#177 It's Not Just Hair!

If you lost your hair during chemo and had to endure the weird regrowth stages, watched it grow back looking like someone else’s hair, or watched it thin due to menopause and hormone treatments then you know…it’s not just hair. 

But you may have heard that comment from others along the way. 

Hair and our identity are closely entwined. 

We change our hair to fit our stage of life, reflect our personality, and fit into religious or cultural norms. 

We judge people based on what their hair looks like 

We envy thick, lush hair. 

It signifies youth, fertility, sexuality and so much more. 

A bad hair day can affect your self-confidence and not allowing yourself to experience the emotions that your thoughts around hair loss bring up can create more pain than the loss itself. 

In this show, I’ll dig into hair, what it means to us, how we can think about it in healthier ways, and what solutions are available to support your healthy locks while you love yourself along the way. 

Referred to in this episode: 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

American Hair Loss Association 
What to Know About the Latest Advancements in Treating Women’s Hair Loss 

Read the full transcript below:

Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

Unknown Speaker 0:37
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. So happy to be here with you today. I got to tell you, one, the biggest thing on my mind today is the amazing past. Let's see is it it's coming up on two weeks now that I have been doing the love yourself unconditionally challenge in my member groups and in the breast cancer recovery group. It's been so amazing. And I invite you to join us just to be able to see what is happening in the breast cancer recovery group or enroll in a better than before breast cancer membership. You can also participate in that way and get even more coaching and support. But the amazing thing about it is that one when I first started talking about it, and we realized how challenging it is so often for women to identify something they love about themselves. One of the things that I heard right off the bat was, are we going to have to do this all month long. The idea of thinking of something for 28 days in a row 28 things that you love about yourself, seemed very challenging for people. And now that each day we're coming up with one thing and some people have enlisted the help of their loved ones to ask like what do you love about me, and so that they have something else they can be aware of and recognize in themselves. They're coming up with these fantastic insights. And I even had someone in my better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, say she woke up. And her first thought is, what's one thing I love about myself today? How cool is that? To shift from all the ways that we criticize and judge and label ourselves to actually wake up thinking? What do I love about myself? How would that change your life? It's pretty incredible to think about. So if you're in any of the groups, if you're in my membership, if you're in the breast cancer recovery group, make sure in post, check in on this challenge. Look with some of the ladies in there are offering and see how that resonates with you. And see if that's something that you recognize in yourself or something that you see you're blocking and struggling with the ability to really love yourself without condition, the ability to drop judgments of yourself. Because if you can work on that piece, and learn to love yourself, I promise you, you can expand that love in so many ways in your life, it will change your life. And all that being said, you can enroll in the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, it is open for enrollment, just go to the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching and come and join me and get the support you need in transforming your life to make it even better than before breast cancer. So exciting. All right. So this podcast this topic, I am really excited about this. And I feel like it's one of those things that I think about I think, why haven't I done this before? Why haven't I talked about this on the podcast before because it's such an obvious pain point for any of us who have gone through this experience. And it has come up so many times in the past month for me in my coaching calls with members and clients.

Unknown Speaker 3:58
And what I'm going to talk about is hair loss.

Unknown Speaker 4:03
If you have been through chemotherapy, if you are on Tamoxifen or other aromatase inhibitors that are causing hair thinning, if cancer treatment puts you into menopause, and your hair is shedding they call it and falling out by the handfuls.

Unknown Speaker 4:22
It's a struggle, right? It's a really traumatic experience. And I want to share my story with you around hair loss. And then I want to talk about why it's important to us why it's not just hair, and what you can do for yourself as far as how you're thinking about hair loss and its impact on you and your self worth and actually some resources for how you can physically address hair loss and what options are available to you. So I distinctly remember when I got

Unknown Speaker 5:00
The phone call that I had cancer and this was in 2011, the original diagnosis.

Unknown Speaker 5:06
I remember thinking, I'm not doing chemotherapy, immediately, like I got the diagnosis. And I don't think my first thought was, oh my god, I might die. I think my first thought was, I'm not doing chemotherapy, I'm not losing my hair. I had seen my brother go through chemotherapy in 1993, which was, you know, considerably more time before my diagnosis. And I don't know, I guess I'd never thought about hair loss being as traumatic for a man as it is for a woman, maybe it is, I don't know. And I never really talked to my brother about that. But for me, that was the first thought, I am not going bald.

