Susan Smith Facebook ad: “My mother hid a wig from me for 32 years. I'm next.”

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I put my dead mother's WIG on my head and screamed YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME at the bathroom mirror. She hid it for 32 years. I found out from the funeral director. I'm 52, and I'm three years into doing EXACTLY what she did. Let me tell you what I saw in that mirror. Because it was not a resemblance, it was HER, the hair and the forehead and the chin held up just so because the hairline had to sit a certain way. And I swear behind her the whole rest of it came at me all at once, the hats and the dock and the back row of every picture and Thursdays at ten. I ripped it off and threw it in the tub and sat down on the toilet lid and screamed the rest of it into a bath towel so the neighbors wouldn't hear. That was August. Read all of this and you are going to be MAD, I still am, and the thing I'm mad at is a sentence, one sentence. Because a doctor handed it to my mother in 1994 and a different doctor handed it to me in March. And it was the same sentence with the same shrug on the end of it, it runs in families, there's nothing to be done. What I found out was shocking, and I did not find it out from her. When I was in the funeral home in february my sister Linda was sitting right next to me and the director had his folder open and his pen out. And he was going down his list like it was a grocery list, did she wear glasses, did she wear dentures, and then did she wear a wig. I said no, fast, like he'd insulted her. And that's when Linda looked down at the folder and did not look up. "Since she was about fifty," Linda said, and she said it to the folder and not to me. I'm the OLDEST, I'm the one who is supposed to know things, and my little sister knew and I didn't. I did not cry in that office, because everybody expects sad and I was not sad yet, I was MAD. I sat in a funeral home with my purse on my lap adding things up like a bill I'd been overcharged on. The first thing I added up was the hats, because she wore a hat to every wedding and every christening and every graduation for 32 years and I honestly thought my mother just liked hats. Then I added up the lake, because every summer the grandkids were in the water begging Grandma to come in and she was up on the dock in a sundress saying somebody has to watch the towels. And then I got to Thursdays, because every Thursday at ten she went to Donna's salon, for 32 years, and nobody was allowed to ride along, not me, not Linda, not the grandkids. I thought that was her one private hour of the week and it turns out it was a FITTING. Go look at your family photos after this, I'm not kidding, and tell me where your mother is standing. Mine is in the back row of every single one and I honestly thought it was because she was tall. We cleared her house that same month, and here is the part that made me sick. On the top shelf of her closet there was a round hatbox, and I knew what was in it before I got it down, I knew with my hand still up in the air. It was ash blond, the soft set, the hair I'd been looking at across a Thanksgiving table since I was twenty, and it was sitting on a white foam head with no face. Taped inside the lid there was an index card in her handwriting, and it said "Style before company. Do not let the girls see." I am one of the girls. I put the lid back so fast I bent it, and then I took it off again because I'm me and I cannot leave a thing alone, and under the foam head, folded in tissue paper, there was a letter. It was from Family Medical Associates in Dayton and it was dated March 14, 1994, and it was two paragraphs on letterhead with one line that I have now read maybe forty times. It said, "Hereditary. Nothing further can be done." Did anyone ask her one follow up question? Nobody did, so she took it like a verdict and she SERVED it, 32 years, and I doubt anybody in that office ever thought about her again. Linda took the box home because she said she couldn't leave it in an empty house, and I said take it, take it, and what I meant was get it away from me. So here is my confession and I need you to hear all of it. I already knew about me. I had known for three years. I moved my part to the left in 2023 because the left side has more to pull over, and I own four cans of root spray and one of them lives in my glove box. And I count the drain every shower, I don't want to and I do it anyway, I pick it out and I count it and I flush it so Emily won't see. I wear a ball cap to Emily's softball games and I tell everybody it's the sun. And I stopped getting in the pool. Are you hearing this? I stopped getting in the POOL. I was watching the towels, the exact same towels, and the only difference between me and her was a Target hat instead of a wig, and the whole time I told myself I was nothing like her. I went to my doctor in March, and I've been going to her for twelve years, she's the one who knows about my knee. And she looked at my part for maybe ten seconds and asked if my mother had thin hair. I said yes. "Well, it runs in families. There's honestly not a lot we can do about that. If it bothers you, some women try biotin." If it BOTHERS me, that's what she said, like my hair was a hangnail. Has anybody said that to you yet? Did you nod? I nodded, because I'm a rule follower, thats my whole problem. So I did what I was told. I took biotin first, nineteen dollars for two months, and my