, the one thing female pattern baldness never took was these little baby hairs on my forehead, they didn’t help much of anything other than being my trademark thing I saw, since birth, and what felt like me.

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Healing. Allow yourself time, in all this to cry, to be upset, to accept the unexplained emotions of chaos at times, to scream, to meltdown. Allow yourself the ability to grieve. Within that have hope that this moment can pass from beyond the pain of which you are in.

It can.

Don’t allow others to rob you of your feelings, to make you feel less than or vain, or stupid for feeling downright devastated by the loss, a loss that I don’t think anyone can comprehend unless it’s happened to them.

I took this picture and I see my age – Drier skin, wrinkles, the dark circles I always had since I was born, raccoon eyes. The signs of aging doesn’t bother me, I’m 45. What bothers me is that I lost so much of life to hair loss, 13 years really spent in a deep struggle before I started wearing wigs at 34. I will never get back that time, and I wish I could get a do over, with the mindset of NOW. My life would look very different, hair loss and all.

Hair loss is awful, I’ll never state otherwise, but it wasn’t worth losing years of my life over. At the age of 21 I didn’t know how to cope, at all, with any of this. I couldn’t process a future. What I didn’t know then, that I wish I did, was that I could make it work in a non perfect way, but still in a way that I would allow me to feel good and live my life. I wish I would have accepted sooner. The denial kept me struggling, the denial kept me in pain.

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If someone has taken the time to share about their hair loss, or post about it online, please don’t dismiss what they are going through. 

Comments such has:

“Your Hair Loss Isn’t That Bad,” or

“I’ve Seen Worse,” or

“Mine is Worse”

Are dismissive and hurtful, to the majority of people on the receiving end. I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule, but to myself and MANY other women comments like these are dismissive and diminish our own suffering we have had to contend with, with our hair loss.  To those that have moved on to another acceptance point in their journey, it can also be potentially quite triggering to a regressive state of a time when they experienced more pain in dealing with their hair loss. 

The struggle is already real for many women with hair loss, no need to add to it. 

Time and time again, I see women feel like they have to PROVE their hair loss. No one is claiming hair loss for the fun of it, no proof is required. 

You do not need to prove your hair loss to anyone, however much you may feel you need to, for that understanding and validation – this is true for friends, family, and online.

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It is OK to feel this way about your hair loss, it is.. but then we also have to process and move forward. 

Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m losing my hair and this is f’ing Bullsh*t.   I was going for more of a Haiku poem thing ? Watcha think ?

When I say I understand, I really do, and in so many ways.  I mean here I am on the 24th year of dealing with female pattern baldness, and now dealing with a second hair loss I got last year (diffuse alopecia areata) completely carving out my temples and hairline, and I think this is some bullsh*t. 

I accepted my female pattern baldness, I accepted wearing wigs, I accepted cutting my hair off (in 2013) one year after starting to wear wigs so that I could deal with my hair loss better, and by doing that accepted never being able to wear my bio hair in a pony ever again… I accepted the progressive thinning of my hair, I accepted it was never going to come back. 

I accepted, I accepted, I accepted.  

I made it all work and then life is like, wait up, one more. Here is alopecia areata for you, just to keep things interesting.

That’s life, unfortunately, and I have grappled with the understanding of how this can be… now, after all I had already been through, and accepted, but I also know there is no logic, rhyme or reason, nothing that will truly bring comfort. It just is, also the process of mind tormenting oneself with thoughts, of “why” doesn’t really help at all, least not me. 

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