Words

My husband and I find ourselves repeatedly teaching our son that “words are powerful.” When he says he can’t do something, we talk about the importance of words and try to drill down to what he might really be thinking or feeling (for example, “I haven’t found a solution yet” or “I need help”). When he (actually pretty rarely) complains, we remind him that words are powerful in shaping how we think about the world and our experience of it.

Ah, parenting. The ultimate reminder that we should practice what we preach – am I right? If I truly believe what I have been saying (and I do), it means I really need to apply this to how I talk to others and to myself about alopecia.

When I was in college I had a management professor who used a lot of unconventional methods to teach us, like sending us outside to look for leadership principles in nature. I loved his class, as it really opened my eyes to new perspectives about the world and who I could be in that world. The final assignment was to write a paper about how these concepts had changed our approach to something in our own lives.

Oh, I wish I could find that paper now to share more specifics with you. By this point in college I had lost and then grown back almost all of my hair within the preceding year and a half. Suffice it to say, I was still processing this. I chose alopecia as my topic and began the paper with a cover sheet filled with labeled pictures of alopecia...words like “gross,” “weird,” “weak” and “ugly.” Throughout the course of my writing I talked about how my perspective had changed. I showed the same pictures at the end, but adjusted the labels to read “strong,” “unique,” and “powerful.” I included a picture of myself at the very end, simply labeled “beautiful.”

How do I hold on to a lesson that 21-year-old me went through all of the trouble to learn? By repeating the results to myself! When I look in the mirror, I need to speak powerful words. Truthful words. Because while alopecia is both unusual and deeply unwanted, I know it has also made me a stronger, more compassionate, more thoughtful person. And that is beautiful.

What’s your experience? Do you regularly practice speaking powerful words?