Hair loss is freaking difficult. There's not sugar coating it. Losing your hair is one of the most difficult things you can go through. It sucks.
When I was in the peak of despair because of my hair loss there was one thing that made my experience so much worse....social media.
In most of mainstream social media, women so often have the most gorgeous, luscious, thick hair ever. For the longest time my newsfeed was flooded with photos and videos of beautiful hair that I could never achieve. It made me feel so much worse about my situation. It made me feel like I could never be as happy with these women with a full head of hair.
And look, it's not the fault of the women posting these pictures and videos. They probably haven't thought twice about how their hair looks in their 'effortless' photos. I'm not trying to say these women shouldn't be posting.
But for me, only ever seeing women with luscious hair was quite triggering for me. I felt confined by the social expectation that my hair was as thick as all these other women. A standard which I could never reach.
This activity is something that really helped me relinquish the power that these societal expectations had over me. We are going to do a social media reset.
What does this mean? We are going to go through our social media accounts, our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and untollow any accounts that:
a) Reinforce any femininity stereotpes we don't want to subscribe to anymore
b) Hurt your selt-contidence
c) Don't do anything to lift you up
Sometimes you need to have a think about this and be honest with yourself. Is that beauty blogger who has the best hair and is constantly talking about how she would hate to lose her hair actually inspiring to you? Yes, you may have followed her for years, but when you see her content, does it make you feel good about yourself? Does it make you feel happy? No? It might be time to say goodbye.
But let's not stop at just removing accounts we follow. Let's add some new accounts! We want to start looking for accounts that LIFT US UP. Accounts that support other women, that encourage self-love and make us feel like we can take on the world. There's so many out there, try searching through the instagram 'self love or girl power hashtags.
If you're stuck, here's a list of accounts by women with hair loss who I LOVE following.
Flooding my feed with these women subconsciously changed how I saw myself in the mirror and before I knew it was catching my reflection and liking how looked more and more. It allowed me to see that no hair is actually STUNNING and let go of the belief that a women needs hair to be beautiful and accepted.
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