My heart was broken, when I had to relinquish my ability to capture my husbands attention in a positive way-to allure and titillate his feelings for me. I was given no choice when cancer became my reality and alopecia areata took over. I had no control in having cancer and no choice in my end result with alopecia. I had to accept what was now a part of me, who I was who I had become.

I don’t believe most people believe that loosing your hair means relinquishing a huge part of your life that you once controlled. I have been told by the very people that loved me most, that if who I am rests on who I was with hair, then I must not think very much of myself.
When I would hear those words, I tied up in a knot and thought I just lost another part of me; their perception of me and who they respected was the person with hair; and because my world had tilted they couldn’t accept the insecurities I felt now that I was living without hair.
I soon realized that I could never make them understand that everyday of my journey another part of Marilyn with hair was chipped away.

In all fairness, I was different. I was needier in ways I had not been before; but every ones attitude only reconfirmed what I knew I had lost.

I had to make a change but how? I had no control over the loss of my hair; but I had to take back control of how I perceived my loss and myself before anyone else could accept it.

I began a journal of my journey through this new part of my life. I was different and I had changed that was a fact. I was not Marilyn with the pretty hair and great smile. I was a robot trying to will my inner self to surface through my smile and it didn’t always work. My beautiful grandson and his perception of me tells this story well. One day after a fun time in the park and a lot of dirt that had to be washed away, he watched me wash my head and I notice tears in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he really wished I had my hair back. I told him that I wished the very same thing; but it looked like I was never going to get it back and how did that make him feel? He hugged me tight and said “ Nana I just wanted to see your smile again”. It took me month’s to get over that one.

What I learned was that I had to believe in that smile, before it would work.
That’s when I decided that I had to make friends with the mirror again, up to this point it had become my enemy. I would look in a mirror and I couldn’t see me, not even a little. I saw a woman named Marilyn whose husband, not in words but in actions turned away from her, a woman that was needy and clingy. I saw this Marilyn very clearly. I saw a woman whose strength of character had never been challenged , not by her children her friends her family or herself. I had been proud of my ability to care for others above all else, now I doubted I could even take care of me. I felt like a shadow in a mirror. I found that I never smiled when I saw my reflection, just as my grandson in that wonderful child like perception had already become aware of. Where was I? Who was I? I only knew that I wanted to find me again no matter what I had to do.

I began to play a game. Everyday , at least once, I passed a mirror and said,” hello Marilyn, nice to see you”. It was a long time before I looked in that mirror and actually saw my reflection again. That happened not with just finding my beautiful new hair; but also finding the new Marilyn without hair. Everyday I have new experiences for the new Marilyn and her new life, some are funny and some still twist my heart. I still keep a journal, it's my life and my story. I have lost many things In my life because of my hair loss ;but with my solution and my strength of character I have taken back the most important and cherished things about me , one of them being my smile.