July 2013

How $35 Saved My Self-Confidence – The Magic of Using Hair Concealers

by Lauren on July 29, 2013

Guest Blog By: Lauren

Bumble and Bumble Hair PowderIt took me a long time to realize that my hair wasn’t just thin, but it was thinning–almost six years until I made the connection. Unlike many women with hair loss, I don’t shed; my hair just becomes so miniaturized that it eventually doesn’t return. It’s been a slow and agonizing journey, but it’s allowed me to try out a bunch of different hair products in an attempt to disguise my loss. I’ve posted about my current obsession, Bumble & Bumble Hair Powder, on my hair loss blog, and several women have wondered exactly what my method is with this product to get that great “after” shot (since my “before” shot is, well, not-so-wonderful). So, here’s my method. Maybe it will work for you, too. Here’s me, prior to application.

Before Application

This product is basically hair spray paint–it certainly doesn’t sound glamorous, but it works. What the Hair Powder does is conceal any area on your scalp that’s sparse, as well as coat your hair near the roots so that it looks thicker. It can be tricky to figure out how much to spray the first few times, because you basically need to master a “half-spritz” so you don’t wind up with product overload. Most sins can be forgiven if you do what I do and take a small bit of hair right up against your part line and basically make a new part with it. This hair will shield your actual part from the product and lay OVER your final result so that it looks natural.

Spray the Bumble and Bumble Hair Powder in short spritzes down your “new” part line (or wherever you want to cover); I usually hold it about six inches away from where I am spraying. It’s kind of hard to tell in this pic since the product sprays diffusely and my hair loss is obviously just as diffuse. It might look a little scary and obvious, but that’s what the hair you’ve saved to use as a cover is for. I’ve sprayed right over my part and onto both that little section of hair that I’ve saved (which is shielding my actual part), and the hair right on the other side of the part. I do use my other hand to block my forehead, but I rarely get any of the product there. [click to continue…]

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Getting Off The Birth Control Pill After 13 Years – My Biggest and Hardest Hair Loss Decision

by Y on July 24, 2013

Getting Off The Birth Control Pill After 13 Years - My Biggest and Hardest Hair Loss DecisionI’m sitting awake in my hotel room in Florida. My mind flooded with thoughts and my fiancé snoring soundly beside me. I had no chance of sleep I tell ya… no chance.

As usual, Florida time means PRP time. I did have my 8th PRP therapy treatment with Dr. Joseph Greco yesterday afternoon. At first glance all seems the same, snoring fiancé, PRP, Florida, hangover…. but it’s not. About a month or so ago I made a very hard personal decision for myself, and  just to bring you up to emotional speed on this one, just starting to type the word “decision” started the tears rolling down face, because it’s a decision wrought with so many emotions and so much pain.

My hair loss started in 1999 (I was 21 years old) after the cessation of the pill Loestrin FE, dumb luck struck and that one act caused the following years of misery, sadness and self loathing as I tried to cope with losing my hair. I was so incredibly alone when this happened, I was desperate, beyond desperate and I was willing to try and do anything I could to just get the shedding to stop and hopefully get my hair to grow back, so I made a choice I have regretted ever since. At the suggestion of a physician I got back on the birth control pill. While the pill can be the cause of hair loss, doctors also use it to try and stabilize the hormones to treat it. I didn’t want to, I was so scared, but I did. Many times I’ve wished I was stronger and just said no. No to the doctor and no to myself. I knew what the pill did to me the first time, why get back on something I would forever be a slave to? Good question. Answer: Desperation and lack of foresight.

