Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Talk podcast, all your favorite episodes from the
Speaker 1: Facebook watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. This is a really important Red Table
Speaker 1: Talk on alopecia. Considering what I've been through with my
Speaker 1: own health and what happened at the oscars, thousands have
Speaker 1: reached out to me with their stories. I'm using this
Speaker 1: moment to give our alopecia family an opportunity to talk
Speaker 1: about what it's like to have this condition and to
Speaker 1: inform people about what alopecia actually is. Now about Oscar Night,
Speaker 1: My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to heal, talk this out, and reconcile
Speaker 1: the state of the world today. We need them both
Speaker 1: and we all actually need one another more than ever.
Speaker 1: Until then, Well and I are continuing to do what
Speaker 1: we have done for the last twenty eight years, and
Speaker 1: let's keep figuring out this thing called lie of together.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. A hundred and forty seven million
Speaker 1: people are living with alopecia, including me, and it's so
Speaker 1: much shame around having alopecia, and when you go bald
Speaker 1: and you don't have a choice, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think the part that makes it most difficult for
Speaker 1: me is that it comes and goes. So when you're
Speaker 1: going through a spout of something and you've got to
Speaker 1: shave your head because and it's fallen out spotty, It's
Speaker 1: like I remember over the Christmas holidays, woke up and
Speaker 1: you had like this, Yeah that this that was like
Speaker 1: a scarring alopecia, scarring alopecia. It looked like you had
Speaker 1: had surgery on your skull. Yeah, it's stressful. Your patch girls,
Speaker 1: and enough patch comes out, and that gives me a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety. Oh well, what's my hair gonna look
Speaker 1: like today. One of the reasons why I thought this
Speaker 1: show is really important because I had so much outreach
Speaker 1: from people who suffer from alopecia, have children who suffer
Speaker 1: from alopecia, and they don't talk about it because it's
Speaker 1: so much shame around it. And so there's so many
Speaker 1: people walking around who have alopecia that we don't even know.
Speaker 1: So I felt like it was so important to just
Speaker 1: allow the alopecia community our brothers and sisters to tell
Speaker 1: their story. I think that people don't understand what alopecia
Speaker 1: is and they don't understand the effects of it. Just
Speaker 1: three months ago, this story broke our hearts. Growing up
Speaker 1: in Indiana, twelve year old real alread love to read,
Speaker 1: sketch and play the French horn in our school band.
Speaker 1: In December, while attending school at home during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Rial's mom noticed a bald spot on our head. Soon,
Speaker 1: Rio's hair began falling out by the handful. Rio was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with alopecia ariata, an autoimmune illness. They tried creams
Speaker 1: and painful injections to save her hair, but Rio made
Speaker 1: the decision to shave her head right before she started
Speaker 1: seventh grade. Her grandma bought her a beautiful brown wig
Speaker 1: with long layers that she couldn't wait to show off
Speaker 1: when she went back to school in person. Rio was
Speaker 1: heartbroken when her new look was mocked by her classmates.
Speaker 1: Constant bullying and relentless teasing took the ultimate hoal. On March,
Speaker 1: Rio took her own life. She was only twelve years old.
Speaker 1: Rio's mom, Nikki, is here. Thank you for being here
Speaker 1: with us. Thank you for having me tell us about
Speaker 1: your precious little girl. She was so smart. She was
Speaker 1: just brilliant, and she was funny. She was a great
Speaker 1: big sister. She loved agree and writing and sketching, and
Speaker 1: she loved being in the band. And with the hair loss,
Speaker 1: she was so strong. She just rapped it even when
Speaker 1: it was still falling out, and she just had these
Speaker 1: big bald patches. Tried the creams, they made her break out.
Speaker 1: We tried the injections. She took five of them in
Speaker 1: one day, but neither of them really did anything. And
Speaker 1: she was just like, I don't want to do that anymore,
Speaker 1: Like can we just shave my head? So we did
Speaker 1: and she just glowed. And then with school coming up,
Speaker 1: we got her that super cute wig and she loved it.
Speaker 1: She like glowed then, but at school, within a few
Speaker 1: weeks she was like, I don't want to wear it anymore.
Speaker 1: There's no point. She had a ripped off her head.
