---
title: "Protecting Your Flame: Ashlee's Story of Finding Strength and Community"
description: Discover Ashlee’s inspiring journey with alopecia areata, from childhood hair loss and years of hiding to self-acceptance, confidence, and community.
image: https://blog.baldgirlsdolunch.org/hubfs/2017_BGDL-Logo-No-Tag-Blog.png
---

[![2017\_BGDL-Logo-No-Tag-Blog](https://blog.baldgirlsdolunch.org/hubfs/2017_BGDL-Logo-No-Tag-Blog.png "2017_BGDL-Logo-No-Tag-Blog")](https://baldgirlsdolunch.org)

**Blog**

**Alopecia Areata Support Network**

[Visit: Bald Girls Do Lunch](https://baldgirlsdolunch.org/)

# Women With Alopecia Areata Support Network Blog

## [Protecting Your Flame: Ashlee's Story of Finding Strength and Community](https://blog.baldgirlsdolunch.org/protecting-your-flame-ashlees-story-of-finding-strength-and-community)

Posted by [Thea Chassin](https://blog.baldgirlsdolunch.org/author/thea-chassin)

 November 10, 2026 at 11:25 PM

- [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share)

When you lose your hair as a little girl, the hardest part isn't the empty hairbrush. It's carrying a secret you're terrified the world will discover.

Ashlee knows that heavy burden intimately. Today, she is a vibrant dental hygienist, a dedicated mother, and an advocate. But behind her easy smile is decades of emotional camouflage – and a courageous journey to reclaim her identity.

## **"Big Hair" and Quiet Secrets**

Ashlee was just six years old in the early 1990s when clumps of her hair began disappearing. In an era where big hair was everywhere and alopecia was never spoken about, doctors offered no answers.

Desperate to protect her, Ashlee's mother took her straight to a salon. The result was a giant, scratchy, copper-red wig styled like country icon Reba McEntire.

"I remember sitting in the car and looking over, and this gentleman was smiling, but I thought maybe he was laughing at me," Ashlee remembers. "That was my first experience of feeling like maybe I do look different."

The itchy wig went into the closet. Instead, little Ashlee compensated with colorful headbands and long, dangling earrings to prove to the world that she was still a little girl.

"I was the only bald kid in school. I was the only bald kid at the mall," she recalls. "It was very isolating."

Her hair grew back, only to fall out again around age ten, leaving her with just a single strip of "rainbow bangs." By high school, the hair on her head had returned, but her eyelashes and eyebrows were gone.

Ashlee learned to live on high alert. When she became a dental hygienist, she spent years taping photos to the ceiling directly above her chair so patients would stare upward at the pictures instead of looking closely at her eyes.

"Any time anybody would say, 'Can I ask you a question?' my whole nervous system would react," she says. "I was constantly on surveillance."

## **The 10-Year Masquerade**

In college, right before spring break, her hair fell out again. Desperate to keep up appearances, Ashlee flipped through a magazine, ordered a $59 pixie wig, and told her classmates she had simply gotten a drastic haircut.

For nearly a decade, she wore wigs and carried the exhausting weight of her secret. Even as she built a life and met her husband, she hid behind styling products, extensions, and silence.

Then, around age thirty, Ashlee attended a camp hosted by the Children's Alopecia Project. Walking through the grounds, she was stopped in her tracks. Everywhere she looked, bald, beautiful children were laughing, playing, and running free without a trace of shame.

"Seeing all the children, it was little Ashlee. It was all little Ashlees there," she says. "I was like, I need to take this power back. I need to own who I am."

## **The Freedom of the Open Road**

The transformation didn't wait. On the drive home from camp, Ashlee reached up, took off her wig, and set it aside. For the first time in her adult life, she felt the air on her bare head.

When she got home, her heart pounding, she hit "post" on a social media photo revealing her bald head to the world.

"It was like the first time of just like, here I am," she says. "It took the weight off."

## **A Roller Coaster with No Finish Line**

Over the years, Ashlee discovered that healing is not a tidy, one-time victory. Her hair has regrown and shed through marriage, motherhood, and new medical treatments. Some seasons she rocks a bald look; in others, she chooses a wig.

Through it all, she has learned that true confidence is the freedom to choose your own path without guilt.

"Everybody is on their own timeline with their alopecia," Ashlee explains. "Embrace who you are because you are unique, and you have your own flame. Don't let anybody else blow that flame out. Protect that flame."

## **A Seat at the Table**

Recently, Ashlee drove an hour and a half to Villanova, Pennsylvania, to attend a Bald Girls Do Lunch gathering. The moment she sat down, the emotional armor melted away.

"The connection – you start there with jitters, and you leave there with hugs and friendship," Ashlee says. "It is the key to surviving with alopecia. It's the key to not feeling alone. When we all feel better, we do better."

## **How You Can Help**

Hair loss can strip away a person's sense of self and leave them feeling completely isolated. When you donate to Bald Girls Do Lunch, you provide a warm table, shared laughter, and unconditional acceptance for women and girls navigating this emotional roller coaster.

Your generosity ensures that no woman has to carry the burden of hair loss in secret. With your support, Bald Girls Do Lunch creates the community and safe spaces where women like Ashlee can reclaim their power and let their light shine bright.

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