Helen no longer has any interest in having hair. “I’ve even had nightmares about my hair growing back,” she laughs. “We associate hair with femininity so much that to be a bald woman is to fight an uphill battle in terms of feeling conventionally ‘beautiful’ in our society, so imagine how liberating it is to stop aiming for conventional beauty!” When I ask her if she has any final words of wisdom for young women who may be struggling to come to terms with their own alopecia, she offers these: “What I would say is this: the world is kinder than you might think. Embrace your strange and unique beauty, and those you encounter will embrace it too.”