2020 The Year Of The Alopecians

Guys the last couple weeks have been amazing for the alopecia community. First Ricki Lake went public with her struggles with hair loss. Then Representative Ayanna Pressley shared that she lost all of her hair to alopecia this past year. I’m not going to lie, Rep. Pressley’s candid conversation about her alopecia gave me alllllll of the feels. It is emotional seeing women with such large platforms coming forward with their stories of hair loss. When I first lost my hair in 2015, I remember scouring the internet looking for female “celebrities” who were also dealing with hair loss. With close to 7 million people in the U.S. who have been affected by alopecia, I assumed there had to be a few ladies in the public eye who were dealing with it too. My searches hit dead end after dead end. I don’t know why, but it felt heart breaking not to find anyone. All I wanted was a “Celebrities, they are just like us!” moment so I could feel a tiny sense of normalcy. Which I know is ridiculous because celebs are nothing like us, but I yearned for a to connect with someone who was traveling in my same shoes. I was desperate to find a woman who had bald forced upon them, but was still out there killing the game in life. I wanted to find anybody who could help me see that it was going to be okay. 

When Rep. Pressley’s video and article started making the rounds, I felt this overwhelming sense of oh hellllllll yes! This is exactly what the alopecia community needs! 2015 Supriya would have done anything to see a video like this in my first months as a bald woman. The emotions and experiences she describes are so on point that it gives me goosebumps. It feels like she read my mind and was sharing my thoughts with the world. 

Some of my favorite quotes:

“I did not want to go to sleep because I did not want the morning to come, where I would remove this bonnet and my wrap and be met with more hair in the sink and an image in the mirror, in the mirror of a person who increasingly felt like a stranger to me.”

“I was wearing this wig, fully clothed. But in that moment, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d ever felt more naked.”

 “I didn’t have the luxury of mourning what felt like the loss of a limb. It was a moment of transformation, not of my choosing”

“I felt naked, exposed, vulnerable. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt betrayed.”

I felt these quotes in my SOUL! I  will never forget the days where sleep was my biggest fear. Every night I prayed that I would wake up and the hair loss would be done. Yet every morning I would wake up to find more piles of hair on my pillow case. And when I purchased my first wig, I thought I would finally feel normal. Instead, I felt like the elephant in the room. I felt vulnerable, scared, and shameful of my secret. I felt like my wig was actually a light up sign on my head that read, “Look at her! It’s sideshow Sup! She is bald! That is a wig!” Like Rep. Pressley, I didn’t have the luxury of mourning what felt like the loss of a limb. Say it again with me, I didn’t have the luxury of mourning what felt like the loss of a limb. My God, truer words have never been spoken! There is no mourning time with alopecia. It is a loss that is felt daily, but society expects you to function as if nothing has changed. I couldn’t call off of work every time alopecia sent my mind into a state of disarray. If I had, I would have called off every single day for 2 and a half years. Life must go on no matter how badly you miss your hair. No matter how devastated you are that your hair is now gone and there is a chance you will never see it again for the rest of your life. After all, to society, “At least it's just hair”. Words that are so easy to say until you become the person whose hair was lost in a matter of months.  

This is why stories like Rep. Pressely and Ricki Lake are just SO IMPORTANT. There is comfort and solace in knowing the emotions you are feeling are shared by other women in all walks of life. From a bad ass congresswoman, to an iconic talk show host and actress. It fills my cup knowing these stories are out there inspiring others on their hair loss journeys. It is further proof that you can have success, you can have happiness, and you can have love regardless of if you have hair or not!!!

If you haven’t seen the article from The Root yet, here is the link. You will not be disappointed. Thank your Representative Pressley for being so raw and inspiring. You are truly out here changing lives!

