When I first started to lose my hair I would try and discuss what what was happening, and every time I was meant with a smack in the face, or what felt like a smack in the face. Since I started off this process with a ton of hair, for many years into my hair loss, I still “Looked” like I had a lot of hair, even though my loss was very real, very profound and taking a tremendous toll on me.
I wanted to be SEEN so badly, and I was dismissed. It was really very hurtful, it shut me down – and it made my already bad situation, worse.
Please realize, you don’t need to prove your hair loss, you don’t need another person’s validation for what you feel or what you do.
Nobody, and I do mean NOBODY knows you, like you. Nobody knows what your hair was, and nobody has any reference point to compare it to like you do.
The same thing is true for if you want to treat your hair loss, or wear wigs. There is no approval needed by anyone. None. You need to do what is best for you.
You cannot live your life waiting and hoping another person gets it.
Living with hair loss is difficult. So difficult. Conceptually imagining that it was a possibility was a complete improbability for me for many years and I understand it takes so much out of us. There also can be this external pressure to feel like we need to be something or somewhere other than where we are. Which honestly, makes everything much more difficult.
I received this comment on my video, “It’s OK To Not Be OK About Your Hair Loss” and I wanted to share my thoughts on dealing with hair loss, deciding to treat it or not, wearing wigs or not and really just allowing yourself to be true to yourself and not feeling pressure to feel anything other than what you FEEL.
She wrote: I feel the pressure to be positive for everyone else all the time about this hair loss. I don’t see a day coming that I can accept this …but I’m trying. One moment to the next. Thank you for validating our feelings. Only someone else living with this can truly understand.
We need to remove any pressure we are putting on ourselves to be happy or positive for ANYONE else about OUR hair loss. You do not need to be happy about a devastating situation to make someone else more comfortable in their world. I understand the pressure to feel that way, but I want to let you and everyone else know, this doesn’t help us deal with with one of the most devastating afflictions to women.
I wanted you to HEAR me speak The words and not just read them on the screen.
I wanted you to take them in, I wanted you to feel the meaning and what I am saying. So I have recorded my words to this video and shared some of my love, including my baby HOPE. The male kitten I got from the Spanish Harlem shelter in 2001, and who I name HOPE because I was devastated by my hair loss and needed a reminder that HOPE was always around. I am pretty sure I still haven’t recovered from his passing in 2019, but that is a different story.
For 13 years I have communicated with women online, and I know the pain from hair loss, not just my own – but in hearing your stories. I spent over the first half of my hair loss life (of 22 years) not believing, feeling or thinking that things could get better, but it did and it is important for me to let those know, that need to know – it can better, that it definitely can.
Often I find that women are so hard on themselves, comparing themselves to other women, which makes the process of working through anything so much more difficult, and especially in dealing with your hair loss – something that is plenty sufficient to deal with on its own.
You only have to do what feels right for you, not for anyone else.
I was prompted to make this video because as I was scrolling my instagram feed, I saw an ad for female hair transplantation. As a whole, in general, women with androgenetic alopecia aka female pattern baldness (diffuse thinning of hair ) are not candidates for hair transplants.
It is important for women to be able to make informed decisions regarding the treatment of their hair loss. While there are a lot of sub optimal things that occur online that result in disappointment, frustration, loss of money etc., this is ONE thing that is extra disturbing to see targeted to women with hair loss, because without the proper information, women who are not candidates and choose to undergo this treatment may not only lose money, but they could *potentially* be left with physical scars and in a much worse position than when they began.
The scar of hair loss to my life is sufficient, I don’t think additional physical ones are needed.
This episode of The Women’s Hair Loss Project podcast focuses on moving forward through hair loss, and what that looked like for me. I know a lot of women are in a place of feeling they will not be able to accept, they will not be able to live with hair loss – but you can, I know you can. I am living proof of that.
I share different parts of my story and journey to let you know it took different things along the way to get me to the place I am today.
Believing YOU CAN emotionally get past hair loss is so important. Removing the fixed mentality that things have to be a certain way – that fixed mentality kept me stuck in my own prison for over a decade, till the one day things changed. I changed. My mindset changed. I learned I could be okay even though my hair wasn’t going to come back. I accepted my hair loss, I accepted what is, I accept wearing wigs. I found a new way to live, and I found it when I was open to it. It was there along, but I wasn’t open to it.
I sat down today to speak to you, to speak to the woman who needs to hear these words from the person who has lived through it, and who knows deeply all the emotions and feelings that hair loss brings with it.
We don’t always feel like we have any choices, but we do. It’s not always the choices we want, but we do get choices. Those choices empower us, and bring us closer to reclaiming ourselves and our power.
When I stopped feeling like everything was happening to me, out of my control, without any say of my own whatsoever, and began to make the choices I needed to, and take action over how I dealt with my hair loss – everything changed.
To the person that needs to hear this today, there is hope.
8 Years Feeling Alone ( Started The Women’s Hair Loss Project in 2007)
13 Years Spent Feeling Helpless/ Powerless
12 Years of PRP
9 Years of Wearings Wigs
9 Years of a Shaved Back Hair Cut
And a partridge in a pear tree…..
I wish I had the exact formula to provide everyone, that one recipe to get you to feeling better, moving forward – closer to acceptance, but the one thing I do know as well as knowing my hair is not coming back, is that everyone is so different. We all process very differently, we all need to do and try things differently, and sometimes one of those things is actually doing nothing.
I mean that in a passive and active sense. Passively doing nothing, as in we cannot AT THIS TIME make a move, and ACTIVELY doing nothing, meaning we decided, we aren’t going to do anything for our hair loss and that works just fine.
There are zero hard and fast rules when it comes to dealing with, living and treating hair loss.
