Visible difference campaigner Laura opened up about losing her hair to alopecia aged 12, triggered by the stress of her parents’ divorce.
Speaking on the Mail’s The Apple & The Tree podcast, Laura, 33, recounted transforming from a happy, social child into someone who stopped attending school, fearing she ‘looked like an alien’.
She described her difficult journey to mum Anne, who revealed on the podcast that seeing her daughter’s hair loss was ‘the last straw’ in her marriage to Laura’s dad.
The Apple & The Tree, hosted by the Reverend Richard Coles, brings together parents and their adult children to explore questions about their shared family history.
‘Even as a 12-year-old, I knew we were in chaos’, Laura told Anne.
‘I felt stressed a lot at home – because of the sudden anger and screaming matches – which made me go into peacekeeper mode.
‘Our lives were always loud and shouty, everything felt rushed, and the littlest thing could trigger a big argument, which wasn’t fun.
Visible difference campaigner Laura opened up about losing her hair to alopecia aged 12, triggered by the stress of her parents’ divorce
The Apple & The Tree , hosted by the Reverend Richard Coles, brings together parents and their adult children to explore questions about their shared family history
‘We went to get my hair straightened – ironically, I was trying to make myself look as beautiful as possible. It was the hairdresser that first found a bald patch.
‘That feeling of everything being out of my control just spiralled from there.’
Laura believes she and her mother both still carry trauma from those difficult teenage years.
‘I so clearly remember your face at the hairdressers’, she said to her mum.
‘You’re like me, you can’t hide your emotions. You looked terrified. It was as if your face was saying: not this now.
‘That created trauma – trauma runs through our relationship. At 12, I was not ready to comprehend the things that were happening at home.
‘Loads of people go through the divorce of their parents – why did it make me go bald? Why did I lose every hair on my body in a matter of weeks?
‘I started to feel like an alien that couldn’t leave the house.’
Anne remembered discovering her daughter’s alopecia as the breaking point in her marriage.
‘It was the last straw for me’, she told her daughter.
‘When I saw your bald patch – the size of a fifty pence piece – I felt terrified. Completely out of my comfort zone.
Laura believes she and her mother both still carry trauma from those difficult teenage years
Laura described her difficult journey to mum Anne, who revealed on the podcast that seeing her daughter’s hair loss was ‘the last straw’ in her marriage to Laura’s dad
‘I realised then that things truly were out of control at home. It was the last straw for my family life – I didn’t know what to think.’
Drawing on her experience mentoring teenagers with alopecia, Laura was critical of how her mother handled her diagnosis when she was growing up.
She said: ‘I see young people now absolutely thriving, even within weeks or months of their alopecia diagnosis.
‘I don’t think there’s a timeline where you accept it – and I remember you clearly saying to me as a teenager: I know you’ll have accepted it when you can walk down the street without your wig on.
‘I still resent that. There is no right way to manage your confidence and condition.
‘You were the adult, and I was the teenager – I needed someone to tell me what to do, and nobody would tell me how to handle it. I think I was really let down.
‘I felt like I was in it on my own the whole time. I felt like I was the only young woman in the world that had gone through hair loss – which is bizarre.’
Anne was apologetic about how she managed her daughter’s hair loss, despite suffering from severe eczema herself.
‘I wanted someone to show me what to do because I wasn’t able to help you’, she admitted.
‘We would have been ideal candidates for what we now call family counselling. I hold my hands up, I was clueless.
‘All I ever wanted was for that little fifty pence piece to grow back. I have lived with the pain of eczema my entire life – with these things, I thought the best way was to just get on with it.’
To listen to the full episode, where mother and daughter discuss Laura’s difficult birth and recent ADHD diagnosis, search for The Apple and The Tree now, wherever you get your podcasts.