THE Representative Ayanna Pressley

Hair Dreamin

I had a weird dream this week. A friend was showing me old photos and I saw one of me when I still had hair. I just stared at it because I didn’t think it looked like me. Like I was a different person now and the person in the picture was a distant memory…a stranger even. I normally have crazy dreams so it’s not unusual for me to wake up and be bothered by them for a few hours. This one got me thinking because it has been a thought in the back of my head for a while. Do I still look like myself? Sometimes I see old pictures and think yes, some days I think no. I mean I look so different now. People used to ALWAYS tell me I looked just like my mom. Since alopecia, I’ve noticed that has changed. I rarely hear that anymore. I think it’s because I lost some of those common features. The way her hair grows on her face. The way her eyebrows are shaped. I suppose I can’t expect to look exactly the same. A wig will never look the same as my hair. I’ll never have those weird short hairs on my forehead that used to drive me mad, but also were such a part of me. A wig will never part the way my hair parted and will never sit the way my hair sat. I’ll never have those same eyebrows. Microblading will never create the same face I had when I had my own brows. So, I suppose it’s true. The girl I was is now just a distant memory…
 

I got the baldie blues

I’m having one of those weekends where I feel jealous of girls with hair. I am emotionally cutting and scrolling hair envy pics on Instagram that are causing a giant jealous knot to build in my stomach. Since starting this blog, I’ve found it easier and easier to be positive about this disease. I’ve met so many rad chicks and dudes who are killing the alopecia game. They inspire me daily and have helped me accept this for what it is. But today I’m just feeling annoyed. When this all started, I always assumed my hair would come back. Now, I am less than 2 months shy of my FOUR year goodbye hairaversary. You’d think by now I wouldn’t even care. Yet today I scrolled page after page on Instagram feeling envious. This feeling of envy was immediately followed by a feeling of guilt. Guilt because so many of my friends are going through medical journeys that are so much harder, so much scarier, so much more trying. Guilt knowing that I have my health yet am sitting here throwing a pity party for no good reason. So yeah, I suppose its just one of those days where my sensitivity is at a level 847 billion. What do my fellow alopecians do when you have the baldie blues?

Get Me Off This Ride

Hello my little boo thangs. On Friday I was chatting with my friend Zigs about this blog. Zigs has been one of my biggest blog supporters from the jump. She mentioned how crazy it was that she didn't know anything about alopecia until we became friends. It is kinda wild that something that impacts my life so deeply is also something a lot of people haven’t even heard of. Somehow, I did know about alopecia long before I was diagnosed with it. I’m not sure how exactly. If I had to guess, I’d say it was from a Seventeen or YM magazine article (you know you grew up in the 90s if you know what YM is), or maybe an episode of Oprah? You get a wig! You get a wig! Who knows, but I’m glad I get to be part of the movement to spread awareness now. Today’s post should be shortish and sweet. I want to take you back to Fall of 2016. Temps were dropping, leaves were turning, and my hair was growing back. Say whaaaaat? You heard me right. My hair was back bitch (insert Britney Spears giphy here). I don’t know if the rest of the bald population experiences this, but when I’m not wearing my wig, I’m rubbing my head allllll the time. It has become a nervous habit of sorts. I was so used to feeling nothing but skin that I was in shock the day I thought I felt a thin layer of peach fuzz. I grabbed my iphone and positioned myself in front of a mirror to snap a pic. Which is shockingly harder than one would think. I zoomed in and sure as shit there it was...REGROWTH! Up until this point, I assumed regrowth was an urban legend in the alopecia universalis world. Sure I had heard stories of people going into spontaneous remission and growing their hair back. Was it possible that I was about to become one of those people who got to tell the same tale? Each day I would take a new picture and each day there was MORE HAIR! I started to refer to it as my hair Yamaka because it bore a little resemblance to one. I was so scared that one wrong move would cause it all to fall out again. At the same time, I started to get excited. I imagined it growing long enough to get extensions, and never having to wear a wig again. I even had my hair extension specialist picked out. I followed her posts on Instagram excited for the day that I could make my appointment.

That year I went back to Ohio for Christmas and New Year. When I got back to Denver, it took approximately one week for all of my regrowth to fall out. One freakin week... Once again I felt betrayed by my body. It felt like such a cruel joke. I was so excited for 3ish months, and in one week it was all ripped away from me again. I don’t know if something happened during that Ohio trip that caused my body to freak the fuck out again, or if it was just completely random. I will never know.
That experience taught me that I do not want my hair to grow back unless there is a 1000000000% chance it will never fall out again. I’d rather be bald for the rest of my life than get my hopes up only to have them bashed all over again. The roller coaster of emotions that comes along with growth/loss is one that I’d prefer not to ride. My emotions take me on enough roller coaster rides that I think I’m set for a lifetime.