Speaker 1: She'd get smacked upside the head walking down the hallway,
Speaker 1: and that was within the first two weeks. It got
Speaker 1: really bad for her. What types of things did the
Speaker 1: kids to her? She was called a naked mole rat,
Speaker 1: She was called a bug eyed alien. She was called
Speaker 1: Mr and Mrs Clean. One of the last things she
Speaker 1: had told me she had a really bad day. She
Speaker 1: had a hat to where during the winter, some of
Speaker 1: her classrooms were really cold, and she walked into one
Speaker 1: class and one kid it was just like, real, put
Speaker 1: your hat back on. I can't stand the glare. Did
Speaker 1: the teachers know what was Yeah? I just can't imagine
Speaker 1: seeing a child be treated like that. And I'm the adult.
Speaker 1: I feel like our teachers nowadays, they're in such a
Speaker 1: hard position. Yeah, I feel like their backs are against
Speaker 1: the wall when it comes to administration and with parents,
Speaker 1: and Rio had some amazing teachers. Did you ever reach
Speaker 1: out to the other parents? Oh, I wanted to so bad.
Speaker 1: I just went through the channels of what I thought
Speaker 1: I was supposed to do, handling everything and trusting in
Speaker 1: the school, because really all I wanted to do was
Speaker 1: go in there and start just kicking things off of
Speaker 1: counters and screaming at the secretary and absolutely kicking kids.
Speaker 1: You can't do that, obviously, I'm fiery, and especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to my babies. But I knew we would
Speaker 1: not be taken seriously then, right, So I went through
Speaker 1: the channels I thought that you're supposed to and still
Speaker 1: was not taken seriously. Did you notice any changes in
Speaker 1: her behavior leading up to March four? Rio is always,
Speaker 1: even as a little one, would just go sit in
Speaker 1: her play room and play for hours at a time,
Speaker 1: and as a preteen, just the same. You know, she's
Speaker 1: in her room, she's reading a book, she's curled up
Speaker 1: in her bed on her iPad, and it was maybe
Speaker 1: a little more, but not I'm reclusive in a bad way,
Speaker 1: but that's just you know, twelve year old girl exactly.
Speaker 1: So it was time, exactly. We had a very open
Speaker 1: relationship with her, like we talked about everything, and she
Speaker 1: had a really bad day. It was about three weeks
Speaker 1: before I picked her up from my exes after work
Speaker 1: and she got in the car and she just lost it,
Speaker 1: just stabbing and yelling. She was just cussing up a storm.
Speaker 1: So I know, like, this is very serious. We gave
Speaker 1: her a choice. You can either stay where you're at
Speaker 1: and we will go in there and we will have
Speaker 1: a sit down, which we did, or we'll pull you,
Speaker 1: put you somewhere else with a new risk not having
Speaker 1: your best friend in this bullying. Still following you around,
Speaker 1: or you can home school. But we told her, like,
Speaker 1: don't make any rash decisions, like think on it for
Speaker 1: the rest of the week, take the weekend, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it Monday. And that week I saw an article
Speaker 1: about a little boy in Utah, twelve year old little
Speaker 1: boy who was bullied to death and did the same
Speaker 1: exact thing that she and I showed her that story,
Speaker 1: like rio, this is my worst fear. Do not ever
Speaker 1: think that this is the answer, because I will go
Speaker 1: to war for you, child, and not just me, but
Speaker 1: my husband, your dad, your stepmom, your sister's dad, like all,
Speaker 1: you have an army of people. And she says, I know, Mom,
Speaker 1: I know. I think we've all agreed. At this point,
Speaker 1: she knew that she was loved and she murdered herself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: knowing that we will do something. We have to do something.
Speaker 1: We can't sit back and just watch this. Tell us
Speaker 1: what the morning of the fourteenth was like for you.
Speaker 1: If that's okay, it's awful. Um, it got up like normal.
Speaker 1: I have a seven year old avery the girls were
Speaker 1: at the time sharing a bedroom. I went into Riel's
Speaker 1: room like I always do. I thought it was weird
Speaker 1: that the lamp was still on and the way the
Speaker 1: room was set up, I did not see her. Avery girls,
Speaker 1: time to get up like I always do, and Avery,
Speaker 1: thank god. One I barely open stumble out into the
Speaker 1: living room and like Rio, because that's normally what I
Speaker 1: would do. And I'd get like a like a grumble
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, she's awake, and didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: So yelled again and hear anything, and then it just
Speaker 1: kind of got this weird, something's wrong. And so then
Speaker 1: I went all the way into a room and she
Speaker 1: had hung her is sop with a pair of jeans
Speaker 1: from her love bed, and I just grabbed her and
Speaker 1: started screaming, just Rio. And as soon as I saw her,
Speaker 1: I knew, And as soon as I grabbed her, I
Speaker 1: really knew because she was cold, she was stiff. God.
