Hair isn’t just seen, it’s felt. The swish of a ponytail down my back, the weight of it brushing my shoulders, the absent-minded comfort of twirling long strands between my fingers. When they began to vanish, it wasn’t cosmetic. It was grief, identity and fear in one.
Over the past few years I’ve lost almost 75% of my hair density. At first it crept in quietly: thinning after COVID in 2020 that I blamed on bleach, a receding hairline I put down to stress. Then came two miscarriages, an intramural ectopic pregnancy, repeated COVID infections, and a hospital stint with E-coli. The shedding accelerated and in August 2023, I stood in the shower, shaking and sobbing, caught between disbelief and horror as clumps of hair fell into my palms, slid down my arms and clogged the drain.