To Shave Or Not To Shave? That Is The Question...

What up baldie boo crew! Its been a week of fighting off the bronchitis for this girl! I swear everybody and their brother is sick in my office. Nothing like the sounds of hacking coughs and flem to kick off a work week. Ick! Thanks to the magic of some meds, an inhaler, and a netti pot, I seem to be on the mend. So much so that I was able to spend two hours navigating the jungle that is IKEA yesterday, and made it to a basketball game to watch my CAVS get sadly demolished by the Nugs. Womp womp. I’m just happy I’m not a feeble Franny snot fest anymore, so I can’t complain. For this week’s blog, I thought I’d address something many alopecians face…to shave or not to shave? That is the question. This is a really tough one, and one that I definitely struggled with. Looking back, I’d say I waited wayyyy too long to shave my head. When my hair was falling out, I could not fathom losing it all. In my head, I was going to grow it back. The pills the derm had me popping were gonna work. The homeopathic shampoo bar and oils were going to work. My paleo diet was going to work. Meditating was going to work. I was convinced something was going to freaking work. It was not an option for me to shave, because my hair was going to grow back!!! Shaving it meant I was accepting it, and I was so far from that. I wasn't about to succumb to a razor and become a bald woman. No way Jose. Turns out when my body hears "no way Jose" it just laughs while doing whatever  the hell it wants. Who knew?! The thing about holding onto those last few strands, is that it amplified my alopecia emotionally. There was so much pain that came with physically feeling my hair fall out every single second of every single day. Even when I was sleeping! My poor cat Jasper (shout out Twilight) used to love jumping on my pillow and sleeping near my head. As a crazy cat lady, I obviously loved every second of it until alopecia struck. During this period, I HATED it. I would wake up multiple times throughout the night in a panic that more and more hair was being ripped out each time he jumped up on my pillow for cuddles. Way to ruin cat cuddles alopecia. As if you weren’t already rude enough! While I wasn’t “sick”, I looked sick. It looked like I was battling far more than my autoimmune system being an asshole. One day I was facetiming with my mom crying as usual. Crying seems to be a common theme for my alopecia journey. My mom suggested shaving my head. She said it might make me feel better, and she ended up being right. Yes mom, you read that correctly, I said you were right. This ONE time you were right. 😉 I did cry my eyes out (staying on brand) while getting my head shaved, but afterwards it felt better not having to physically feel the loss anymore. It was a new normal, but the constant dread that came along with washing my hair, taking off my topper (my hair would get stuck in the clips and rip out), feeling pieces fall on me at work, waking up and seeing how much less hair I had than the day/week/month before was finally gone. That dread caused me massive amounts of anxiety, and it was freeing not to feel it anymore. I suppose its sorta like breaking up with a shitty boyfriend. You know the type. The one you will bend over backwards for to keep, even though they treat poop better than you. Even so, when you break up you think your world is ending, but what really happens is that you have your come to Jesus moment and realize life is so much better being free of that pain……in the ass douche canoe. We've all been there LOL.
 What should you do? Shoot this is a hard one to give advice on because alopecia is soooo different for every single person. There is no guarantee that your body will act like mine, and there is no guarantee your body won’t act like mine. What I can tell you, is that you should seriously consider the impact on your emotional health. If you’ve lost a crap ton of hair, is it going to benefit you emotionally to keep hanging on, or would it be better to just shave it, get wiggy with it, and wait and see what happens after? I’ve yet to meet a single alopecian who regretted shaving the last pieces off. Talk to your friends, talk to your family, or even talk to me! Get yourself a solid support system that will have your back no matter what your decision ends up being. Always listen to your gut, and know there is a whole baldie boo community out there who will have your back! We got you boo! We got you!

