Enough About My Kids. Let’s Talk About My Hair

About this time last year, I was on the couch running my hands through my hair when my fingers slid over a smooth, hairless round spot. I broke into a sweat.

“Look at this,” I hissed at Kyle, lifting my hair to show him. “Is this a bald spot?”

“Ooh,” he said, in that restrained tone that suggests yes it is, but I do not want you to scream. “It’s big.”

I spent the next few days convinced, as I am wont to be, that I was dying. But a week later, my dermatologist diagnosed it as alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that crops up when it feels like it, and makes your hair fall out in round patches.

“What causes it?” I asked.

“We’re not sure,” he said. “Stress can be a trigger.”

That’s me and everyone else I know, I thought. Maybe we’re all walking around with strategically covered bald spots. I rolled through my questions. Should I change shampoo? No. Is it something in my diet? No.

“Can I color my hair?”

“I wouldn’t do anything to it until we see some results,” he said.

Dang it.

I’ve kept my grays at bay for many years with professional dye jobs to the tune of $200+ per visit. Now, I went cold turkey into the big gray grow-out. It was a particularly rough moment for my hair. Aside from falling out, I had colored it shades lighter during a girl’s weekend with my best friend, which seemed like a great idea at the time.

Now, the demarcation line between salt-and-pepper roots and “Tired Orange” outed me as someone who, in her real life, keeps forgetting to book a hair appointment.

Hair growth, it turns out, slows down as you age. So I waited. And applied steroid cream to my bald patch. And waited. And felt very old.

I noticed something else. My hair started to look and feel better. It seemed happier in its new chemical-free, high-on-life state. I didn’t have to rearrange my budget to slink away to the salon. I also discovered a whole movement of women owning their gray and supporting others who make the same leap. More of this, please, in everything.

I haven't colored my hair since. It grew back, and grew out. It took forever. But it’s healthy. My bald spot is gone, though I keep a vigilant lookout for others. 

The ultimate payoff came when my favorite Co-op cashier (as he shall now be known) glanced up at me in line one day and said, “I really like your hair. That light and dark combo looks really good on you, and not everyone can pull that off.”

The shock and joy of a genuine, unexpected compliment from a stranger turned me into a rambling idiot. I know I said, “It took me TWO YEARS!” because the man behind me piped up, “It took me two years to grow this out, too!” as he ran a hand over a lovely salty salt and pepper beard. We gushed collective approval, and walked out of there feeling great about ourselves. Let’s have more of that, too.

It was worth the wait. And the bald spot.