I've been dealing with Alopecia for 17 years.
I grew up in a small farm town in Kansas where everyone rejected the unusual. I know my story isn't any different than everyone on here, but I didn't understand that 14 years ago when the kids on the school bus tormented me. It just felt alone and depressed. There was NO ONE I could talk to who could actually tell me I would be OK. No one I could believe anyway, because no one understood how it felt to be me ... the bald girl.
My parents did the best they could to help me, which I know wasn't easy on them because they couldn't fix it. They couldn't take it away.
I would have really benefited from a site like this back then, and it's so refreshing to find a whole world full of people, now, who can really relate to me and understand what's it's like to reach the moment of clarity when you discover that you don't have to let AU define you.