Unknown Speaker 5:43
The first step in my treatment was a lumpectomy. And I was thrilled to be able to have that as an option. Let's just go in, let's get this done, let's get this lump out, let's move on with life. And when I woke up out of the beautiful slumber of anesthesia, which I gotta tell you, I like, I woke up to my doctor, my breast surgeon saying, We found spread to your lymph nodes, we're gonna need to get you in chemotherapy right away.

Unknown Speaker 6:11
And I just remember thinking, I don't want to be bald, I don't want to be bald, it never occurred to me that I couldn't handle the rest of it. And in my mind, what it looked like was what I saw my brother go through, when in reality, what I went through, and chemotherapy was much less intense than what my brother went through in 1993, when he had to be hospitalized for five days every time he went through chemotherapy. So fortunately for us, we do have drugs that manage the side effects of chemotherapy now, which is a good thing. It still sucks physically, there's many challenges that need to be managed. But I didn't think I can't get through that. Right. I didn't think if I'm weak, if I'm tired, if I'm vomiting, I thought I don't want to be bold.

Unknown Speaker 6:58
And that was definitely the most traumatic part of this idea of cancer treatment for me at that time. And I remember, I didn't want to watch my hair fall out. I thought a lot about what was going to happen. And I thought, I cannot watch my hair fall out like this is bad enough. But to watch it to me felt like even more powerless. I felt like an even more powerless position that I was in that I had no control over my hair, and that I would watch this being done to me in so I decided that after my first chemotherapy treatment, I would shave my head and I would donate my hair. And I did. And so I have four sisters, and my sisters and my mom came to my house and we one of my sisters is a hairdresser. And I had always had long hair, I never cut my hair. I think my mom cut our hair when I was in about fourth grade. And I resented her terribly for that for the majority of my life. And I swore to myself, I would never cut my hair short again. So here I was not only not going short, I was going bald. So my sister who was my hairdresser, came to the house with her clippers, and we set up a place on my patio. And then my other sister, my younger sister Christy. She brought a stereo or boombox or whatever it was, I don't know, and was playing the song by pink. I am not my hair. And my sister shaved my hair. Oh, I could feel it all coming back now as I think about it, and it was traumatizing. And then after it was shaved my mom who I don't know if any of you have a mom like my mom, which some how I don't know, I think filters are something that wither with time. And I remember my mom coming up to me and say, Wow, your head is so white.

Unknown Speaker 8:55
Just really, Mom, I just had my frickin hair shaved off. It's not seeing the light of day. Geez, I haven't been bald since the day I was born. Of course, my scalp is white. But thanks for pointing that out. Right. So here we are, again, with the things people say that they don't have any intention of being malicious. But when they hear you have a cancer diagnosis, I just had someone say that to me again. The other day, they discovered I had cancer and they said, oh gosh, my sister and my cousin both died from breast cancer. Thank you. Thanks for that, right. This is a lot of times of things that come up with our hair. And here's the number one winner if we were on Family Feud, and they said what are stupid things people say when you lose your hair and chemotherapy, ding ding It's just hair.

Unknown Speaker 9:41
And if it's just hair, then Why don't y'all shave your head too? Because it's not just hair. It is not just hair. If we're talking about it in the physical sense of what tissue is this part of your body then yes, it's just hair, but in the psychological sense in the

