Baldie Con 2024 is in the books! I had a fantastic time this weekend as a speaker at the convention. It was a gift to be able to connect with so many others and to share what I’ve learned through my journey.
The event is a wonderful way for the bald community to gather, connect, and support one another. It’s also a celebration of resilience. Everyone there has experienced hair loss for one reason or another. For most people, that involved a difficult – even traumatic – experience.
And yet I witnessed so much joy and freedom in everyone there. Each of the bald women at the convention went through challenges that could easily have destroyed her. And yet, instead of giving up, she grew through that experience, and became even stronger.
That’s resilience – the ability to bounce back from difficulties, and even to use them to help you grow and thrive.
We all have the power to make a decision about how we respond to the challenges that we face. I want to inspire you to choose resilience. No matter what you’ve gone through – or what you’re going through right now – you can make a choice to not just go through it, but to grow through it.
Growing through your challenges
Everyone will go through something challenging at some point. We might lose a loved one, receive a medical diagnosis, lose our job, or get injured in an accident. It’s impossible to predict when something challenging like this will happen to us, but the reality is that everyone is going to go through difficult times.
We can’t control what happens to us, but we can definitely choose how we respond to it. None of us would choose to go through something difficult if we were given the choice. But in time, many people actually find that their biggest challenges also gave them their greatest gifts.
I definitely feel this way myself. As I shared last week, I’ve come to realize that being diagnosed with alopecia areata changed the course of my life in some really wonderful ways. My diagnosis was what pushed me to want to learn more about health and well-being, which ultimately led me to go to medical school and become a doctor. I’m very proud to be the first doctor in my family, and I can honestly say that my path into medicine started because of alopecia.
Beyond that, alopecia led me to discover the power of authenticity. Although I spent so many years hiding, the difficulties of that part of my journey were what ultimately led me to discover the immense power and freedom in showing my true self to the world. This has made my life immeasurably richer and better in so many ways.
Having alopecia areata has shaped me into who I am today. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult. At times, I would have given basically anything to have my alopecia just go away. But instead of letting those challenges defeat me, I used them as fuel for growth.
I want to inspire you to do this too.
How can you use your challenges as opportunities for growth?
Everyone has the ability to grow through their challenges. Everyone. This isn’t something that’s only possible for a certain special type of person. It’s possible for anyone—as long as they’re willing to show up fully in their own life.
The key to ensuring that you grow through your challenges is to take the time to truly process and integrate what’s happened to you. This means looking inward, getting curious, and seeking to understand what you’re experiencing on a deep level.
This type of inward journey is not always easy. We have to be willing to look at the most painful parts of our life, and to see the darker aspects of ourselves that we may have long denied or ignored. It’s very tempting to try to escape from doing this, and so many people distract themselves or numb themselves out. For many years, I used food in this way. There are lots of other things that people use—TV, social media, alcohol, the list goes on.
Instead of running from your dark and difficult emotions, I encourage you to be with those feelings. In order to experience growth and transformation, you’ll need to integrate and process all of your emotions. In fact, the most difficult emotions are actually the ones that will lead to the most growth in the end. For example, my intense feelings of shame and inadequacy ultimately led me down the path of authenticity.
After a challenging event, it’s important to give yourself time to process what happened. Don’t expect to “bounce back” immediately – that’s just not how our emotions work. Give yourself time and space. For a while after a challenging event, you might feel a lot of sadness, grief, or even anger. This is normal and absolutely okay. Don’t force yourself to look for the gifts or the positive side of your situation right away. In fact, if you try to force yourself to feel the way that you think you should feel, this will prevent you from actually doing the work that you need to do. Instead, in order to move through your dark emotions, you need to feel them fully.
For me, journaling is an extremely important part of this. When I journal, sometimes I start with a journal prompt—a question or topic that I’d like to explore. Other times, I simply start writing spontaneously. As I journal, I simply write whatever appears in my mind and heart, with no editing at all. My journal is private—sometimes I share something I’ve written with my therapist, but otherwise, no one else will ever read what I’ve written. The goal of this practice is to explore what I’m thinking and feeling on a deeper level, not to produce “good” writing that I could publish.
Talking with my therapist is also a huge part of how I explore my challenging emotions. If you’ve never tried going to therapy, it’s something you could consider. For me, this has been hugely impactful. My therapist gives me new perspectives on whatever I’m going through, which helps me to gain insights and clarity. She also shares techniques that help me to manage stress and move through challenges.
There are also other ways to integrate and process emotions—meditation, spending time alone (especially in nature), making art or music, dancing. Everyone is going to go about this differently, but what’s important is that you find a way to process your challenging emotions.
This is what will help you to grow through your challenges.
Support for your transformational journey
On your journey of transformation, it’s very helpful to have support from others who have gone through something similar. I can offer my support on an individual level as a health coach. My programs, such as Mind Gut Skin Academy, are also designed to support and guide you through your own transformational journey, and always include membership in a community so you can connect with others who are also on their own journeys.
I always like to emphasize that if processing your dark emotions becomes very challenging for you, it’s important to seek professional help with this. Talking to a therapist or counselor can make a huge difference. If this starts to feel overwhelming or like more than you feel prepared to handle on your own, there is professional support available. Don’t ever feel like you have to do this alone.
The human spirit is naturally resilient. Whatever you may be going through, you can grow through it.
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