Speaker 1: What's up our t T fan? Check out this bonus clip.
Speaker 1: Having alopecia can be hard on the whole family. Kevin
Speaker 1: Aldridge recently wrote an article about his wife's battle with
Speaker 1: the disease. My wife has alopecia. I've dried her tears,
Speaker 1: affirmed her beauty and used only my words to support her.
Speaker 1: And that's such beautiful words. Thank you, Kevin. Why is
Speaker 1: it important for you to share your perspective? I think
Speaker 1: because if you haven't been on this journey with someone
Speaker 1: who's who's been through it, you don't know what it's like.
Speaker 1: You know, people will say things like, Oh, it's just hair.
Speaker 1: Oh it's just a joke. I think when you've walked
Speaker 1: with somebody on that journey and you've seen the things
Speaker 1: in the private moments that people don't see publicly, do
Speaker 1: you understand that it's not just hair, it's not just
Speaker 1: a joke. After the event with the oscars, I understood
Speaker 1: the gut reaction of a husband and want to defend
Speaker 1: in that moment. I think where I differentiate as I
Speaker 1: understand that people need to be educated about the struggle
Speaker 1: that people who have alopecia go through. So Nicole, what
Speaker 1: is your journey. So I had alopecia um the first
Speaker 1: time when I was sixteen years old. My hair came
Speaker 1: out for about three or four years, and then it
Speaker 1: started to grow back, and I didn't think anymore about alopecia.
Speaker 1: We got married in two thousand seven, and on my
Speaker 1: wedding day at the beautition, she noticed a spot and
Speaker 1: that was the first time that I thought that it
Speaker 1: was coming back. And it did. And I wore wigs
Speaker 1: for a while, and they're itchy, they're hot. My head
Speaker 1: is very small, and so the yes, they do right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it just got to me, you know, I
Speaker 1: did not want to wear the wigs. I thought maybe
Speaker 1: I'll shave it. I talked to him about it, and
Speaker 1: he was super supportive. Whatever it is that you want
Speaker 1: to do, I'll do. I'll support you. That's what I've
Speaker 1: always tried to do, just be a support for her
Speaker 1: as her husband, to make her feel always accepted and affirmed,
Speaker 1: and that I never looked at her any differently than
Speaker 1: she was still the same beautiful woman that I'm married.
Speaker 1: And so I shaved it. I decided to just go
Speaker 1: all out, and he said, you go upstairs and you
Speaker 1: cut it and I'll shave it off for you. Then
Speaker 1: he gave me the barbershop treatment, and I had like
Speaker 1: the the hot towel that he put on my head
Speaker 1: and and he shaved it. At the time, I worked
Speaker 1: at and inner city elementary school, so I was really
Speaker 1: nervous about going to the school with the shaved head.
Speaker 1: I went in. I did hear the kids, why did
Speaker 1: miss Soldiers she cut her hair? Or look at her?
Speaker 1: It wasn't bad. I received a lot of hugs from
Speaker 1: the staff and from the teachers, even from some of
Speaker 1: the kids. Your journey reminds me of mine a bit.
Speaker 1: It started falling out and I was trying to hold
Speaker 1: on to it, and then I cut it, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I was just like, funk it. All the
Speaker 1: trying to manage it and I was just over it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even hiding it under the wigs. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: doing all of this only to cover it up more.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do it anymore. So I did
Speaker 1: the steroid shots, going every month, getting thirty to forty
Speaker 1: shots in my head with this little bit of hair growth,
Speaker 1: and if I want to continue my hair growth, I
Speaker 1: have to continue the shot. And I was like, no,
Speaker 1: they gave me the stress ball, and so I'm just
Speaker 1: squeezing on the stress ball while they poke all of
Speaker 1: these holes into my scals. It does, it's these little,
Speaker 1: tiny needles, and so it just wasn't worth it for
Speaker 1: me anymore. Yeah, I'm with you that I was going
Speaker 1: to say, you don't realize that the community is bigger
Speaker 1: than you think it is. And a lot of times
Speaker 1: when you're affected by something like this, you feel so
Speaker 1: alone and you feel like it's only happening to you.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people that she knew
Speaker 1: who were suffering in silence. And I think if if
Speaker 1: there's one thing that I hope comes out of this
Speaker 1: and the attention that this has been getting over the
Speaker 1: past few months, is that we'll see more communities form,
Speaker 1: people feeling more comfortable about coming out and sharing their
Speaker 1: stories and um feeling so not isolated, and maybe even
Speaker 1: those of us who aren't impacted by will develop a
Speaker 1: little more humanity, empathy, and sensitivity. We just don't know
Speaker 1: what people are going through. You and my wife present
Speaker 1: strong on the outside, but people don't see the internal
Speaker 1: struggles that are going on, and so we all just
Speaker 1: need to learn just to check ourselves for amatic Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to this bonus content