Getting back on the pill essentially meant never being able to get off it. The amount of shedding that occurred when I got off the pill the first time was INSANE, I’m talking about waking up to fist fulls of hair on my pillow. I had a ton of hair back then and while no one wants to loose their hair, looking back I had hair to spare. I have none to spare today I can assure you. Knowing this, I started to feel very trapped on the pill, how could I ever get off again? I was stuck on a medication I had so much animosity towards and worse my hair continued to decline so I had no way of knowing if it ever helped in the first place, and since we all know we just love to poke ourselves in the eye with our torture sticks, I’d constantly remind myself that I never really allowed my body the chance to heal on its own, to stabilize it’s own hormones without the use of any medication. Maybe in a few years time all would have resumed to normal, or maybe not, but I’ll never know. [click to continue…]

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Finding Hope, Finding Hair and Moving Forward – A’s Story

by Y on July 20, 2013

I received this email, and requested permission to share it here, with all of you. Much thanks to “A” for writing me this incredibly amazing email and allowing me to share her story. I had gotten home one night and made a quick check of my email and saw this in my box, I felt moved, excited, touched and inspired all over again. Thank you! 

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I want to thank you for your wonderfully honest, heartfelt, and supportive web site. I found the womenshairlossproject site one day on the internet and my life hasn’t been the same since. I have been struggling since my late 20s with thinning hair due to androgenic alopecia and I am 49 now. I so wanted it to be a medical issue that I could then take a pill and be cured but that was not to be. I took aldactone for a while and it stopped the shedding but I hated taking pills so I went off those after a year. I found a shampoo for thinning hair that controls the shedding for me and I have used it for several years (Nisim is the brand). However, the diffuse thinning continues and it’s worse on the top of my head. I have been wearing baseball caps everywhere for over 15 years now, even at work, it’s my signature look.

I have been living (and I use the term living loosely) a subdued life, shunning social activities and just not being able to enjoy the outdoors. Being naturally shy anyway, my hair condition has made me hyper sensitive and even more uncomfortable being with other people for fear of being found out, stared at, or laughed at. You don’t realize how insidious the negative inner dialog becomes until you see yourself 20 years along in your hair loss and how much you’ve retreated from life. You also can’t help becoming more cynical of people thinking they have nothing better to do than find weaknesses in you to possibly exploit.

I have grown especially weary over the last year of wearing hats, of spending an hour fixing my hair moving one hair this way and another that way hoping for a better outcome, of feeling less worthy and less than in everything. I traversed the web to find solutions and support and I found it with you and your web site. I found hope and realized I wasn’t as alone as I felt. I began to believe that my life could be different. I began to believe that I didn’t have to hide anymore and that there are solutions. It took many months for me to finally decide to DO something. I originally shied away from wigs because I believed it’s harder to hide wearing a blonde wig and I didn’t want anyone to know I was wearing a wig. [click to continue…]

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Living For Today

by Y on July 12, 2013

I sat down tonight, poured myself a glass of wine and remembered all the Friday nights (and Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights as well) I spent suffering in loneliness, fear, despair and bottomless depression. Whenever I could avoid the world I would, I made excuses for not making it to various functions and sought refuge on my couch, often times eating and drinking myself in a puffy sobbing, bloated mess. I felt sorry for myself ALL the time, and I simply could not process the future. What future? My hair was leaving at seemingly warp speed at times, and how could I ever live being a balding girl. How? My heart would sink at the mere mention of my fiancé talking about being able to wear a “hair addition.” What? That’s fake, that’s not real, that’s not me, never never never, not in a million years I would profess to him and then I’d leave the room (or cry) in frustration that he couldn’t really understand what I was going through. Not really anyways. I couldn’t compute and process any of this, so I sat paralyzed and living in a self imposed prison, bound by the shackles of hair loss.

