Living with Alopecia has been the most empowering “grab your lady balls” condition I have ever experienced. Yeah you heard that right! Lady Balls! If there was ever a moment in my life that defined what womanhood was ~ or wasn’t ~ was the day my hair fell out in chunks!
I remember the first quarter size bit of hair that I lost. It was shortly after I had reconstructive surgery from massive weight loss and the doctor’s chalked it up to my bodies reaction to the trauma of surgery. I honestly did not think much about it. I hid it easily under a mound of healthy hair and filled it in with my handy bottle of small particle hair fibers. I didn’t think it was unusual in the years to follow that I was slowly using that entire bottle to cover my whole head. It wasn’t significant loss by any means, but the added hair dusting fiber made my head look full and fantastic. I felt like I was a cover girl in the best shampoo commercial of my life! Nothing can be wrong with that, right?
Time passed. On July 4th,2017 my then husband was driving around town dealing with his pain of losing his grandfather in the wee hours of the morning and I woke up to more hair on the pillow than normal. Dazy eyed I stared at the pillow in slight disbelief and ran to the bathroom. There it was in the mirror looking back at me!! Alopecia! Full blown Alopecia! I didn’t know that was its name but I knew it looked bad. REAL BAD! I had lost the whole right side of my head and the crown was nearly bald all the way around. Oh my god, my beautiful hair!!
I sat on the toilet seat crying. I held chunks of hair in my hands and wondered can I glue them back on? I couldn’t move. I mustered a text to the manpanion, “Please come home. I am in the bathroom.” I am sure he thought to himself who cares if you’re in the bathroom. But, I couldn’t even laugh at my own thoughts. There I sat with my hair in my hands crying for nearly an hour. When he finally walked into the master bathroom I lifted my hands to show him. Still in full on tears I croaked out some wretched statement that I think was along the lines of “It won’t stop coming out.”
He said it wasn’t that bad but I knew he was lying. I saw the shock as he pulled away the hair that my body was denying as its own. OMG, he’s disgusted!!! What do I do??? That was my thought, the manpanion is disgusted. Not oh my goodness what is wrong with me, am I ok?
The decision was made at some point that shaving the rest of the hair my body deemed good off. The manpanion just kept looking at me in disgust and I kept thinking this is it! I am never going to be attractive to him. I was so internally disgusted with myself. But then things changed.
Clippers tight in manpanions hand my sons, Raymond and William, started hyping me up. Here is the thing, every word they said I saw in their face was real. I looked at those boys and I knew they meant every word. No shock, no disgust in their face, just pure love and TOTAL HYPE!
Mom, It is just hair.
Mom, you’re going to rock bald.
Mom this will fit you!
My confidence begins to build. The remaining hair falls to the ground.
My son looks straight at me and with the most sincere loving look he says,
Mom, omgawd you are so beautiful. You have the most perfect-est head I have ever seen. I can’t believe how beautiful you are.
Hair gone, feeling hyped up, and loved I went to the mirror to see. Somewhere deep in me there was this nagging feeling that I may not see my sons view and it was going to be a monster that the manpanions face showed. So, I looked.
HOLY SHITBALLS! I’m hot! I stood in the mirror and thought to myself,
You are one BADASS mama! I have never in my life felt more beautiful than I did in that moment. I felt bare, stripped of anything that defined the word woman, and in that freedom of no hair to define me, I felt free to be anything I wanted to be.
Life Is Just A Soul Of Cherries 