Speaker 1: I just started screaming and screaming, and I ran out
Speaker 1: into my kitchen and I fell and I just kept screaming,
Speaker 1: and then my husband came up and I just said
Speaker 1: Rio was dead. He was what? Then he goes in
Speaker 1: there and he starts screaming and and then it's it's
Speaker 1: just a blur. Yeah. I called nine, and I could
Speaker 1: hear the sirens right away. We lived very close to
Speaker 1: a fire station. But even then I knew, like, there's nothing,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do. And the officer there walked
Speaker 1: in and he said, where is she and kind of pointed,
Speaker 1: and because anotherthing like I didn't didn't take her down,
Speaker 1: did anything to do that. I just knew what we
Speaker 1: needed help. And he looked at me and at him,
Speaker 1: and then it just saught. I was one of her
Speaker 1: dad's old best friends, and so he, I mean, realizes
Speaker 1: who I am and who who he's about to find.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have pictures of this man holding her
Speaker 1: as an infant. Oh my goodness. And then it was
Speaker 1: just a flood of uniforms and you could see it
Speaker 1: in every single one of their faces of just like
Speaker 1: this beautiful twelve year old girl this is. And then
Speaker 1: it's just no one prepares you just sign a death
Speaker 1: certificate for your child. We're watching a Corners fan pull
Speaker 1: up and then having to sit your seven year old
Speaker 1: down and tell her that her sister's death. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: H m hmm. It's the worst of life I can imagine.
Speaker 1: Thank you for just sharing this. I just feel like
Speaker 1: that's really important for children to understand that communication and
Speaker 1: that amount of pain that's left behind when we do
Speaker 1: things to ourselves. We're not the only ones who are affected, right,
Speaker 1: people love us. Just feel like this is going to
Speaker 1: be so healing in so many ways, gifts such understanding
Speaker 1: of the devastation around this condition. Yes, it's so important.
Speaker 1: Did really leave a note behind? She left too? Okay,
Speaker 1: the police took the one that they had found. We
Speaker 1: have not read that one yet. Her dad found a
Speaker 1: second one in her room. Um, there was no date
Speaker 1: on it. So she like listed all of us out
Speaker 1: in the beginning and apologized and said she loved us,
Speaker 1: and then at the very in the last paragraph, she said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry Mom, and I'm sorry Dad. I love you,
Speaker 1: and there's so much left to say. I just can't.
Speaker 1: I just can't, and then asked to be cremated and
Speaker 1: put with my mom. And oh, that was really rough
Speaker 1: because that was kind of the plan already. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the first one, and I'm really torn
Speaker 1: on that, Yeah, because no answer is going to be
Speaker 1: good enough. But also that's literally all she wrote. But
Speaker 1: there's nothing left to say, and once I see that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Really tore it. I don't understand, but
Speaker 1: I do understand. How are you guys healing as a family.
Speaker 1: I worry about all of us a lot. I feel
Speaker 1: like I have to stay strong, but like I worry
Speaker 1: a loud about her dad. Cassie and her step mom
Speaker 1: put it really good. The other day, we're all in
Speaker 1: this fog. I genuinely don't know what day it is.
Speaker 1: You can't see that grief monsters there, but you know
Speaker 1: they're there, and they're just gonna come grab you at
Speaker 1: any second. Eating has gotten a little easier. Literally have
Speaker 1: to eat to stay alive. I can't fall asleep for
Speaker 1: the life of me. Once I'm asleep, I'm all right.
Speaker 1: My husband's kind of the opposite. He'll fall asleep, but
Speaker 1: then he's constantly waking up. Yeah, we did start going
Speaker 1: to therapy altogether. We just had our first one a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. I just can't imagine how difficult
Speaker 1: this is for you. And then you have to put
Speaker 1: on this mask of break because you're not the child. Yep,
Speaker 1: you know, so sweetevery she was a wise old soul
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, and and she's just seven year old. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's doing okay, but she's not doing okay, And I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you process that seven? How do you sit
Speaker 1: down and tell your seven year old that her sister
Speaker 1: is gone? But be that by her own hand. She'll
Speaker 1: say things like, oh, I wish Sissy, what does decided
Speaker 1: to stay alive? Or I wish Rio was still here.