2018 Year In Review

The holidays are a weird time for me. I’m not sure exactly why, but there is something about the time frame between Thanksgiving and Valentines Day that always spikes my depression and anxiety. Even this year when everything has been on the up and up. Here I am, in my head in a funk. Do I have a reason to feel this way? Nope, sure don’t. But that’s the thing about depression, it never really chooses a reasonable time to show up. Sometimes it just wants to make an appearance as a quick reminder that it can hide, but it can also come back anytime it wants. Rude AF. I think the obvious reason here is that I’m 35 and spending yet another holiday alone. Which in theory is fine because I’m totally okay with being single. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, every year that I have been in a relationship during the holidays, it’s never been Hallmark movie worthy. If anything, its been the exact opposite and included me feeling more alone in the relationship than I feel now as a single lady (insert Beyonce hand motion here). Maybe that’s it. That the holidays remind me that I’ve never had a holiday with a man friend who has truly made me feel loved or special. Instead its usually me, scrolling through social media and talking to my friends while being envious (maybe a smidge jealy) of the man friends they have who make them feel like princesses. Luckily as history goes, this feeling will start to fade away after my birthday and will make its final exit after Valentine’s day. I guess you can say, I’m so ready for February! Denver February means that pool weather is just a hop, skip, and jump away (why does saying that make me feel like an elementary teacher?) Just gotta tough it out until my bald butt is laying pool side making this tan skin even tanner (now its your turn to be jealy 😊) I’m sooo ready for it!For this week’s post, I thought I’d do a 2018 year in review and share some of my most favorite memories of this past year. Hope you enjoy and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!1. I turned THIRTY FIVE! The scary age that happened after I passed my original scary age of 30. I celebrated with not one but two boozy brunches, and realized that brunch is my new most favorite meal of the day. It was also when I made a conscious decision to start having more fun and go out there and live that YOLO  best life. A decision that made 2018 one of the best years so far!2. I got to see my most favorite kids from Akron (Lebron James obvi..no offense if you are one of my friends from Akron, I still love you just as much) playing in Denver. At the time I was hoping, wishing, praying, it wouldn’t be my last time getting to see him play in CAVS wine and gold, but alas it was. I hate to break it to you Bron, but purple and yellow will never look as good as wine and gold. Just sayin! PS I miss you and please come back!!3. OMG I went on my first dates since losing my hair and my first dates using a dating app. This will for sure be its own blog entry at another time. Yes, it was awkward, hilarious, fun, and wayyyy outside of my comfort bubble as expected. I went on two dates with two different dudes and didn’t go on a single other date after that. Baby steps people, baby steps.4. This is a sad one. I had to say goodbye to my little kitty Jasper. I got him in 2009, and he traveled with me from Ohio to Denver. He was my #1 sidekick through all of the rough times, the good times, and everything in between. Saying goodbye to him was one of THE HARSDEST things I ever had to do. I miss you every single day my little buddy.5. Got my first Shuly wig!! This is my 3rd human hair wig since losing all of my hair, and it is hands down my most favorite. The hair quality is amazing and it is everything I’ve wanted in a wig and more. If I was a baller shot caller, you better believe I’d fly my butt to NYC to get a dozen more. But one will have to do for now 😊6. Took my first trip to NASHVegas to celebrate my BFF Heather’s Bachelorette weekend!! The trip was a total blast!! I literally don’t understand how college kids in Nashville can graduate. How can you choose studying over all of the other fun things to do out there?! Props to you if you’ve done it. This trip was interesting because it was my first time having girlfriends see me first thing in the morning…no hair…no makeup….full bald…eyebrowless Supriya. Straight up ET phone home alien mode. I had MAJOR anxiety about it the entire trip, but everyone there made it so easy me. Pro tip--if you want to know how to make peace with alopecia, find yourself a strong AF girl squad who will give you all of the confidence in the world!7. TAYLOR SWIFT. Yes, I am a 35 year old Swifty. Yes, I jumped all of these verified fan hoops to secure my place in the ticket line. Let me tell you, it was all WORTH it. I don’t know about you, but I was feeling 22 that night!8. Had another family reunion in Siesta Key. 900000% humidity is worth it for fun vacations with the fam!9. I moved on up! Literally. I moved up one floor into a new renovated apartment that I LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE! Thank you renovations, target, and hobby lobby for making my girlie decorating dreams come true.10. After 6 months of being pet free, I adopted a tiny little kitten and named him Neville Longbottom! He is the cutest, funniest, craziest wild man of a cat. Everyday he makes me laugh and he is currently curled up next to me while I type this blog. I may suck at relationships, but man am I great at being a cat mom.11. Last, but not least, I started this BLOG!!! After months and months of feeling unfilled with life, of feeling like the world was going to shit and I was doing nothing to contribute to society, I decided to get off my overly anxious butt and do something about it. Here I am sharing my story with family, friends, and strangers, all while making new alopecia friends every single day. I cant wait to see what this blog will bring me in the New Year!HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!! Hope you all are safe, have fun, and drink lots of Pedialyte. Nobody wants to start a new year with a new hangover. Am I right? Talk to you in 2019 boos!! 

