Sandy Rosenblatt, BS - Expert

I wanted to love myself. I wanted something to change. After years of therapy, coaching and other healing work, the world began to look up. I was full of possibility. The secret that I kept close to me, hidden in the shadows for 31 years was now ready to be shared and I was ready to share it.   I chose to bring my secret to the light. I wanted to celebrate It, and who I had become. I wanted to use It to help others – people like me, people who felt ashamed; men who felt embarrassed, and women who felt ugly.

So, I took a deep breath, exhaled, and I wrote my story.  And had it published in The Huffington Post.  Seeing it in the media, online, in color, in the world, I knew what I was meant to become – a feeling not to dissimilar to another moment in my life.

I remember the first time I was looking into my playroom mirror. I was studying my face. As a 7-year-old I was fascinated by all parts of my body, but especially my face. I am not sure what had me reach my hand up towards my eyes but I did. I began to feel my eyelashes between my fingers; the texture, the softness, the vulnerability of a single strand of hair . . .  and then PLUCK.  I pulled one out. There was something quite satisfying about that feeling; the power, the pain, something being created and destroyed all in a single moment.  That was the moment that changed me, defined me, shaped me into the person I am today.  It was that day that started my downward spiral.

Over the years I plucked the hair on my head, eyebrows and eyelashes. I have been through many stages and phases. Sometimes no one could tell a thing. Other times, I had no eyelashes no eyebrows, and the bald spots on my head were the size of a baseball. I hated looking in a mirror. I loathed myself. I knew I was different. And in those brief moments I felt normal, days I looked normal, there was always some kid, or worse some adult, to remind me who I really was.  Different. Alone. Ashamed.  It was dreadful.

I longed to have someone like me to talk to, cry with, to share the hurt and shame.  Someone who would understand what I was going through. I wanted someone who would get it, get me, see me – the real me.

So here I am, writing about Trichotillomania. Here I am, a voice, for those not ready to speak up.

And that purpose, I spoke of is this:

I am here to let others know that they are perfect exactly like they are AND exactly like they are not.

I am here to listen and share my story.

I am here to be the person I always wished I had had in my life.

I am here to eradicate the shame around trich.

I am here to step into the shoes I was always meant to wear.

I am here to love myself and all of you.

I was meant to be a voice.

And today, I am here to be that voice, The Voice of Trichotillomania