Unknown Speaker 10:00
sense of self image in the sense of our impression that we want to put out into the world of ourselves. Hair is so much more than that. Hair has religious connotations. Hair has cultural connotations. Hair is something that we identify with. I mean, my God, what are some of the worst days you have as a teenager, bad hair days or a zit on your face? Right? We put a lot of value and thought into hair. I read this article that said, the women in the US spend an average of $55,000 over the course of their lifetime on hair product. And I don't question that by any means. Because I know that by the time I have finished doing my hair, I have had shampoo, conditioner, definitely some kind of mousse or cream or product, a texture product, a maybe a Root Lift, depending on the look I'm going for, and a hairspray right in a day. And I'm 58 years old. So imagine how many days I've been putting product on my hair. And that doesn't even include the times that we do chemical treatments from a professional hairdresser all the times I've dyed my hair colored my hair highlighted my hair $55,000 I'd say as an average, very realistic and believable. So we don't spend that kind of money on something that's not important to us. When we see when our kids are teenagers, right? And they don't brush their hair or they don't wash their hair. We look at that as a society. And we're like, Come on, take better care of yourself. Think about the way you make a first impression on people, right? And we look at our hair as a part of that first impression. And it's true. Because psychologically and culturally speaking, when we are young, younger, or when we have thick, luscious, long hair, it's a sign of fertility. And that's just something that's in our animal brain, right? This is something that's useful, that's more virile that we think, Okay, this is a person who is of childbearing age, and in this subconscious, or even unconscious part of our brain, as the mammals that we are, it means something to us. So as we lose our hair as we get older, and as our hormones change, and as our hair thins, we identify that and think about that, as part of getting old, as being less productive or valued in society. And we have our own thoughts and ideas about that. And definitely illness right? We know when people are ill. They look different. If you saw a person come up to you and they had very thin straggly hair and bald spots, you might have a thought about that. You might have a thought about that person doesn't look healthy, or that person doesn't look sexy, or that whatever you think, and when that thought is going to be something you apply to yourself as well. When we think it's just hair, or when we believe when other people say to us it's only hair. Well, let me take that back. I don't think we ever believe it. When people say to us, it's only hair. What we too, is then feel ashamed. Right? Because that minimizes our experience. We're freaking traumatized. Our dang hair fell out. That's not fun, right? I don't think any I think we make the best of it. You know, our hair falls out will be bald, we'd make the best of it and whatever way we can. Whether that is a scarf, whether it's hats, whether it's wigs, I distinctly remember wig shopping, and how upset I was that I could not find a wig that looked like my natural hair. I had naturally long curly hair. And I just couldn't find a wig that looked like that. Nothing looks like my hair. And the wig that I ended up going with was a straight wig. And I always preferred my hair curly. I like my hair. I'm an 80s girl. I like a big and puffy and as it got curlier as I got older, I liked that curl. So I was really struggling with the fact that I couldn't even find a wig that looked like my hair. And when my hair first fell out, I did have a nice wig. It was pretty, but I put it on. And I would say this looks like my daughter's hair. It didn't look like me. Right? And we say that that doesn't look like me. And that is something I hear and have heard a lot over this past month. But I've heard a lot in general in coaching men after breast cancer. I don't look like me. And I'm going to talk about that in a minute. So this is part of this cognitive and emotional challenge and struggle and trauma that we have with our hair because it's like if I'm not me, who am I? Who is this person I'm looking at? And then somebody says to you Come on it

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Only hair, be grateful you're alive. Okay, thanks for that, right? Shut down. You don't have the right to feel the way you feel? Why are you making a big deal? You're so vain, get over yourself. And then we just suppress this feeling. And we don't talk about it, we don't feel like we have the right to feel it. And I want to tell you right now, that's bullshit, right? That's not true. And for an industry that the average woman in the United States spends $55,000, on an A lifetime on her own, and that's just an average, then it's not true for anybody. And it's not true for the person that says it to you. And it's not true for you. And I just want to say that out loud, because I hope from that, that anyone who's in this position right now who's either experiencing hair loss and baldness, because you're in treatment, or experiencing hair loss, because of ongoing treatment, or your hair just didn't come back the way you wanted it to. It's okay. That you feel the way you feel about it. It's okay. You are not alone.

Unknown Speaker 16:13
It is justified, it is understandable. But we also have to get to the point where you have to ask yourself, Is this how I want to feel?

Unknown Speaker 16:26
Is whatever I'm telling myself about my hair right now? In the feeling that it's springing up? Is it serving my healing and health? Is it helping me to live a happier life? And if the answer to that is no, then that's where the work is. So it's not to say, well, I'll just accept it and be grateful to be alive. No, feel it, allow yourself to feel it. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of your hair.

Unknown Speaker 16:58
It's okay. And when we say to ourselves, you know, that doesn't look like me. This is another thought that it's very important to explore. Because that is you.

