Deciding when to shave: The Decision

Part 1

For so many of us, hair is part of our identity. It’s an easy way to communicate what social groups we’re in, or want to be in. We, women especially, even signal how we’re feeling with our hair (messy ponytail versus blow out, for example). There’s a whole industry for the styling and maintenance of hair! 

via GIPHY

Hair is part of who we are, and we are part of our hair. Everyone knows that we lose it, eventually. It thins with age, it changes color. In Western society we try to hide even those subtlest of changes, for ageism is alive and well in the 21st century. 

So when someone who isn’t 60+ loses their hair...what does that mean? How does it change how they see themselves, how they identify, and how others treat them? For those with Alopecia, it is a daily challenge to look in the mirror and accept that how we look, and therefore who we are, will change abruptly and without our consent.

At some point, the disease becomes less about losing the hair itself, and instead about losing our identity.

When that happens, when we look in the mirror and no longer recognize the strong, smart, beautiful or handsome person we once saw, it can be devastating. You can feel lost, broken. You are now “other” than what you once were. It’s frightening.

One of the many hair chunks I lost in the shower on a daily basis

These 4 paragraphs are a much more cohesive version of one phone call I had with my mother in the spring of 2018 as I discussed the progression of my hair loss. Mostly I remember crying and saying how scared I was. I didn’t feel like myself; I didn’t know the terrified young woman staring back at me in the mirror. Who was this person who cried over handfuls of hair lost in the daily shower? Since when did I hide who I was? That wasn’t how I was raised, nor expected to be.

Now, to be fully transparent, in the spring of 2018 I was dealing with then-undiagnosed crippling depression and anxiety and a toxic work environment. These did absolutely nothing to help my Alopecia. I know that a large chunk of my fear and sadness wasn’t just from the disease… but it was all tied up into a messy knot that I couldn’t untangle. 

Even if I sought treatment for Alopecia and my mental health issues (I did), I would still have to come to terms with the potentially permanent changes in my appearance. And so I decided to take back control. I decided to shave my head.

A couple months before the shave. I know I’m smiling, but I remember that evening feeling very much not-like-me and hating how I looked

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