When I was growing up, navigating my hair loss felt so scary. I have Alopecia Universalis. It's a type of hair loss which causes me to have no hair on my entire body. There was no one to show me how to do this whole alopecia thing. Not to say I didn’t have support, my family were AMAZING! But when it came to wigs and brows and all the rest, they were learning it all along with me.

Flash forward 25 years and I get to be that person for girls growing up with alopecia today. It's so cool being able to be part of their journey. Here's a pic of me and Tabitha- a twelve-year-old with Alopecia Universalis, just like me!

Me and Tabitha

And I’m also so thankful for social media… for all the pitfalls of social media, it has given us Alopecia women a platform to be represented how we want to show up. I didn’t see ANYONE who looked like me till I was in late twenties. Now? I see them pop up on my feed everyday. And I feel so lucky to have connected with so many of them. To have made lifelong friends, just like Tabitha.

Wearing hair isn’t part of everyone’s alopecia journey. And that’s 100% okay. There’s no ‘right way’ to handle this hair loss thing. No rule book. No set of standards of what you have to achieve to be doing alopecia ‘the right way’.

If bare faced works best for you and makes you feel good, that’s the right path for you.

But in saying that, wearing hair, brows, eyelashes or whatever else does NOT make you vain. Wearing hair can give us back some of our control that this unpredictable alopecia takes from us. It can help us think about hair loss a lot less and give us time to work through the grief of losing our hair.

Community and finding others going through the same thing as you is life changing. And that’s so true of the Alopecia community. And if you ever feel alone in this hair loss thing and don’t know where to start, I’m always here ❤️ Just a message away x