What Not To Do When Your Nail Tech Calls You Fat

Oh hello friends. It’s almost Christmas and that is completely insane. Its about 60 degrees in Denver today, so it surely doesn’t feel like almost Christmas. This time of the year means that I’m only a couple months away from my bday. Next year I am turning 36 and that is literally the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Getting older is so weird because when you’re younger you think 36 sounds SO OLD. You assume by 36 you will have everything figured out. But with 36 less than 2 months away, the only thing that I have figured out is my reality tv lineup. Have you ever watched Love After Lockup? Because OMG you HAVE to watch Love After Lockup. It is the worst and the best all rolled up into one glorious hour.I thought today I’d dive a little bit deeper into that time frame in between losing my first handful of hair and shaving my head. I keep using the Gollum reference, so to stay on brand lets call these the Gollum months. When I first realized that I was losing way more hair than my normal shedding, I thought it was weird, but I wasn’t alarmed yet. I honestly didn’t even think it was related to my alopecia because my alopecia had never acted like that. I thought it would just stop in a couple days, but as you can tell by my shiny dome, I thought very wrong. I remember the day of sheer panic when I realized something was very wrong. I was sitting at work on a conference call and had my sleeves rolled up. I looked down at my arms and realized my arm hair was GONE. Now I am of Eastern Indian decent. My arm hair was never thin. I basically had Chewbacca hairy arms, but today it looked like someone had nair’d them in my sleep. Am I dating myself? Is nair still a thing? Do the youths know the struggle of using chemical cream to remove your lady mustache leaving you with a smooth but slightly chemically burned upper lip? Anywho, I saw this and FREAKED OUT. It was at that moment I realized that I could be losing ALL of my hair. I kept telling myself, its not alopecia, its not alopecia. This is because I didn’t want it to be alopecia. I knew damn well that there is no cure for alopecia. I needed it to be something with a cure. I thought if I said it enough I could convince my body of it. That I could go into the doctor, have them tell me it’s a thyroid issue, give me a bottle of pills, and my problems would be fixed. Of course, that is not what happened. Instead I went to my dermatologist and he told me I was having an alopecia flare up. Can we talk about my derm Dr. Norris for a moment? He is literally the sweetest, best dermatologist on the planet. I’ve bawled my eyes out in his clinic a million times over, and he is soooo kind and sweet. Always comforting me and saying, “Its okay, I know how tough it is, we see a lot of tears in the hair clinic.” Today Dr. Norris broke the news to me and I was crushed. There are not any alopecia cures, but there are many experimental treatments. Dr. Norris had a plan of attack and we were going to give it a shot. I was willing to try anything to keep my hair. He started me on a course of prednisone and methotrexate. Yes, methotrexate is used for chemo, but at these smaller doses its not considered chemo.Have you ever taken prednisone before? I like to kindly refer to it as the devil drug. Why you ask? Because it fucked shit up for me. My body has always been overly sensitive to medications and I often get side effects. Boy did I ever. My mood was wild. Anything could make me cry. I would go from normal, happy, fine, to rage filled, blood boiling, emotional mess. It made me ungodly hungry, and while I stopped eating carbs during that time to prevent the weight gain, I still gained. Mostly in my