There are many ways to support the people we love, but very often we cannot feel what they go though during major illness. Friends who have lost their hair due to chemo have told me that one aspect that sucks is how people will try to tell them that it's not important, but they themselves could never imagine not having hair. I'm shaving my head to show that hair is just one thing that makes us beautiful and we are beautiful with or without it.

St. Baldricks has the added bonus of donating moneys to  childhood cancer research. More federal research funding in recent years has been focused on early detection and screening for cancers which usually affect adults such as breast and lung cancer; while children are more commonly affected by blood, brain, and bone cancers. This funding has saved countless lives and drastically changed what a cancer diagnosis means compared to what it was a generation ago. But we can do more. The smallest of us deserve more birthdays and your donation can help give them that.

Additionally, I hope my top knot will grow long enough so that I can donate it to Children with Hair Loss, a charity which accepts hair only 8 inches long and makes wigs for children enduring medically related hair loss.