Ann’s Story and Karen’s Story

Ann’s Story

When I was seventeen I lost my hair. I’d had an autoimmune disease called alopecia almost my whole life, with small circular bald spots appearing and disappearing in my thick hair since I was three, so at first I assumed the ever-increasing patches would fill back in like they always had. Except this time they didn’t, and within about six months I was almost completely bald.

I had been a theater brat, loving the stage and the limelight since I’d starred in the sixth-grade Christmas play. I practically lived in the high school theater, took acting classes at a nearby college, and performed everything from Shakespeare to Anne Frank on local community stages. I was pretty and vivacious, and invariably cast as the ingénue. My dream was to study serious theater in college, and act in a reparatory company or even perform on Broadway.

That was, until I lost my hair and “knew” my dream was over. What’s more, somehow it felt like I’d lost my full rights as a member of the human tribe. Now I know that sounds dramatic, but even now I recall so clearly how I felt at seventeen. I’d watch carefree people in TV commercials and feel that there was no room in that reality for me, a bald girl. I felt—ashamed. And oh, so separate.

I think it’s possible that before losing my hair this separateness was lurking under the surface of my life. I was never as skinny as the Seventeen models in their tube tops and short shorts (this was 1981), and I’d grown up knowing my parents had an open marriage which was certainly not the norm. But I went to an alternative high school where we were all a bit different, and basically felt I fit in as well as anyone most of the time. And yet, there was something so disconnecting for me in losing my hair, something so fundamentally shocking and strange and different, that for the first time I experienced a profound chasm between myself and “normal” people. The chasm of separation.

As I began to realize my hair was not coming back any time soon, I started wearing scarves and then wigs (always hoping it was temporary, of course). I was mortified if anyone commented on my hair or asked me if I was wearing a wig, and that exuberant girl who loved being center stage faded into the background so she wouldn’t be noticed. Of course, this made me feel even more separate and cut off, as I removed myself from situations where there was the possibility of connection for fear of being seen, and therefore judged as less than by others.

But some people got through anyway, and at the height of my feelings of isolation, a group of older friends adopted me. They must have seen the spark alive somewhere inside me. They encouraged me to talk about losing my hair, and they brought me to personal growth seminars (it was the 80s, after all), where I saw with fascination that I wasn’t alone in feeling alone. At age eighteen, I saw and understood it was part of the human condition to long to be part of the tribe, and to believe there is something shameful or wrong in oneself that is preventing this sense of belonging. For me, it was losing my hair. For others, it was addiction, or lack of success, or being from another country. I saw that it wasn’t personal; I was somehow part of a general condition of aloneness. This realization was my own path home to myself.

It’s over thirty years now since I was that young girl feeling so completely lost and alone, and I’ve come to see that losing my hair has truly been one of the most profound blessings of my life. One thing it taught me was the visceral understanding of what it feels like to step fully into the question that haunts us all—am I a part of things? On a basic, fundamental human level, do I belong?

Karen’s Story

When I was eleven, my mother told me that she was ashamed of me. We had gone swimming at the community pool and after we got home, she took me aside. I looked so pretty, she said, when I came up from under the water, with my tanned skin and the water sliding off my dark eyelashes. But when I got out of the pool and began to walk toward her, she was embarrassed, she said, for people to know I was her little girl. I can still remember the flush of shame, from my toes to the tips of my blond hair. I wished for the floor to open up and swallow me.

Looking back, I wasn’t really overweight. I was stocky and strong and far from the idealized, “perfect” girl that my mother wanted me to be, the one we always saw in magazines and on TV. Those girls were willowy and thin, or cute and bouncy like cheerleaders. They seemed to move effortlessly through life.

I was an intense adolescent, dramatic, angry, and lonely. I longed to be easy, to flirt effortlessly, and to giggle and laugh. I longed to be friendly and outgoing. If I had the chance, I probably would have given a limb in exchange for being one of the “really popular girls.”

Instead, I felt awkward and shy, alone and afraid. I had boyfriends, but I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. Of course, I was constantly surrounded by images that reinforced my feeling of being all wrong. My shoulders were too broad. My arms were too short. My skin was not smooth enough. My hair was too straight and too thin. I was too big, too clunky, neither cute, nor graceful, nor beautiful.

My first year of college I was in the common area of my dorm when I overheard some girls talking about eating and then making themselves throw up. They were laughing about how much ice cream they could eat and how it was a surefire way to lose weight. The next day, I tried it on my own. And thus began twelve long years as a closet bulimic.

Actually “closet” is an unnecessary modifier. Being a bulimic and secrecy go hand in hand. Secrecy is one of the things that keeps the behavior in place. The other is shame.

I tried to stop many times over the years. I’d promise myself that I was going to stop. I would for a while, and then something would happen that was emotionally challenging and the cycle would begin all over again. Finally, I found myself at a dead end. I was beginning to have health problems. My life was going nowhere very fast. Then I saw a sign on a bulletin board at a local store for a group meeting of women with eating disorders.

I wrote down the address, and for several weeks in a row, I just casually walked by on the night the meetings were held. I was afraid to go in because then everyone would KNOW that I was a woman with an eating disorder, you see.

Finally, one night I got the courage to walk through the door. And the path home to myself began. The rest wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. There were times when I thought I wouldn’t make it, but with the support of others managed to stay on my recovery path. In many ways, my battle with bulimia was my salvation. The physical challenge illuminated my path toward wholeness. I believe we each have our own challenges, our own “break in belonging,” and our own path of healing. It’s part of both the gift and the challenge of being a human being.