5-3-2026

Finding My Way Back to the Mirror

    It was a damp Sunday morning in May when I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and really looked. I mean really looked. The steam from the shower had cleared, leaving behind a cold, damp frame around my reflection. For months, I had been practicing the art of the quick glance—the five-second brush past the glass to wash my hands or brush my teeth without letting my eyes linger. But today, I stopped. There it was. My hair was finally coming back, a soft, dark shadow dusting my head. It was longer than it had been a month ago, but as I leaned closer, the harsh light cut straight through it, showing the pale, unmistakable expanse of my scalp beneath. It was a strange, emotional moment of seeing progress and seeing the empty spaces all at once.

    I stood there wondering if I could actually survive another six months of this. Six months of waiting for real length, for hair that moves when I turn my head, for something that feels like me again. The grey peach fuzz is a start, but it is also a reminder of how far I still have to go. It is a slow, agonizing process that tests every ounce of strength I have left. You expect the baldness to be the hardest part, but this middle stage—this awkward, patchy, in-between phase—comes with its own quiet grief.

    I remember the exact moment I decided to shave my head. It was a cold late January morning, and the shower water felt like lead as it beat down on my extremely sensitive skin, the tears falling fast because my mind went THERE. I can NOT handle seeing my hair fall out, I can't see myself that way.  I would rather see myself Bald than to see the clumps of hair missing from my head. I had my husband shave it shortly after that, wanting to take control of a situation that felt completely out of control. But shaving it off is a fast, dramatic act. It didn't bother me, but it made my husband cry.  Now Regrowth? Regrowth is a painfully slow test of endurance. You look in the mirror every single morning, hoping for a miracle, only to find the same soft grey peach fuzz staring back at you.

    Living with the aftermath of Stage 2b Serous Carcinoma means learning to live with a stranger in the mirror. For a long time, I tried to avoid that stranger. I would look at the floor, or look at my hands, or just keep the lights low. The shock of seeing myself was too much to handle on top of everything else. The human brain is a funny thing, though. It wants to protect you. It wants to pretend things are normal.

    There are these fleeting moments during the day when I completely forget about the cancer. I will be sitting on the couch, planning my grocery list or thinking about a book I want to write, completely forgetting the looming scanxiety of my next follow-up, and for three beautiful minutes, I am just a regular person. My mind is clear, the heavy fog of chemo brain lifts, and I feel light. Then, I walk into the bathroom, catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and do a complete double take.

    The shock hits like a physical blow to the chest. Oh, right. That is me. That is my survival skin, pale and thin, dark sickly circles under my eyes. That is my head, looking like a fuzzy tennis ball. It is a jarring reminder that my life has been split into two parts—before the infusion room and after. It takes a second to catch my breath and remind myself that this is my body, and this body saved my life.

    You have to find the humor in it, or you will cry all day. Right now, my eyebrows are in a state of absolute rebellion. They are not growing back in a nice, neat line. Instead, I have half-developed eyebrows that make me look like I am constantly questioning the universe. One side has a decent start, while the other side is just three lonely hairs holding on for dear life. When I try to draw them on, my chemo brain makes my hands shake, and I end up looking like a startled cartoon character.

    I have sat on the edge of my bed and laughed out loud at my own face. It is ridiculous, really. But laughing at myself is how I keep the darkness from creeping back in. If I can laugh at my weird, patchy eyebrows, then the cancer does not get to win today. It is a small way of reclaiming my joy.

    Sometimes my friends will tell me how brave I am, or how much they admire my strength. I always smile and thank them, but inside, I feel a little bit like an impostor. They see the survivor who wears cute headscarves and posts updates with a smile. They do not see the girl who spent twenty minutes crying over a lost eyebrow pencil because her chemo brain could not remember where she put it. They do not see the sheer frustration of trying to find some resemblance of the woman I used to be before the surgery and the endless rounds of toxic drugs.

    This whole journey is teaching me a hard lesson in patience. God knows I have never been a patient person. I like plans, I like schedules, and I like results. But you cannot rush hair growth, and you certainly cannot rush healing. Everything good takes time, and this is no different. I am learning to slow down, to breathe through the frustration, and to accept my own unique healing pace.

    The exhaustion is the hardest part to accept. Yesterday, I tried to fold a single basket of laundry. Just shirts and socks. By the time I finished, my energy was completely depleted. , and half of the basket of laundry still lay at the foot of my bed awaiting to be put up. My heart was racing, and I had to sit in my lazy boy with my heat pad to ease the acking pain in my back and just to catch my breath. A minor exertion like that should not knock me out, but it does.

    In the past, I would have beaten myself up for that. I would have called myself lazy. I would have forced myself to stand back up and keep going, pushing my body past its breaking point. But I am learning to give myself grace. There is a massive difference between telling yourself "it is okay to be selfish" and actually knowing, deep in your bones, that you are taking care of yourself and not being lazy.

    Taking care of yourself is a full-time job when you are recovering from chemotherapy. It is not a luxury, and it is not a sign of weakness. It is survival. When I fall to the floor because my legs cannot support me anymore, I am not quitting. I am giving my body the space it needs to rebuild itself from the inside out.

    I am learning to love this nearly bare reflection. It is not the version of myself I would have chosen, but it is the version that fought the battle and won. Every patch of scalp, every weird eyebrow hair, and every line of fatigue on my face is a mark of survival—the unfiltered truth of what it takes to make it to the other side. We do not talk enough about how hard it is to rebuild your identity when everything you thought defined you has been stripped away.

    Our hair is so tied up in who we think we are. It is our security blanket, our style, our shield. When you lose it, you feel naked. You feel like your illness is on display for the entire world to see. But as the months crawl by, I am realizing that my identity was never in my hair anyway. It was in the strength god gave me that kept me going to the infusion room day after day.

    So, if you are looking in the mirror today and struggling with what you see, please be gentle with yourself. If you are doing a double take because you forgot for a second what you have been through, take a deep breath. You are still here. Your body is doing the quiet, invisible work of healing, even when it feels like nothing is happening.

    We will get our length back. We will get our energy back. But until then, let us hold space for the patchy, awkward, beautiful middle. Let us laugh at the half-grown eyebrows and rest when our bodies beg us to. We are not lazy—we are healing, and that is more than enough.

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