I got up that morning and just decided to do it. I was like, It’s supposed to be 80 degrees outside, it’s hot! I hadn’t done a quick weave for myself, and I didn’t want to wear a wig. I had just shaved my head, and my scalp was smooth. I thought, Yep, this is the day! So I got dolled up and did my makeup, and I said, I’m gonna wear pink underneath my scrubs. And I went to work at the hospital as a certified medical assistant, uncovered.
I was nervous, and I don’t know if it was more so because it was work or if I was more worried about the questions. I wouldn’t have direct contact with patients, so there wouldn’t be a way for patients to even question and go, “Oh, what’s wrong?” I didn’t want the pity. When I got there, one coworker’s face just lit up, and she was like, “My queen! You look amazing!” Some of the doctors came over and said, “You look great!” They didn’t treat me any different like I thought they would. They didn’t throw a bunch of questions at me. I literally made it nine hours with no covering! Afterward, I got in the car and cried a little because it was such a huge milestone.
When my hair first started falling out, I thought, Is it lupus? My doctor started running all these tests. Once that came back negative, he said, “Let’s send you on to dermatology.” I learned that I had end-stage scarring alopecia. I had let it go on for so long, and there was so much inflammation and so much scar tissue that had built up, that it was at the end stages, so regrowth would not be possible. When I got the diagnosis, I remember I sat in the doctor’s office afterward for, like, 20 minutes, and I just cried and cried because I didn’t understand why it was happening to me. I almost fell into a depression. We tried treatments for about a year, and the medications and the treatments helped tame the inflammation, the redness, the burning, the itching. I even had some sores that would scab up and bleed. So the treatments helped with that, but my hair just kept falling out. I immediately went into self-protective mode: I got to hide this. I got to keep people from seeing it.
A delivery man coming to the door would prompt me to hide and cover up before I got the package. It was really hard to wrap my head around the fact that there were patches of hair missing. I tried crochet braids and quick weaves to cover them up, but quick weaves were causing too much of a flare-up. Then I tried wigs. From when I got my diagnosis in 2005 until last year, there was always this fear that people could see the spots and that I didn’t cover it up enough. I was very big on making sure that I was always presentable; I never went out of the house looking any old kind of way. I didn’t want people to stare. I didn’t even want my parents to know.
To me, a woman’s glory was her hair. And when I lost mine, I felt like I lost a little bit of me. I was such a girly girl, and I loved doing my hair and having my hair done. So when I started to lose it, I was devastated as a woman, in my femininity, you know? So there were a lot of sad and depressive moments, but I never acknowledged them because I wasn’t a firm believer in depression. There were some moments I’d sit in my bedroom after I put my kids to sleep and cry. But knowing that my kids accepted me for who I was helped get me through the down days. When they were smaller, they were never embarrassed about their friends seeing that their mother didn’t have hair. They never saw me differently, which means a lot to me. ’Cause to them, I’m just Mom, whether I have hair on my head or not. So my children have been my strongest and biggest support through all of this, my biggest community for the last 17 years.
I remember the day I first thought about modeling: January 16, 2022. That’s when I decided to come out of hiding and embrace my alopecia, love it, and accept it as part of who I am. I was on Snapchat, using their little apps, and there was a magazine filter, I think, and I used that, and it put me on a magazine, and I was like, I wanna see my face on a magazine!
I texted my kids, “I think I wanna do modeling in my bald crown. What do you think?” My son, Desmond, texted back, “Do that shit, Mom!” Then my oldest, Deja, wrote, “I think it’s a great idea. You’re naturally pretty, your hair is just a bonus. By rocking your bald crown, you can advocate for so many women who aren t comfortable with their baldness.” I had just turned 45, and I was like, You know what? I am too old to be worried about what somebody thinks of me. I have hit middle age, I look great. I just lost 75 pounds. Let’s do it!
Then I thought, If I’m going to do it, let’s do it big! So I decided to do a boudoir shoot. Nothing too raunchy, nothing too sexy. It was something completely out of the box for me, something very different from the world of medicine. I found a local photographer that could do professional photoshoots. We submitted the photos to an online magazine, and the magazine gave me a two-page spread! When I saw the pictures in the magazine, I was like, Lord have mercy, I’m in my unmentionables, and I don’t have no hair on my head! But it got so much good feedback, and it felt really, really good. I was so proud of it. So I did another one, and then I did another one. Then women who were going through hair loss started messaging me or commenting, going, “Oh, I have alopecia too, and this is awesome. You’re so inspiring.”
I’ve been featured in about 20 online publications so far. I’m really enjoying it. I’m building more confidence in me, which is…whoa! You could not have convinced me in a million years when I got diagnosed in 2005 that I would literally take a picture in my bald head, let alone put it in somebody’s magazine for the world to see! So it’s been a really, really amazing thing. I may not be America’s Next Top Model, but I have touched a few people here and there and made them feel a little bit more confident in themselves or feel like they can take this alopecia journey head-on and build themselves up.
I’ve never felt more beautiful, not even when I had hair on my head. So I’m truly, truly grateful for the growth. Like, who would’ve thought the one thing that I’ve hid from the most and tried to hide for the longest ended up changing me? It’s been really freeing.
You know how it can feel like you’re smiling on the inside? That’s what it’s been like for the last year. All those times I smiled behind the pain…now I don’t have to do that. My smile is genuine because I’m in acceptance of all of me from head to toe.
This story was published with support from the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.