Speaker 1: I'll say me to Avery and she's like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you think she knows how clouds feel. Now. She's just
Speaker 1: the sweetest and she just got Student of the Month
Speaker 1: for April and Avery was like, do you think Real
Speaker 1: would be proud of me? She's proud of you. They
Speaker 1: were the best of friends. And then like she was
Speaker 1: in there with her, and that scares me to my court.
Speaker 1: I don't think she saw anything, but I literally like
Speaker 1: she was right there and some weird, kind of magical
Speaker 1: something happened in that room where she's just absorbed some
Speaker 1: of Rio now or I don't know if that sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: but just that's not crazy at all. It's hard. The
Speaker 1: hardest thing. We knew Rial was in pain, and we
Speaker 1: knew that she was struggling, but she was such a fighter,
Speaker 1: and you know then not even two weeks later, Oskers
Speaker 1: was on. It's just like what is the universe doing
Speaker 1: right now? This is crazy. People are going to be
Speaker 1: googling what is alopecia? What is this that we've never
Speaker 1: heard of? It's not a joke. I mean the allopation
Speaker 1: community was already in an uproar. We had heard from
Speaker 1: so many people. I didn't realize how huge and amazing
Speaker 1: that community is. It's one of those could have shut
Speaker 1: it what ups Yeah, if I really wish it would
Speaker 1: have found them for her sooner instead of them coming
Speaker 1: and speaking at her funeral. Well. Real's death was heart
Speaker 1: crushing for so many of us in the alopecia community,
Speaker 1: and there were so many that didn't know her, but
Speaker 1: they definitely wanted to send a message. My heart just
Speaker 1: breaks for Rio's family. In middle school, I was bullied
Speaker 1: relentlessly for losing my hair, and it was one of
Speaker 1: the hardest times in my life. But I hope that
Speaker 1: you guys know that we will all honor Rio's memory
Speaker 1: and uplift her spirit. No child should ever feel less
Speaker 1: than because with their hair, and no family should have
Speaker 1: to go through what you are enduring right now. Rio
Speaker 1: has touched so many people's hearts throughout the whole world.
Speaker 1: I feel like Rio is a part of my life
Speaker 1: and a part of my heart. It is so tragic
Speaker 1: and made me want to scream and cry. My name
Speaker 1: is Grace and I live in Gresham, Oregon, and I'm
Speaker 1: very sorry for your love. And the Alopecia community in
Speaker 1: d is here, and we're gonna put an end to bullying.
Speaker 1: I would like to say I'm so so sorry to
Speaker 1: Rio's family for the loss of their sweet, innocent, beautiful
Speaker 1: little Rio. Everyone in the Alopecia community promises to carry
Speaker 1: on her name and make sure that no little girl
Speaker 1: or boy ever feels alone or ashamed of alopecia. We
Speaker 1: are with you and we're here for you. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what you're going through, but just know that real
Speaker 1: story is going to inspire and impact so many and
Speaker 1: I know that she will be the reason that change happens. Well,
Speaker 1: I have to agree, Yeah, it's like real story through
Speaker 1: that's really difficult. Time has been really inspirational for me.
Speaker 1: I always knew that baby would changed. I hate it's
Speaker 1: this way. When I heard her story, it affected me
Speaker 1: so profoundly. I feel like I'm a part of such
Speaker 1: a beautiful tribe. Alopecia communities such a beautiful, amazing trap
Speaker 1: and um, I feel like I have this family that
Speaker 1: beautiful Rio is a part of. And so just thank
Speaker 1: you once again for your courage or your strength and
Speaker 1: willingness to share her light, to share her story, to
Speaker 1: share the story of your family, because it just helps
Speaker 1: to educate us. All I have to thank you deeply.