face and gut. I don’t blame Dr. Norris for any of this of course. Everyone’s body acts differently and mine was acting like an angsty teenage girl who got her cell phone taken away. Unfortunately, my flare up continued to progress and I had to make my very first hair investment—a topper. A topper is basically hair you clip onto the top of your head to make it look like you have hair when yours is thinning away. I hated that thing SO MUCH. It would rip more hair out every time I unclipped it. It never felt secure on my head. I hated the way it looked in photographs. It honestly just made me miss my old hair that much more.During this time frame I remember having an extra shitty, I feel fugly pity party day. I decided to go get my nails did. I wanted to be comfortable, so I didn’t wear the topper. Instead I put those feeble remaining pieces of hair into a teeny tiny side braid and hoped for the best. Welp…best is not what I got lol. I was sitting in the nail chair and the lady immediately asked about my hair. From the jump I felt like crying. Next, I thought she asked me if I had gained weight, but I also thought I misheard her because WHO ASKS THAT?!?!?!? I asked her to repeat herself and then the technician next to her looked at me and said, “she wants to know if you gained weight because we can see it in your face.” I shit you not. OF COURSE I had gained weight. I had been pumping my body full of prednisone and my face looked like a little puff ball. I responded by shaking my head and holding back my tears. I used every single ounce of strength not to start crying in that salon chair. My hands were even shaking at one point. The second I walked out of the salon, I bawled and bawled and bawled my eyes out. I walked into my apartment, laid on the floor and bawled some more. That day getting my nails done didn’t make me feel cute, it made me feel like a fat, ugly sea slug. Womp womp.Stuff like that continued to happen, but never as bad as that day. I recall a shocked coworker thinking I had cancer. I remember walking into my crossit, and immediately crying for no reason at all. I had SERIOUS pony tail envy lol. Who gets jealy of a pony tail? Oh yeah, I did because all I wanted was my pony tail back. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, thank goodness I had my crossfit family on my side. The same goes for my work fam. For every tear there was a hug, for every break down, there was a text, for every sad cubicle talk there was an ear to listen. I’m not sure I would have had the will to push through those awful months if it wasn’t for all of them. My Ohio fam and friend fam were such amazing long-distance support too. I remember calling my best friend Kristin at 6AM because I realized my hair loss was moving to places on my head where it couldn’t be hidden. I completely broke down to her on the phone while she was getting ready for work and she still took the time to patiently listen and help me get through it. The feeling of loss was so real and so overwhelming.
Now let’s fast forward to today. I was brunching (PS brunch is a VERY regular occurrence in my life #BasicAF) with my friends Kera, Rachel, and Mattie. Rachel asked me what my long-term goal is with this blog. I think its just this. To share these raw emotions and stories. To be able to connect with people who are going through this and help them feel less alone. To help people going through alopecia know that their emotions are valid, that their feelings are real, that its okay to feel sad no matter how many times people tell you “at least its just hair”. If I can help one person struggling, then I know I am doing the right thing. 😊 That’s all for now friends. Hope you have a fabulous week my sweet boos!! Byeeeee.

