“Our wigs restore cancer patients’ confidence!”
When Carolyn Keller lost her hair while undergoing chemotherapy, a wig helped boost her morale. So when her sister-in-law faced the same struggle, she bought her one too—and it started a special exchange that’s provided free wigs to thousands of women
Carolyn Keller’s heart went out to her sisterin-law, Laura Jirsa. Undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2011, Laura was losing her hair and wanted to buy a wig. “I can’t believe how expensive they are— hundreds to thousands of dollars,” she told Carolyn.
Carolyn knew just how Laura felt. She, herself, had survived two bouts of breast cancer and the trauma of hair loss during treatment in the early 2000s— and had paid $ 2,500 for a wig. But it had been such a big boost to her self-esteem, which helped during her fight. Now, she wanted that same boost for her sister-in-law.
“I’m going to buy you a wig,” Carolyn told Laura.
Laura was touched and overwhelmed with gratitude. So much so that when another family member also got breast cancer, Laura, by then cancerfree, passed the wig on to her.
That small gesture gave Carolyn an idea.
In the 1990s, Carolyn had founded Ebeauty.com, an online clearinghouse for the beauty industry. She shut it down during her illness but had since relaunched the website with a new, charitable purpose: to help people with cancer find assistance with everyday tasks, like cooking dinner and walking their dogs.
Why don’t we collect wigs and give them to the women we serve?
Carolyn thought.
Carolyn asked for donations on her website and began distributing the wigs to hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area, near her home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. But then she connected with the American Cancer Society, and soon, women around the country were sending in thousands of wigs. So many that Carolyn made the wig project into a nonprofit: Ebeauty Community Inc.
Volunteers sort through the wigs, keep the best ones and send them to Paul Mitchell Schools to be cleaned and refurbished. The stylists-intraining write messages of encouragement like, Let your dreams be bigger than your fear,
then pack the wig and note in a sealed bag. Ebeauty then distributes the wigs to hospitals and individuals in treatment who request one.
“It’s about looking in your mirror and seeing a survivor,” says Leslie Rager, Director of Volunteers and a cancer survivor herself. “You just need that little something to make you feel good about yourself and see a bright future ahead.”
Adds Laura, now Ebeauty’s chief operations officer, “You can go to the store with no makeup on and nobody is going to pay any attention,” she says. “But you go to the store with no hair, and people are going to stare…it makes a big difference.”
Which is why Carolyn will keep this project going.
“Ebeauty is not about coming up with the next pill that is going to cure cancer,” she says. “We are just somebody who can help hold your hand while you’re going through it and give you a little confidence boost when you’re feeling down.”