Speaker 1: Dr Mina Singh is a board certified dermatologist and a
Speaker 1: hair transplant surgeon. Can you tell us exactly what alopecia is.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of confusion around it. Alopecia is just
Speaker 1: an umbrella term for hair loss, but there are many
Speaker 1: different forms of alopecia. The kind that we were all
Speaker 1: discussing just now is the autoimmune kind. So that is
Speaker 1: alopecia ariata. It's affecting about seven million individuals in the
Speaker 1: United States. That causes rapid hair loss where you can
Speaker 1: get so pullar smooth bald patches, and it can affect
Speaker 1: the eyebrows and eyelashes. If it affects the rest of
Speaker 1: the body where you have no hair, we call that
Speaker 1: alopecia universalice. Typically that occurs in individuals under thirty. Both
Speaker 1: of these types of alopecia are autoimmune, which means that
Speaker 1: your body is mistakenly attacking the hair follicle. We don't
Speaker 1: know entirely what causes it, but we do know that
Speaker 1: there may be a genetic predisposition. So I think you
Speaker 1: have alopecia ariana and you were getting the injections. Was
Speaker 1: it painful? Yeah? I was shocked. I was like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't do that. Oh. The steroid injections with that involves
Speaker 1: are several pokes on the scalp in the affected areas.
Speaker 1: I have ways to make it less painful. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: use vibration or pressure, and generally they go by really quick,
Speaker 1: so if you can just bear with us and get
Speaker 1: through it, it happens really quickly. Yeah it didn't work
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, it just had to go so often,
Speaker 1: you know, and if you miss it, I just I'm done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, with autoimmune alopecia there is no cure, so
Speaker 1: the first line treatment are steroid injections. They directly target
Speaker 1: the inflammation around the hair bulb, so they're suppressing the
Speaker 1: immune system and often we do around eighty pokes or
Speaker 1: eighty injections just into the scalp. We try to do
Speaker 1: them once a month. Because when they start to wear
Speaker 1: off after several weeks. So with Black women, we manifest
Speaker 1: other forms of hair loss more frequently. Traction alopecia is
Speaker 1: the most common form, and that's where we tend to
Speaker 1: lose the frontal hairline or we say lose our edges
Speaker 1: from tight hairstyles, and that can occur in about one
Speaker 1: out of three adult Black women. And then there's another
Speaker 1: form of hair loss more common in Black women, and
Speaker 1: that is a scarring, permanent, destructive form called c c
Speaker 1: c A or central centrifugal sickatricial alopecia that can destroy
Speaker 1: the hair follicles. There is now known to be a
Speaker 1: genetic predisposition to this. Tight hairstyles can make it worse.
Speaker 1: Possibly relaxers things like dan druff may exacerbate it. The
Speaker 1: treatment for c c c A is very similar to
Speaker 1: how we treat autoimmune alopecia, so we will often start
Speaker 1: with steroid injections. Early recognition, diagnosis, and management is the
Speaker 1: best way to prevent c c C A from becoming
Speaker 1: more severe and more scarring. I always advise that if
Speaker 1: you have hair loss, please do see a dermatologist that
Speaker 1: specializes in hair loss because we don't want to miss
Speaker 1: the diagnoses. So Gina Knight worked in the hair industry
Speaker 1: for over a decade before losing her hair from c
Speaker 1: C c A. She wrote a recent article about living
Speaker 1: with alopecia. Gina joins us from home in England. First
Speaker 1: of all, just watching what's been going on abouts fall,
Speaker 1: I'm emotional. It's just such an important issue. So thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, thank you, Gina. Well, tell us
Speaker 1: what your journey is like. Gina, I've had this for
Speaker 1: over a decade now. I was pregnant with my first child.
Speaker 1: I had a very small circular spot of hair loss
Speaker 1: and I thought, I absolutely don't know what this is.
Speaker 1: So I went to the doctors and unfortunately my diagnosis
Speaker 1: was all over the place. He said it was probably
Speaker 1: part of my postpartum shedding, and as someone who listens
Speaker 1: to her doctor, I ignored it. And especially with c
Speaker 1: C c A, that's the worst thing you can do
Speaker 1: is ignore the hair loss, because that spot grew and
Speaker 1: grew and grew, and eventually I couldn't hide it or
Speaker 1: shield it. Gina, what did your hair mean to you?
Speaker 1: It has been said that I am hair obsessed and
Speaker 1: there's a reason behind that. So I was raised in
Speaker 1: private foster care with a white family at eleven months old,
Speaker 1: and God rest my mother's soul, she could not do
Speaker 1: my hair. I always felt that my hair was problematic,
Speaker 1: and up until the age of eight, she used to
Speaker 1: shave off my hair, cut it really short. And that's
Speaker 1: where I figure I get the kind of anxiety from
Speaker 1: having a bald head. I just feels like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: you're problematic. So at the age of eight, I said, please,
Speaker 1: don't cut my hair again, please, And I started to
Speaker 1: learn how to do my own hair, and it just
Speaker 1: became such an important part of how I would connect
Speaker 1: with my Nigerian heritage because when I went home, there
Speaker 1: was no one for me to relate to. So hair
Speaker 1: was my way of relating to other Black women. And
Speaker 1: it's something I've taken from starting my blog and then
Speaker 1: going on to work in their hair industry and becoming
Speaker 1: a wig designer who specializes in Afro textures because I
Speaker 1: am obsessed um, and then to sort of then lose that,
Speaker 1: it definitely felt like I'd lost a huge part of myself.
