I’ve had over 15,000 bad hair days in my 42+ years.  Ok that may be a slight exaggeration, but you haven’t seen my baby pictures.  My hair just never generally did what I wanted it to.  My curl looked like an afro.  My hair was too thick and then too thin.  Some of it was probably user error with the homemade cuts, chemicals and colors.  But suddenly my hair started to come out.  It’s the worse (non life-threatening) thing I think a woman can go through.  If you had asked me a couple of years ago how would I respond to hair loss, I would have said “badly”.  Somewhere between sackcloth and ashes and wailing and gnashing of teeth bad.  Turn into a hermit bad.  But it really didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.  I’m in a different mental and spiritual place than I was then.

Any-hoo… Yesterday, I bit the bullet.  I got a wig.  I thought about wigs even before the hair loss. Cool wigs.  Sassy wigs.  I could have a different hairstyle to go with each of my personalities.  But I felt like wigs, like makeup, would be going back to masks that I have put away.  It would be pretending to be someone I’m not.  It felt like I would be saying that something about me isn’t good enough.  So I didn’t want to do it.  But I did.  And it’s ok.  It’s because I’m not my hair or my clothing or any physical attribute.  I have a value because I was created in the image of God. He accepts me flaws and all.  So I accept myself flaws and all.

Now I’m not bald.  My hair just has weird peaks and valleys going on that I didn’t want to deal with anymore.  My docs are checking stuff.  But if they can’t find anything or if it’s not reversible, I will be upset.  I will not die.  I’ll just have to use that top shelf in the closet for my House of Hair.  No..No..my Rainbow House of Hair.  If I can’t change it, I guess I’ll have to enjoy it.

Why am I talking about my hair loss problem?  Because it’s hard.  Because it’s not rare.  Many women of all ages deal with varying degrees of hair loss for various reasons.  Fear of ridicule or stares lived in my heart.  But I survived Wig Day #1.  So if you have a thing–whatever it is that causes you anxiety.  Remember this.  If you can survive day one.  You can survive them all.

Be Blessed, FNKIDD