Over the years, I’ve often been asked “How did you get over your hair loss?” But I didn’t get “over” my hair loss, rather, I learned to accept it and I learned to live with it.
Hair loss was traumatic for me, it impacted every part of my life, countless decisions were framed around it, including many times choosing to not treat myself medically because I was afraid ANY medication would make my hair loss worse, so at times I had compromised my health for hair loss.
I wear wigs because of my hair loss, if I shave my head, it’s because of my hair loss – those are present day realities. I treat my hair loss with PRP. Saying I’m “over” my hair loss would not be an accurate statement.
What I CAN say is I have quite successfully learned to live with hair loss, accept it, no longer feel a prisoner to it, no longer compromise my health for it (physically or mentally) and that’s a solid win in my book. I couldn’t have hoped for more, truly. Quite honestly, that’s as close to getting over it that I will be, and I am really content in that, because I can actually accept my reality, no longer be owned by it, I can live my life – I can feel free from hair loss, and also at the same time, not be “over it.”
I’m proud and have much gratitude for having reached this place I have in my hair loss life, there was a time I never thought it was possible.
Let me know your thoughts below, would love to hear from you!
Hair Loss Choices. We have some, believe it or not – we have some. I put my hand on my hip and say to my non glorious bio hair, “I own you.”
I choose to keep it or let it go.
Since way before I started wearing wigs I’ve wanted to shave my head, I have friends who have, and grew it back out, but they did it. I spoke to one yesterday about it and she said it was one of the most liberating things she did for herself.
I think 2021 is my year, it isn’t that I plan on keeping it forever shaved (who knows, I cannot say), but I want to know I CAN, so I know I can always go back to that place, and the only way you get that confidence and power is really to just do it… no way around that one.
Same is true for wearing hair by the way, how do you know you can do it? – You just do it.
The planner girl has come up with a plan that I think works for me – which I’ll share another time and along the way. But it would be after my next PRP treatment, and if you are wondering why the heck would STILL do PRP if I am making plans to shave my head, it’s because I want to, and it’s not an all or none mentality to how I choose to address my hair loss life. I can treat my hair loss in a manner I feel good with AND wear wigs. It’s because it is still a part of my process at this time, and even if I had a shaved stubble head for life, I might want a fuller appearance of stubble, if possible – then again, later I could decide, eh, I’m done with it.
Choices, decisions – my decision, my choice.
There is no right or wrong in your journey, no one can tell you what you should or should not do.
Make the choice to treat your hair loss or don’t, make the choice to wear wigs or don’t. Shave your head. Do it all, or do nothing. Only YOU can choose the path best for you. Choose what will bring you peace and ultimately make the choices that you can live with.
To avoid confusion, wigged up. All images are wigged. Except the obvious shaved one.
What if we accepted as truth, that this life isn’t a dress rehearsal, this is it, our one shot.
What ifwe realized our misfortunes, our angst… Is just that, our misfortunate and angst, but it does not define us, nor has to.
What if we accepted that we can actually live, despite not having every single thing we expected in our lives – like our hair.
What ifwe could honor our feelings while simultaneously moving forward, without judgment of self. What a concept. Abandoning judgment of self, and any real or perceived judgment from others – abandoning that too.
If our happiness is relying on things we cannot control, we are surely in for a rough road. My suffering in hair loss came from just dealing in loss…. constantly, that and a loss of control, loss of self, and no matter what I did, an inability to get back “what should be.”
Who’s to say what should be? Simply because I was born with hair doesn’t entitle me to have it forever. Everything on us is potentially on loan, including life.
If we focus on our loss we can lose gratitude for all that we do have, perpetuating a cycle of self-erosion.
What ifwe focused more on some of what we have, what is good, rather than reminiscing the loss.
If there was a sport for “Reminiscing The Loss” I would be a top contender, a front runner for sure.
I am truly skilled in the art of living backwards. Truly skilled.
Over analyzing what left me or what was taken, and to further detriment, thinking of it in those terms actually sets up the mind, and every facet of your constitution, to automatically be on the losing end, from the start.
That’s like starting towards the race of life, not a little behind where the line starts – but rather in a ditch. It is our race, we race against ourselves, but who wants to start in a ditch?
What if we accepted, this was just life, not all great. Accept the past, live in the present, look towards the future. I know, it’s not always so easy, but what if.
What ifI told you, you are stronger than you think.
2016 – The incredibly talented Sophie Hafner created this color for me for a photoshoot, and also dying her own hair pink for the shoot as an effort to help me to de-stigmatize wig wearing, showing what hair wearing CAN be.
What if we strive to not excel in the sport of reminiscing the loss, but work to build our now, and our tomorrow with the cards that are dealt, have been dealt and work with what is within our control.
What if….
I have often been asked how I managed to accept and move past hair loss, and it’s worth noting, I don’t think I’ve necessary moved past it, more accurately stated, I learned to adapt and live with it.
No longer be a slave to it…Accept what I thought was impossible and change my preconceived notions that began with, “I could never…”
I could never wear wigs – I can I could never live unless all my hair came back – I could I could never be accepted with hair loss and wigs – I was and am.
Most importantly, I accept myself, which lends itself to the rest falling in place.
I want to first write that I am not a fan of hair transplants for women, I personally
think that most women with androgenetic alopecia are NOT candidates for
this procedure. Having said that, I get emailed all the time from women looking
for a good hair transplant surgeon.
If you are deadset on having a consultation, please visit the International Alliance
of Hair Restoration Surgeons. The IAHRS (http://www.iahrs.org)
is an organization that selectively screens skilled and ethical hair transplant
surgeons. Read
my thoughts about hair transplants here.