Speaker 1: My hair was just such an important part of everything
Speaker 1: about me. I could always connect with other women because
Speaker 1: we had the same hair, We felt the same about
Speaker 1: our hair, we had the same woes, and we had
Speaker 1: the same joys. Right, I completely understand that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get that completely, and that being your only way of
Speaker 1: feeling connected. That goes deeper than just that's like I
Speaker 1: lost my corn of where I felt I was connected,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? It makes a lot of sense. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a journey. I'm finally a good place with
Speaker 1: my hair loss, but it's definitely been something that has
Speaker 1: taken an emotional toll on me. Yea, Dr Mina, what
Speaker 1: kind of mental health impact do you see in your
Speaker 1: alopecia patients. I think it's difficult for people to empathize
Speaker 1: with our patients that have hair loss because it's not
Speaker 1: life threatening, but it takes a significant psychological toll on
Speaker 1: their mental health. I have patients whose significant others and
Speaker 1: their family members haven't seen their scalps and years because
Speaker 1: they have to hide it even at home. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: feel like hair is how you show who you are,
Speaker 1: your identity. Really, that's sometimes why it's so hurtful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what it meant for my hair to start
Speaker 1: falling out six years, right, Yes, I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about men that suffer from alopecia. We don't want
Speaker 1: to underestimate the mental toll that it takes on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really wanted an opportunity for our brothers to speak
Speaker 1: about this. I was diagnosed at the age of ten.
Speaker 1: They took me about six years to finally accept it.
Speaker 1: It was a constant battle not being comfortable in my
Speaker 1: own skin. I did a good job of putting a
Speaker 1: mask on and acting like everything was okay, but in
Speaker 1: the inside, it wasn't. Alopecia drove me to become a
Speaker 1: bad basketball player, and he also helped me become a
Speaker 1: better person and be firm. Believe everything happens for a reason.
Speaker 1: The reason why it happened to me is because now
Speaker 1: I have the opportunity and I had the platform to
Speaker 1: help others with this condition. I was diagnosed with alopecia
Speaker 1: and two thousand and twelve, and just like Jada, I
Speaker 1: lost all my hair in the shower, it felt like
Speaker 1: hair was in my hands and I looked into the
Speaker 1: mirror and I'm gonna be honest with you. Tears started
Speaker 1: to roll down my cheeks and I started to question
Speaker 1: my worth, my value, my identity, Throughout my journey, I've
Speaker 1: wished people understood how draining it can be to deal
Speaker 1: with ignorance, and that often people respond to something that
Speaker 1: they don't understand with either anger or amusement. I think
Speaker 1: as a man with alopecia, it's been a journey to
Speaker 1: understand who I am in my appearance and my values.
Speaker 1: It can be a vicious visual disease, and it can
Speaker 1: be difficult to be perceived as different. I wore a
Speaker 1: wig for many, many years because I felt like I
Speaker 1: had to hide. We have this really weird misconception that
Speaker 1: it's easy for guys because being bald is a style.
Speaker 1: I was seven when I first law my hair, and
Speaker 1: I was kid literally try to break my hand one
Speaker 1: time just because I was bald. Now it really has
Speaker 1: become one of my favorite things about myself because it's
Speaker 1: made me you realize that your worth doesn't come from
Speaker 1: your aesthetics, period comes from who you are. That's right. Well.
Speaker 1: I wanted our brothers to speak about this because I
Speaker 1: didn't want that stereotype and that perception that because you're
Speaker 1: a man and you're losing your hair, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: because I know that's not true. That was really important
Speaker 1: to me. Nikki. Once again, I really feel like your
Speaker 1: testimony is so powerful. He did a great job. I
Speaker 1: can't thank you guys enough. To join the Red Table
Speaker 1: Talk family and become a part of the conversation. Follow
Speaker 1: us at facebook dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast
Speaker 1: produced by Facebook, Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.