I look back upon this, and I am quite saddened that I let my ENTIRE 20’s, and some of my 30’s pass by, as I sat still in the paralyzed fear of sadness, uncertainty and self loathing. This is time I will never get back. It was for all intents and purposes, very much like a prison sentence. Mind you, much of this time  I still had plenty of hair whilst it was falling out,  I still had hair that I could go out in and no one really would be clued into my hair loss issues, but that was of very small comfort. I hated myself for causing my hair loss. Yes I believed I did it to myself, after all I was the one that took the pill (Loestrin FE), that was my choice, had I not taken it in the first place all of this suffering may never have happened, so on top of everything else I had to deal with emotionally, I added blame to the mix — you know, just to spice things up in the self torture arena. [click to continue…]

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Working Out In My Wig At The Gym, Making Mila (Follea Aero-2) Sweat

by Y on July 10, 2013

Took Mila (my Follea Aero-2 Wig) to my circuit training class for the second time. We both survived, and I brought the camera along to share with you how she looks when she has been worked out!  A little over a week ago I made my first attempt at wearing Mila to the gym, I posted about it on Facebook, and I was a bundle of nerves wondering how she would hold up, if she would slide, how it would feel etc etc etc., the list goes on. I made it through that workout just fine, but decided to fine tune Mila’s look for optimal heart pounding endorphin raising, serious cardio blasting circuit training.

For today’s workout , I pinned the front bang area hairs to the side because they got sweaty plastered on my head last time.. not great. Also, last time I left my hair down for way too long, perhaps I was just enjoying being one of those gals at the gym on the treadmill with her hair down and swishing all around, or perhaps I knew that the ponytail isn’t Mila’s best look in my view, maybe it was a little of both. Either way, once my neck started sweating the hair got a little stuck together in the neck area, and Mila just wasn’t looking as cute as when she walked in… poor girl. Eventually I put her in a looped ponytail but it was too late, the sweatiness had taken over.  This time, from the start of the workout, I put her in the looped low ponytail and it was just sooooo much better and I felt so much more confident wearing her to the gym today. I think as with anything else, the more you do it the more confident you will get with it.

So ladies I’m happy to report, that with the assistance of the WiGrip, that Mila can pretty much do anything, including sit-ups, pushups, treadmill, squats against the wall… and oh, so much more.  

Happy video watching 🙂

P.s. I make a comment at the end, that it was a long video — and really this video isn’t that much longer than my others, but I had a whole separate six minute first part I recorded this morning before I left the house, I decided it would make the video too long so I cut it out.

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So Three Wig Wearers Walk Into a Wig Shop… Lina’s Update

by Lina on July 5, 2013

Women's Hair Loss SupportLina sent me this post to share with you. If you haven’t followed Lina’s journey you can read her other posts here. 

So three wig wearers walk into a wig shop…

Just an update as my one year anniversary approaches of wearing hair full-time (sorry this is a little long).
I have posted a few blogs on this site and have found a wealth of encouragement, inspiration, and compassion on this site – a real sisterhood. After “suffering” and I know you know when I say “suffering” with HL for 25 years; the gamut of emotions: self-loathing, anxiety, depression, hiding from life, feeling like the future is hopeless, feeling somehow less and unworthy, scared, a ball of negativity, my old self gone and the list goes on.

Well, timing would have it a whole lot of “life” was added to my load last year and the final monumental shed happened – I call it the point of no return, time to deal. Luckily, Y – our fearless leader, was completely entrenched in her wig search and shared everything: highs, lows, amazing hair videos, even how to wash them. I couldn’t help but let her energy sweep me up in a vortex of possibility. So long story short Aug. 17, 2012 I shaved my head and forced myself to wear my “just in case” wig that had been in my closet for two years. I won’t go into details as I blogged about my shave and hair wearing beginning or I will keep you girls here for days 🙂

Slowly starting to accept this as Lina 2.0, I started feeling less chest tightening, accepting the occasional outings that would have me in public – gasp, the thought! Even my reflection (while wearing hair) in the mirror – still difficult to make the non-hair wearing eye contact. Guess what? I started laughing again, a little at first – what strange noise is this? My sense of humor started to creep in, people were commenting on a very positive change in my spirit and low and behold they wanted to start hanging out with me again – besides my hair loss I was most afraid of was losing myself. [click to continue…]

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