Strands: Losing My Hair at 26 Reopened Old Wounds

I wasn’t sure about writing a blog about losing my hair. It seems like a strange topic for a website built around kids and young adults with ill parents. Then again, living that experience fills your life with strange things.

I’m 26 now, and I’ve started losing my hair. Slowly, subtly. The patches at my corners and crown aren’t quite bald yet, but they’re heading there. I catch a glimpse in a mirror under a harsh light or step out of the shower and spot it. Faint, thinner circles that weren’t this big a year ago. It’s a slow, quiet transformation. Most people wouldn’t notice. But I do.

And it messes with me more than I expected.

My Mum’s Hair Meant Something

My mum’s hair was always this big symbol of how she was doing. When she was well, it was beautiful. She had thick, curly hair that was full of bounce and vibrant, like her. When things got worse, the hair went. Chemo took it. Illness thinned it. Sometimes it came back. Sometimes it didn’t. It became this visual code I could read without words. 

When Mum was bald, things were bad. When her hair was growing, it meant we had hope.

I learned to read her hair like a weather report.

And now, all these years later, I’m standing in my bathroom staring at my own scalp and feeling the panic creep in.

It’s not that I’m afraid of being bald. I mean, sure, I’d prefer not to be. No one wants to lose their hair. But this isn’t completely about vanity. Not really. It’s about what hair means to me. What baldness has always meant in my world.

In my world, losing your hair meant you were unwell. It meant things were out of your control. It meant something was ending.

Trauma Doesn’t Expire

Sometimes something unexpected comes along and rips the stitches open. That’s what this has done. I didn’t expect a receding hairline to remind me of Mum being ill. But it does. It takes me back to hospital rooms, headscarves, whispered updates, the way she used to joke about her wigs when really, she was just trying not to cry in front of me.

And now I’m here, healthy and grown, seeing those same patterns on my own head and it’s like my body remembers before my brain does.

I’ve passed the halfway point of my mum’s life. She died at 48. That number looms in my mind now like a finish line. I know 26 isn’t old. I know, logically, I should have plenty of time. But emotionally, I feel like I’m running against a clock no one else can hear.

What losing my hair has shown me, painfully and unexpectedly, is that trauma doesn’t stay neatly in the past. It hides in ordinary things. Like mirrors. And shower drains. And awkward reminders that time doesn’t wait.

It reminded me that trauma doesn’t just hide in the big stuff. It’s not just empty chairs and birthdays and beeping heart monitors. It’s also in the tiny, ridiculous things like the moment you realise your scalp is more visible than it used to be. And you can’t explain why that breaks your heart a little, but it does.

And if you’ve lost someone young, or watched them suffer, maybe you get it. Maybe you know what it’s like to carry symbols you didn’t ask for. Maybe you’ve had a moment where something small like a smell, a word, a song, pulls you back to somewhere you thought you’d moved on from.

What I’m Learning to Do With It

I haven’t figured it all out. Some days I laugh about it. Some days I stare at my reflection and feel like I’m watching someone else get older too fast.

But here’s what’s helping:

•Naming it. Just saying out loud, “This is about more than hair” makes it easier to breathe. Because it is. It’s about memory and fear and all the stuff we never talk about. Giving those feelings a name takes away some of their power.

•Turning it into a conversation. I’ve spoken about it with mates. With people who’ve lost parents, or who are dealing with their own weird symbolic grief. And every time, someone says, “I thought I was the only one.” You’re never the only one. Not really.

•Letting it remind me, not ruin me. If seeing my own hair thin brings Mum to mind, maybe that’s not all bad. Maybe that’s her tapping me on the shoulder. Maybe I can let those memories fuel what I do next.

How I love, how I live, how I give. That feels like a better way to carry her than trying to avoid the feeling altogether.

In the End

I’m still me. Hair or no hair. But part of being me is knowing where I’ve come from. 

And Mum’s illness, in all its messy, unexpected, symbolic ways, is part of that story.

If you’ve been through something like this, if a small, physical change has cracked open something deeper in you, you’re not broken. You’re human. You’re grieving in ways that don’t always make sense to other people.

But they don’t have to.

Write it down. Say it out loud. Find your own way to carry it.

And know that if your hair is falling out or your joints are aching or your eye sight is getting worse and it’s making you think about your mum, or your dad, or whoever you lost, it’s okay to feel all of it.

You’re not alone.