Unknown Speaker 17:13
That is me now. And a lot of the trauma and the internal struggle. And the emotional pain that comes with treatment is the physical changes, we experience, our hair changes, our skin changes, many, many things change, depending on the treatments that you go through. And when we look at ourselves and say, That's not me, I just want to offer a new thought to consider that doesn't look like me in the same way I looked before breast cancer.

Unknown Speaker 17:47
Right? Because that's the truth. It does look like you because it is you now.

Unknown Speaker 17:53
And it's again, okay, to grieve, the loss of what you were used to write our normal aging process usually takes a lot of time. So we slowly migrate into menopause, or we slowly migrate into our 50s 60s 70s. And then we look at a picture of ourselves one day and go Holy mackerel, how did I get so old, or that looks so young, right? We go into breast cancer treatment, bam, it happens immediately. And hair loss is a major indicator, especially in that unconscious or subconscious animal brain that's like old and sick, old and sick, moving towards death. And it's okay to allow your self to recognize that your brain is offering these thoughts.

Unknown Speaker 18:38
That way you can manage them that way you can say,

Unknown Speaker 18:41
okay, brain, I see my brain is offering this, I see this is what my brain is bringing up. But here's where I'm at instead. Right? And so we have to really understand that we have the choice to choose our thoughts. And that is never to say that our thoughts are not okay. Or they're wrong, or that you have to feel ashamed of thinking them.

Unknown Speaker 19:07
Give yourself permission to feel everything that comes up. Give yourself permission to notice and to not resist. I've talked about this so many times, right? When we resist the thought, when we resist this, this is me now. Right? And we fight it? And we say no, it's not me. No, I refuse. No, I'm going to look the way I looked before. Nothing good happens from that. That doesn't help our hair grow back. And it doesn't serve you in any way.

Unknown Speaker 19:40
So I think that when we start from a place of giving ourselves permission to feel permission to grieve and permission to slowly progress into acceptance, because acceptance often doesn't happen overnight. You know

Unknown Speaker 20:00
I mean, I guess at the point where we're the acceptance clicks it, you're like, I've come to a place where I can accept this. But as you get there, you've got to let go of a lot of judgments and labels and thoughts. You've got to create and choose new thoughts along the way. And so as long as we're in this place, where we're fighting, the acceptance, we're resisting the acceptance and saying, it's got to be back this way, my hair needs to look the same way that it looked when I was 20. I don't like that it's thin, I don't accept that it's thin, then we are just refusing to love ourselves. Now. We're refusing to be in this moment with ourselves now and say, I love me.

Unknown Speaker 20:40
I'm searching for ways to get my hair to look more like the way I'd like it to look. But I still get to love me along the way.

Unknown Speaker 20:50
Okay, and you get to go through the process of grieving. There'll be days when you're like, oh, to make sure and check that bald spot on the back of my head. I know I do. I was watching TV with my husband a couple of weeks ago. And they were showing this commercial of men spraying this color on their hair, right to make their bald spots look like they have hair. And my husband's like, Who the heck could use hair spray paint? And I said, Me? I use it every day. And he's a What? Are you kidding me? And I said no. And so that was an alternative that I found right when I see that spots that are thinner, or even if I don't have time to get my hair color, because I do color my hair then I spray the out the growth, the regrowth to make it blend in with my hair, because that's the way I want to look and I'm okay with that. I get to decide how I want to present myself. But first, I have to accept who I am so that every day I see it, I don't feel sick to my stomach. I don't go back to that teenage trauma of having a bad hair day where I feel sick to my stomach or I'm just like, I tell myself, people are gonna judge me how I'm going to look if I go out in public and let these thoughts just ruin my day, right? I get to the point where I'm like, Okay, let me check your let me check there. Let me do a little spray here. Let me get my Juva been right, my little twisty that's actually made out of hair. And some days I'm just like, Okay, there's just nothing to do with this hair today. So it's put it up at a duvet bun, which makes me look like I have this thick luscious up do and I don't, that that's okay. Because I still get to accomplish the look I want. And that's a part of this once we can get to the acceptance. Once we can recognize that it's okay to have feelings of grief, feelings of anger, feelings of frustration, to allow those feelings and process them and then decide to choose a thought it's going to get us into a better place. Now we can start looking for solutions. And there are a lot of solutions out there. Believe me, trust me when I say this. There are extensions, there are vitamins, there are serums. There are creams. There are gels, there are tons and tons and tons of solutions for thinning hair and hair loss. And if any of those types of things like topical treatments or vitamins or anything don't appeal to you, there are hair pieces. There are wigs and you know, it's amazing like wigs have really become a fashion trend now. And it used to be, I don't know, it seems to me like it was wig pieces when my mom you know, when I was a kid, my mom and her friends would wear these big bouffant hair pieces. I think of when I think of wigs, I think of Dolly Parton. But wigs are a really big fashion accessory now. But it's hard to accept something like that. If you're not in a place of accepting yourself. There's a difference between shopping for something to help you look the way you want to look. Because you hate the way you look.

