This will be my second year in a row I am shaving my head to raise money for childhood cancer research.
People are constantly commenting on my short hair, and the thing I get asked every day I go out is something like, “Oh, you like short hair?” I usually just tell them I did it to bring awareness to Childhood Cancer, but that is a long story short. I didn’t just wake up one morning and think shaving my head would be fun. I didn’t think that my 3 month hair growth would make for a cute pixie cut. I didn’t do it for compliments. I actually struggled long and hard internally about shaving my head. I was born with more hair on my head than I had the day I shaved. My hair was a part of my identity. Here is what I would like to tell them if I had the time, and energy.
I shaved my head for my daughter, who didn’t have a choice. Watching a 7 year old, who dreams of being a princess, clean clumps of hair off of her pillow every morning was heart breaking. I wanted her to know that her hair didn’t define her. She was still a princess with or without hair.
I shaved my head for all of the kids fighting cancer, in hopes that the money I raised would help to make a difference, even for just one. After doing my research about how underfunded Childhood Cancer was, and how shady most agencies that collect money in their name are, I found St. Baldrick’s to be one of the few programs that really put their money where their mouth is.
I shaved my head for mother’s whom I do not even know. For mothers who are sitting in ER’s and cold hospital rooms with children who haven’t even been diagnosed yet. Mom’s who will instinctively know something is wrong with their child and then have to hear those words nobody every wants to hear, “you child has cancer.”
I shaved my head for mother’s currently in the trenches of Childhood Cancer. We are nicknamed Momcologist for a reason. We know things that no person without medical training should ever have to know. Here a few things Momcologist become experts on: PIC lines, g-tubes, ports, catheters, chemo, nausea medication, pain meds, dressing changes, line flushes, blood counts, radiation burns. I read a comparison once that childhood cancer was like a monster in the closet, but this monster lives inside your baby and you can’t just shut the door and turn on the light to make it all better.
I shaved my head for the mother’s who have lost their child to this ugly disease in hopes that another mother will never have to feel that pain.
I don’t want you to think I am taking anything away from the father’s, because I did it for them too. A bald woman just makes a bigger statement. I am hoping that statement will touch someone who may not have known about Childhood Cancer and how underfunded it is before, so we can start making a change.