The Baldie Boo Story

One week ago, I posted my first blog and launched my Baldie Boo Instagram. I’m so blown away by the response and am excited to see what is to come. The fact that strangers are reaching out to me with their own alopecia stories is legit the best ever. Sharing is caring with this disease, that’s for damn sure. So, speaking of sharing, I thought I’d take a little trip down memory lane, and share some deets on my alopecia journey. Buckle up kids and bring your lint rollers because shit is about to get hairy.First, I need to rewind back to 2013. Actually, lets throw it back one more to 2012. 2012 was not a good year in my life. I was in a dumpster fire of a relationship. I was living in Colorado and my only real Colorado best friend was my boyfriend of 2 years (because I moved to Colorado with him in 2010). Now typically you don’t use dumpster fire and BFF to describe the same relationship, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbled. I made A LOT of poor life decisions in that relationship. I mean I look back at 2010-2013 Supriya and think, good lord woman, get it together!!! The list is endless and to say I ignored the red flags is the understatement of the century. Times were bad for my little brain and I didn’t have any real friends or family out here to shake me until I started making sensible choices. Instead I started to drown in my abyss of emotions and my depression and anxiety were at a whole new level of bad news bears. Now back to 2013. I’m at Target, living my best life, buying all the things I do not need. The Target dressing room has a million mirrors, so you can see every awkward angle of yourself and be horrified. Well today I happened to have my hair up in a pony tail and was trying on something or another. I look in the mirror and can see the back-left side of my lower scalp. I notice a coin shaped patch of skin near my pony tail. After much maneuvering and trying to capture it on my phone, I realized it was for sure a bald spot. I go to the doctor, he ships me off to a derm, he looks at the spot and says yup its alopecia. He shoots it up with some steroid injections (not the gym brah kind) and sends me on my way. I’ll get into treatment options in a later blog, but this is one of them. I continued to get these less than pleasant scalp injections for the next few months and poof my hair grew back! Phew!!Now lets fast forward to 2015. Things in life are turning aroundISH. I had signed up for crossfit at the end of 2013 and for the first time in my Colorado life I had friends. Not just casual acquaintances, but actual ride or die type friends. My relationship is over, but at the end of that dumpster fire relationship, I was about 87 levels below rock bottom. I hated myself more than anyone or anything…and if I’m being nitty gritty honest here, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be around in the world anymore. Depression is such a fuck. It had taken over every ounce of my body. It was a serious climb to start building myself back up to okay…let alone good. Making real friends was a great starting point though. For the first time since moving to Colorado, I had people in this state who genuinely cared for me and loved me. I had been surrounded by so much self-inflicted negativity for so long that it was a new normal to function around caring, loving people again. So, I’m out here living life and starting to dig out of my hole. My little brain was still in rough shape though. I would fake happy around my friends and come home and crumple up in a heap and just cry and cry and cry. Life felt impossible most days. Like I said, depression is a FUCK. I get man, if you’ve been blessed enough to never have had depression or anxiety, this all probably sounds like nonsense to you. If I could have just flipped a switch and changed things, you better believe I would have. But I was just so very stuck, and mentally I was average at best. I wasn’t seeking out therapy or medication to deal with these issues at that time, so my emotions just festered in me until my body had had enough.In May of 2015 I was getting ready for work. I love big ass hair, so I of course was teasing mine, when I noticed a pile of hair in my hands. I’ve always been a shedder, but this seemed like a large amount. From that day on, my hair fell out piece by piece, handful by handful, all day long. I would shower and the tub would be covered in obscene amounts of hair. It would fall while I was driving, while I was working out, while I was sleeping. ALL DAY LONG.  I went to the doctor and he told me I was having an alopecia flare up. While there is no known official cause for alopecia, he attributed it to my emotional stress. I was given some medication and told not to stress out…which let me tell you is a really easy thing to do when your hair is falling out by the handful…NOT LOL. This is when I entered my Gollum months. Now I don’t actually watch Lord of the Rings, but I know Gollum. Him and I looked like total twinsies during this time. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. We basically had the same who wore it best hairstyle. My hair continued its mass exodus and by August it was basically all gone.

I went to a salon called Hanas Designs and purchased my first full wig. Hana shaved off my last few strands of hair while I sat in her chair bawling my eyes out. This was the day I made wearing wigs trendy…sorry Kylie I got you beat! Those 4 months of hair loss were just so awful. I felt like I was losing my identity, my femininity my self-worth strand by strand. I know, I know, I know, its just hair. Trust me I KNOW. But I want to be raw and honest about my experience and that is what I was feeling. I didn’t think my depression and anxiety could get worse, but man oh man did this crush me. My desire to live was just so little. Looking at this now, I realize how silly that sounds. Life is so precious and such a gift, but back then I am not exaggerating when I say depression had taken over every damn ounce of my body. So, this is where I began my journey into bald life.This story is long, and I don’t want to turn this blog entry into encyclopedia volumes A-F. I’m gonna pause here, but I will continue in a later post. For now...To Be Continued...Reading this part of my story seems so surreal now. Its just a few years later yet I am SUCH a different person now. I was at a holiday party yesterday with some of my old crossfit friends, and my friend Jenny mentioned how I seemed the happiest she’s ever seen me. It’s the truth! Life is for real good so damn good now. While this entry is emotionally intense, the light at the end of the tunnel was nearer than I realized at that time. So that’s all for now. Talk to you soon my fellow baldie and non-baldie boos!! Come back soon! xoxoxo 

Oh Hi!