Unknown Speaker 24:00
Versus shopping for something to help you look the way you want to look. Because you love yourself. And you want to present yourself in a certain way. Right? So one is hiding. So if I'm going to go and get a wig, like when I originally knew I was going to lose my hair, and I was going to look for a wig. I was hiding. I wanted to hide the fact that I had cancer, I wanted to hide the fact that I was bald. I was in a place of fear and scarcity.

Unknown Speaker 24:30
Versus when I was walking into my third chemotherapy treatment with my wig on and I was having a horrible hot flash. And I rip that wig off my head and I said at this I don't care what anybody thinks of me. I am miserable. And I'm not going to add to my discomfort to make somebody else feel happy because I have hair and that was it. I think maybe I put my wig on two more times.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
So after that, and again, even in those times that I put it on, it was like, Oh, I'm putting on this outfit. And I want to look this certain way. And I put the wig on. Sometimes I did that. And I was like, yeah, the wig doesn't work, I'd rather just be bald. And then I just put on big earrings instead, which I love big earrings anyway, but you see what I'm saying. So when we're looking for solutions, we want to look for solutions from a place of love for ourselves. Not a place of hatred for ourselves. Not a place of judgment for ourselves, because there's a different feeling.

Unknown Speaker 25:30
When we're out there looking for solutions, and we're like, fix me fix me. I look horrible. I don't want anybody to see me. Or I love myself, but I don't like the fact that my hair is thinning. What are some awesome options that are out there? What are some things that I can try? And what are some things that can hold me over in the meantime. Okay, so I am going to post an article that I found that offers lots of solutions for hair, and I'll post the link to it on the show notes for this episode, which we'll find at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 177. So just in case, you're not aware of solutions that are out there for you, it's just something that allow you to explore them. But even more importantly than those solutions. I just want you to listen to this podcast again if you need to. And remember, it's not just hair.

Unknown Speaker 26:24
Ask yourself, What is my hair mean, to me, this is an incredibly powerful thought download, what does my hair mean to me. And then put all the thoughts about your hair.

Unknown Speaker 26:37
And then look at the ones that are attached to your self worth.

Unknown Speaker 26:42
Those are the ones that we want to look at closer, because those are the ones that I want you to see are not true.

Unknown Speaker 26:49
You're always worthy. You're always deserving of love. You're always amazing.

Unknown Speaker 26:58
So look at the thoughts that you have about your hair.

Unknown Speaker 27:02
And let's work through some of those to let go of the ones that don't serve you. And to use the other ones to help you find a solution for your hair from a place of love for yourself.

Unknown Speaker 27:17
And, again, know you're not alone, my friend, and you have every right to feel everything that you feel.

Unknown Speaker 27:26
If you'd like more ongoing support in helping to work past these thoughts that keep you suffering and stuck, whether they're about hair or relationships or cell value, or anything else in life. Come and join me in the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership. And you can learn where your power is and how to embrace it and how to use it to live your most amazing life. All right, I will talk to you again next week and come and join us in the unconditional love challenge. It's amazing and if you aren't comfortable posting something about what you love about yourself, just read what others post and see if that helps you to alright and I'll talk to you again next week. Until then, Please be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care

Unknown Speaker 28:17
courage to the test laid all your doubts

Unknown Speaker 28:24
your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures