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I’m not a selfie taker. In fact, just the word “selfie” gets under my skin. 

I had no intention of sharing this photo when I took it. It was shot on Dec. 26, 2018 at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis—we spent Christmas in STL with my aunt. 

I have a background in architecture and I’m completely enamored and enthralled with the arch. So is my husband. We just can’t get enough of it. Every time we go to STL, we have to get up close and personal with this feat of engineering and design. Did you know that you can take little “industrial dryer tubs” (elevator pods) up to the top that go “chink chink chink” as they make their way up the flattened catenary curve? (The arch isn’t a parabola, as many people think.)

If you don’t have any plans to go to STL anytime soon, do yourself a favor and watch the documentaries online of the making of the arch. They make me weep. But I digress…

Many people (mostly those who are on the waiting list for the next round of my Reversing Alopecia course) have asked something like, “Okay, I get that you were 1/3 bald and you grew your hair back, but have you kept your hair?” 

I’m pleased to say yes.

I get it. Many people with alopecia have tried various conventional approaches (drugs and “hair loss remedies”) only to see some improvement and then lose their hair once again. Or see no improvement at all.

These conventional (and often degenerative) approaches rarely work because they don’t get to the root (no pun intended) cause of the loss, so it’s a losing (and extremely frustrating) battle. 

It was really blustery the day the above photo was taken. As many of you know, at one point, I was 1/3 bald—for quite some time—with alopecia ophiasis. I had no hair above my ears, wrapping around the back of my head. 

(My husband, the mathematician, said, “Honey, you were more like 40% bald.”)

When things were bad, there’s simply no way I would’ve walked around without my hat on on a blustery day like this, with the wind whipping every which way, much less allowed my picture to be taken.

For the most part, I’ve had my hair back for two years. I’ve had little spots here and there, but they’ve all grown back quickly, unlike what was happening the few years prior—clear-cuts everywhere with NO improvement for months and with some of my larger spots, no improvement for a couple of years. All of that has grown in.

So while things have been really good for me for quite some time, this picture really struck me insofar as how far I’ve come, not only due to the volume of hair, but also the texture, which is better than it’s been in years.

When things were bad, the texture of my hair (what I had) was largely like straw. Very dry and wiry. Kind of like the “thyroid hair” that a lot of people with Hashimoto’s complain of, although my thyroid was checking out fine and I didn’t have unusually dry skin.

All of those curly-q’s you see on the sides here? Those were MIA for a long time and when my hair started growing back in, it was DRY. Dry city. I’d accepted that it was likely my lot in life and I’d rather have dry hair than no hair. I thought, I’ll take it!

But as time went on and my hair continued to grow, much to my surprise, the texture improved to the point that it’s the same as it was before things went south. (I don’t use any styling products other than a small amount of leave-in conditioner.)

I don’t feel that I’m a “special case.” I’ve always been transparent about how reversing alopecia takes work. And time. I put in the work. I put in a healthy five figures figuring it out. And I was patient—not always patiently patient, but I had faith.

If you’re struggling with alopecia, I’d love to have you in the next round of my Reversing Alopecia masterclass series. You can see what my wonderful and hard-working prior participants had to say about the Summer 2018 course right here. (And I will be posting some updated testimonials soon!)

If you haven’t already, you can look to the top left of this page to sign up for updates on the course. Remember, reversing alopecia is an inside job. I can give you the insider’s perspective.