nails got hard as a rock and my part got wider. Then I did the rosemary oil, because every woman on the internet swears by it, and I rubbed it into my scalp every single night for six weeks until my pillowcase smelled like a pork roast. And I got NOTHING, not one hair I could point to and say that one, that one is new. Which brings me back to August and the thing I am most ashamed of. Emily was at her dad's that weekend, and I had asked Linda for the hatbox back that week and told her it was sentimental. I stood in my bathroom under that same light with the box on the sink and I took my mother's wig off the foam head and I held it for a minute like it might bite me. And then I put it on. You already know what I screamed, and here's why I screamed it. She had 32 years to say one WORD to me, one sentence, "Diane, watch your part," and that's all it would have taken. You want me to say I was sad. I was ANGRY, at her and at that letter and at the word bothers, and at myself most of all, because I was already halfway into the box and calling it a ball cap. After the towel I said it out loud, in my bathroom, to nobody. I am NOT doing this. I am NOT hiding my hair from my own daughter for 32 years so she can find out from a stranger with a clipboard. I did not sleep that night, and at 2 AM I typed "my mother went bald will I" into a search bar and couldn't even finish the sentence. And that's when I found a thread, hundreds of women whose mothers went thin around fifty and whose mothers hid it and whose doctors said some version of the exact same thing, hereditary, runs in families, not much we can do. And then a woman in Michigan said the thing nobody said to my mother or to me. She said you don't inherit a bald head, you inherit hair that can't take what your body starts doing to it after fifty, and THAT part is not a verdict. I read that twice. But here's what makes me furious all over again, and I mean furious, because NOBODY TELLS YOU HOW. The women in that thread kept coming back to pumpkin seed oil, so I ordered plain pumpkin seed oil capsules off Amazon, the cheapest one I could find, and I took them for six weeks. Nothing happened, I'm not kidding, it was the same drain and the same pins and the same everything. Then the Michigan woman posted again, and she said the oil alone had done nothing for her either, and that it was the two together, pumpkin seed oil WITH saw palmetto. So I went looking for both in one and I landed on Bloom & Bond, because it's pumpkin seed oil and saw palmetto in the same softgel. And I take one with my coffee, and that's the whole routine, I'm not going to make it sound like more than it is. And then honestly nothing happened. Week one was nothing and week two was nothing. Week seven I was cleaning the drain and it was not clean, I'm not going to tell you it was clean, but it was LESS. Month three I parted my hair down the middle under that light, on purpose, for the first time since the wig, same mirror and same bulb. And the line was still there, I won't lie to you, but it was a line again and not a road. There was hair growing IN it, short and dark and standing straight up like a kid's crew cut, right where there had been skin. Month four Emily came home for the weekend and said from the doorway, "Mom. What are you doing to your hair? It looks different." I hadn't told her one thing. Month five I went back for my knee and my doctor looked at my part on her own, with no prompting from me, and she said, "Huh. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it." Now here's the thing I need you to understand. If your mother went thin, if there's a hat in every picture, if there was an appointment nobody could ride along to, if somebody told you it runs in families and you nodded because it sounded true, then hear me. Because the sentence they gave her is the sentence they'll give you, near enough word for word. And you'll go home and move your part and buy a hat and watch the towels and call it your style. You think you have time. My mother thought she had time, and she had 32 years and she spent every single one of them in a hat. Do you want your daughter finding out from a clipboard? Do you want her on a step stool one day pulling a box down off your shelf? Do you want her to think you were tall? That's the road, and I stood on it, I had the wig ON MY HEAD. My hair is not what it was at thirty, and my part is still wider than it should be and I still favor the left out of habit. And I'm one woman in Ohio and I can't tell you what it does on your head. What I can tell you is that hereditary was never the whole sentence, and nobody was ever going to finish it for me, so I'm finishing it for you. The link is below, and it's the softgels, the two in one. Then go stand under your bathroom light tonight and part it down the middle and LOOK, not to scare yourself, but so you know where you're starting. You already KNOW, don't you? P.S. The hatbox is still on my closet shelf. I fixed the lid I bent. P.P.S. I sat Emily down the week after that knee appointment and I told her all of it, Grandma and the Thursdays and the letter and the night with the wig, all of it. Because nobody sat my mother down and I sat my daughter down at my kitchen table. Do not let the girls see. I'm one of the girls, Mom, and I let her. What are you going to tell yours?

Where the ad sends people

trybloomandbond.com

My mother hid a wig from me for 32 years. I'm next.

Pumpkin seed oil and saw palmetto in one softgel.