My name is Emma, I’m 34 and I’m from Carlow – although my current home is in Hoi An, Vietnam, where I teach yoga and mindfulness and manage a hair loss website called Lady Alopecia. Nowadays, I feel quite confident in walking around with my tiny mohawk; the only hair I can grow. But it took me a long time to get to this point.

This is my story.

Growing up, my auburn curls were sort of my trademark. It used to bother me – how strangers in the street would comment on it, how everyone would ruffle it. I hated that I had such unusual hair. But it was only when I started losing it, that I realised how lucky I’d been.

My mum died a month before my eleventh birthday. She’d had Lupus and had been sick for most of my childhood – still, it came as a total shock and I guess the emotions I felt hard to express at the time took a toll on my physical body. I got my first small bald spot, towards the nape of my neck, one month later.

That bald patch didn’t bother me at first. I even enjoyed having a secret friend, who I called – cleverly – Patch. But when I went to boarding school in Dublin, and became more conscious of my appearance, it became harder to ignore. By the time I was 15, it had spread upwards towards the back of my head, and inwards from my ears. So even tying my hair into a ponytail for sport became a complex manner of arranging clips and headbands “just so”. I lived in fear of anyone finding out and spent my weekends going to Blackrock clinic, then Vincent’s Hospital, to get painful corticosteroid injections in my scalp. They ended up doing all kinds of damage but I didn’t care. I was 16 and desperate to be “normal”.

When I went to DCU for college, headbands became part of my new identity. I don’t think anyone saw me without them on! But when I reached my mid-twenties, around the time I was studying for a Masters in Edinburgh, I lost 70% of my hair in a couple of months. It was devastating to witness: the clumps in the shower, in my hands, on my pillow. I experimented with stick-on extensions and each morning before I went to college, my boyfriend Andy would get the sticky tape and little sections of synthetic hair I’d laid out, before piecing me back together.

Back in Ireland, when I began working in an advertising agency, I bought my first human hair wig. Shockingly expensive and difficult to style – I’d spend an hour or more each morning trying to curl it so it’d look like my natural hair – I grew to hate it. At first, it had given me confidence but I soon felt like I was hiding, all of the time. I didn’t feel like myself. And the headaches it gave me, plus the jagged scratches its combs inflicted on my scalp, became too much to bear.

So one evening, right before I left Ireland for a solo trip to Indonesia, I asked Andy to shave my head. In our little apartment in Portobello, he got out the clippers as I watched my remaining curls pool around my feet. Then the BIC razor to finish the job.

Although I felt slightly sick at the result – the shadowy stubble which remained in a crisscross pattern over my scalp, the giant bump on my crown I’d never noticed before – I felt strangely liberated. I felt like myself, for the first time in years.

So the next morning, I took my bald, bumpy head on a plane. And over the next 3 months, I found a strength that I never knew I possessed. I put up with the stares, the points and the outright laughter and learned to talk openly about my condition, without welling up. When I came back to Ireland, I wrote a Facebook post, complete with a photo of my shaved head, and posted publicly about it for the first time. The response I got was so incredible – from friends and strangers alike, from people who told me they’d been through similar experiences – that I realised how powerful it can be to share our stories. And how important it is that we do so.

This realisation led me to setting up Lady Alopecia – a website on which I share information about hair loss and tips to manage it. But mainly, it’s to let alopecians know that they’re not alone. To realise that beauty isn’t about how much hair we have – or don’t! It’s about having confidence in ourselves, just as we are.

People often ask me how I’ve come to terms with my alopecia. And I know that my yoga and meditation practice has had a lot to do with it – which is why I’m actually launching a course specifically for people with hair loss. But mainly, it’s realising that we all have our insecurities. And the very things we’re anxious about? They’re actually what make us special.

Oh sure, I’ve had negative reactions. I’ve had abuse hurled at me as I walked down Camden street one night towards my Christmas party, insults I can’t repeat here. An ex-colleague told me my bald head “sickened and offended him” – I wasn’t at the stage I am now and actually apologised to him for making him feel that way!

But I’m a lot further in my journey now.

Since connecting with other baldies online, and reading more and more stories of inspirational men, women and children with alopecia, I’ve been blown away by their confidence, strength and positive attitudes in the face of obstacles. People just getting on with their lives and not letting alopecia control those lives...which is how it should be. I feel so lucky to have found them and have come to see my alopecia as a gift. Sure, I didn’t ask for it – but I probably wouldn’t give it back, not considering all the amazing experiences, opportunities and people it’s sent my way.

Don’t get me wrong, I still get days when I want, more than anything, to blend in. I’m human, after all! But usually, I’m quite comfortable with my bare-headed look – I’ve actually grown to like it and most people think it’s a style choice! And I wanted to share my story here to reiterate, like others here have said, alopecia doesn't have to be this awful thing. We can turn this “weakness” into our power, make this “difference” something we’re proud to unleash!

It may not happen overnight. And it’s ok if you’re not there yet. But you CAN get there...and just know, there’s a whole community of fellow alopecians who can support you, every step of the way.