Living Free With Hair Loss

I know that title is confusing to many, how is it possible, how could or would that even be a thing? I would have rolled my eyes or even gotten annoyed if someone had said that to me during the time I simply wasn’t ready to hear it. My mind could not allow it. I just lived in pain, that’s all I knew. 

That didn’t change till the moment it did, and not one minute before. I think all the things I did, the steps I took before that moment contributed to leading UP TO that moment, but it didn’t happen till the day it did. Until I was ready, till my mind was ready. 

I speak about acceptance a lot because to me that IS the only cure to hair loss. 

I have had hair loss for 22 years, beginning at the age of 21. I started The Women’s Hair Loss Project in 2007. For 14 years I have interacted with women and I have worn wigs for over 9 years. 

I know a lot about hair loss, treatments, and wigs… I know none of it will ever be perfect. I also know there are simply questions that can never be answered.

I know I ONLY moved forward because I accepted, I let go. I let go of my preconceived notions of what NEEDED to be. I let go of the idea I needed all my hair to come back, or I’d have no life.  

The life I wasn’t having, the one I wasn’t living, was the one where I waited in agony for my hair to return, and it wasn’t going to. Not the way I wanted. I have female pattern baldness, androgenetic Alopecia – that is progressive hair loss, there are treatments, but there is no cure.

I am a 43 year old woman with 22 years of hair loss and for 13 years of those I suffered tremendously. Life got better, when I let go. I wasn’t going to have my fairytale ending, and I’ve long since let go of that fantasy. It wasn’t my path, and I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that because I need to be okay with that. Anything less would cause me pain, I’d be regressed back into the cycle of loss, and it’s a place I never want to go back to.

Not everyday is perfect, my wigs aren’t perfect, my hair is still progressively thinning, but I am able to deal with it. A bad day now is a a bad day, it’s a moment, not a life sentence.

I choose to not live in the loss.

My hope for every woman is that they find peace, we all deserve it, however which way that comes to be. It’s different for all of us. Don’t judge yourself for how you feel. Your feelings are valid. Be kind to yourself.

To get to where you want to go, you have to be willing to change, and sometimes the change we need to make, is our mindset. Never give up on you. 

Much Love Always!
XOXO
~Y