Today I feel better. I’m taking control. No more agonizing over strands lost in the shower and on my comb, the telltale hairs all over my clothes and furniture and newborn son. No more begging and pleading with my body and my maker. No more tears.

Today I admit to the world that I have alopecia areata.

I found my first spot – about the size of two quarters sitting above my right ear – in December of 2005, a few months after my wedding. Having never heard of alopecia, I was certain I had contracted some horrendous disease. When I found out about alopecia, in a way, I felt it was far worse. I was to suffer the humiliation of hair loss, without the heroic back-story of fighting cancer. My spot grew, and another showed up above my left ear. Obsessively, frantically, I hid the spots, certain that if anyone saw, they would label me a freak. My family doctor thought it was nothing – “Just don’t wear a ponytail,” he told me. By May of 2006, the hair had completely returned. Thank God that’s over, I told myself.

Not so. A little more than two years later, I noticed a few spots appearing. During that time, I was experiencing significant stress at work (a job where which a few months later I would no longer be employed). The spots got bigger. And bigger. Soon my hairline started receding. Hair bands became necessary before leaving the house. When working out, I wore a hat and a hair band. By May, when my hair stopped shedding, I had lost more than half my hair. It was time for a wig.

I found a gorgeous, auburn coloured human hair wig close enough to my natural hair, and paid a small fortune. Interestingly, I looked fantastic with my new hair. Did I relish in my newfound beauty? Of course not. I felt like a fraud – broken and humiliated because I needed to wear one in the first place. Without the wig, I felt disgusting. I couldn’t believe my husband could be with such a hideous creature. Luckily, I married a wonderful man - he would laugh and take my hand and insist that I was still beautiful.

The need to wear a wig prompted me to revisit my family doctor. This time, when he saw the extent of my hair loss, his tune was a little different. Worried that something was seriously off with my body, he sent me for several blood tests and a dermatologist. When nothing came back out of the ordinary, he confirmed what I had already long realized – my pesky alopecia had literally reared its ugly head.

Over the next four months, I had hundreds of cortisone shots from an abrupt dermatologist whose bedside manner resembled a foot soldier in Nazi Germany. Each appointment she’d give me about 90 seconds – no small talk as she filled the needle and started poking. The first time I got the injections, it hurt so much I cried. I toyed with the idea of asking for another dermatologist, but given that I had to wait almost a month for her, I stayed put. About a month into treatments, I started to lose my body hair. First a spot in my eyebrows, then a few of my eyelashes. Then, happily, all my leg and arm hair.

I wore the wig the entire summer. "You look fabulous!" friends and acquaintances would exclaim as I scrutinized their expressions for a hint that they knew. "What happened to your hair? It's gorgeous!" one friend enquired as she took some of it in her hand. I trembled and changed the subject. My few confidants swore they couldn’t tell I was wearing a wig, but I was never sure. In public, I kept waiting for someone – perhaps a small child – to point and exclaim ‘Why is that woman wearing a wig?’

Finally, by September, my hair came back. I returned to work (in another job), and no one there was any the wiser. My eyebrow and eyelash hair had also been replenished, although it would be another eight months before I would need to purchase a razor. Again, I breathed easy. Surely this wouldn’t happen again.

Fast forward a year and a half. My son is now almost six months old, and while hair thinning/loss is a common occurrence following pregnancy and my doctor assured me that postpartum hair loss was not related to alopecia, I wasn’t surprised when I found the first plum sized spot in January. Over the next three months, we were swimming in hair. I began my cortisone treatments right away, and now after countless needles, swelling and bruising, I have no new hairs. I’m approaching worse hair loss than my last bout, and I have lost all that eyelashes on my left eye. Again, my body hair is gone. Fortunately, I still have my eyebrows for now.

I can deny it no longer. It’s time to dust off the wig. It’s also time for a new attitude. I’m sick of being humiliated by my condition, cowering as the wind blows or feeling like a fraud as I wear my fabulous wig.

I have alopecia. There are millions of people out there just like me, many who suffer much worse than I do. While I’m not about to shave my head (I have enormous respect for those that do!), I am ready to tell the world that I lose my hair. If my hair never grows back, then so be it. If it does, I’ll lose it again. It’s who I am.