MY GIRL TAUGHT ME TO love y elf
Naomi and her girl have bonded over their shared condition
Brushing my long blonde locks, I noticed hair in my hairbrush. I’d found clumps in the shower drain recently too.
Ignoring it at rst, everything clicked when I found small bald patches all over my head. My mum, Ruth, and grandmother Hilda both had alopecia and had gone bald.
Could I have it too?
I wondered, scared how I’d cope with losing all my hair.
I told my husband, Clifford, then 38, about my fears.
‘You are beautiful with or without hair,’ he smiled.
But our kids, Jacinta, then 11, Stanley, nine, and Sam, four, worried when they saw the clumps falling out.
‘Are you sick?’ Stanley asked me.
Sitting them down, I told the kids it I was okay, but
I’d likely lose all my hair in time, just like their grandma.
Four weeks later, I had a bald spot on my head as big as my hand. Visiting my GP, I was of cially diagnosed with alopecia areata – an incurable auto-immune condition.
Working as a teacher, I worried my students would judge me, but they were incredibly supportive. Some even offered to cut off their hair to make me a wig.
Nine months later, most of my hair had fallen out.
With my little sister, Alice, then 26, due to be married in four months time, I was devastated.
‘How can I be a bridesmaid now?’ I cried to her.
‘Just be there,’ she told me. On the day of the wedding, in April 2019, I tied what hair I had left into a little ponytail.
A year later, I noticed Sam had some small patches of hair missing on her head too.
‘Will I be like you, Mummy?’ she asked.
‘I think so,’ I replied, being honest.
‘We can be alopecia girls together,’ she replied.
Within a month, Sam had lost all the hair on top of her head and, a few weeks later, all her body hair had fallen out, including her eyelashes and eyebrows. It was so sudden but, thankfully, it didn’t bother her.
‘At least I don’t have to brush my hair,’ she joked.
Doctors con rmed it was alopecia universalis. Sam wore a beanie to school until she was ready to embrace her new look.
It’s now been more than three years since my diagnosis, and over a year since Sam’s.
Strangers often assume Sam, now seven, is a cancer patient, and sometimes they mistake her for a boy, especially when she’s playing soccer. She just looks at them and smiles.
Though I initially felt ugly and old when people stared, I’ve learned to accept it, just like my little girl has.
She’s taught me how to love myself again.
Together, we’ve learned it’s not what’s on the outside that counts, but the people we are inside. ●
I had a bald spot on my head as big as my hand