Hey guys. Welcome to my blog! A little about me. My name is Supriya and I have alopecia universalis. For those of you who don’t know, at a very high level, alopecia is an autoimmune disease that causes your body to wage a war against your hair follicles. It can come in the form of areata (bald patches), totalis (losing all scalp hair) and universalis (bye bye all hair..its been real). Anywho, this disease has taken me on quite the little journey over the past 3.5 years. So I thought I’d give this blogging thing a go and share my story. The longer I have this disease, the more passionate I become about sharing my experiences in hopes of helping others who suffer from hair loss. But lets be real here, this journey has been tough and I am by no means a picture of perfection. I am just a gal who has things to say and maybe there are a few bald gals or guys out there who can relate. If not, that’s cool too, I’ll just sit here and talk to myself. No big deal. LOL. For my inaugural post, I thought I’d share my alopecia “coming out” social media post circa 2015. Before I get there, I want to share a few other random fun facts about myself completely unrelated to anything of importance. Icebreaker...the blog version.• I excel at binge watching TV. Give me a series, and I’ll watch a season in a weekend. I probably shouldn’t be bragging about this? Maybe this is why I’m a single awkward cat lady and not a 2 cool for school married person? Hmmm...• Speaking of, I have a little kitten and he is a wild man. When he isn’t trying to use my arm as a scratching post, he is pretty dang cute. Oh yeah, his name is Neville and you guessed it...I love me some Harry Potter (and periods of ellipses apparently) and yes he is House Gryffindor and I am a Puff...still struggling to figure out HOW I could be single LMAO.• I’m obsessed with the CAVS and am so sad Lebron wears purple and yellow now. ☹ I mean it legit HURTS. Ouch.• I love working out but I also love chocolate chip cookie cake…the struggle is SO DAMN REAL MAN!!Okay enough randomness for now. Trust me there will be way more where that came from. While alopecia is a part of my life, some days my life is like a weird Truman show world filled with awkward encounters and MANY laughable moments that I swear people are filming and laughing at. You best believe I will talk about those too.I plan on blogging about random adventures in bald life—working out, dating (UGH), wigs, eyebrows, fake lashes, funny mishaps, and whatever else that pops into my brain. If you have something you’d like to hear more about, feel free to shoot me some questions, comments, concerns. I’ll re-iterate I’m no expert in this, I’m just a work in progress willing to share her journey along the way. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Check out my social media “coming out” below and I’ll see ya on the next post boo!!SupriyaI've been going back and forth about posting these for some time now, but since you're reading this it means I finally grew a pair and posted 😳. Don't worry I do not have cancer. I do have an autoimmune disease called alopecia, and two years ago my body thought it would be super fun to start attacking my hair until I had none left. Pretty rude if you ask me. May of 2015 I was doing my hair and noticed a pile of hair in my hands. For the next 4 months my hair fell out by the handful. Finally I caved and shaved the last few strands off and started living the wig life. (I was doing it before Kylie Jenner made it trendy). The summer of 2016 alopecia decided to take my eyebrows. So now they are a combination of tattoos and makeup. Yes that means my first and only tattoo was a face tat. 😧 Finally this year I lost my lashes. I'm now officially hair free. Best disease ever neck down (free laser..am I right?!), not so fun lashes up.As someone who has been battling depression, anxiety, and body image issues the bulk of her adult life, alopecia was a crushing blow. It's not all that surprising to me that my biggest medical hurdle to date was caused by my own body attacking itself. Being my own worst enemy tends to be the story of my life.Losing your hair is a weird thing. Everyone tells you "at least you're not dying"...which is true and something I'm beyond thankful and grateful for. But losing my identity strand by strand was not exactly the best feeling in the world either. Maybe it sounds vain, but I've spent many many tearful days consumed with sadness, missing the person I used to be..physically at least. I was already getting myself out of a rock bottom part of my life when this disease entered my world, and it definitely slammed me right back down to rock bottom in a hot second.Im not sure why I'm making this part of my life Facebook official now. Maybe it means I'm finally making peace with things? Maybe it's because through this process I've cut out the most toxic people I've ever had in my life and replaced them with some of the most amazing humans on the planet who have accepted me, loved me (hair or no hair), and supported me every second of this nightmare. Or maybe it's just so someone else who may be going through a shitty shitty time can see that things can get better. Because it does get better. Even when it feels physically and mentally impossible. It gets better. Somehow some way.Either way that's my story. If you've read this far into my novel of a post, thank you for reading. Also I may or may not be throwing up after hitting post. Not nervous about this at all. 😰😰😰😬😬😬😱PS if you have any alopecia questions, please don't hesitate to ask!📷cred: the AMAZING Green Chair Stories