I saw a picture of you the other day. It made me laugh. Stripes, plaid, and polka dots all at the same time… You always had a great sense of style. But then again, you didn’t care what people thought about you. It was refreshing. Even as a 10-year-old girl with alopecia areata, you didn’t care how other people saw you. Most people saw your patchy bald spots and assumed you had cancer. But you didn’t blink an eye at those people. You smiled and laughed and made them feel comfortable. You, the almost bald one, made them feel better. I wish I could tell you that you still have an endless supply of confidence, but middle school doesn’t leave young girls unscathed.

In eighth grade, you will lose all of your hair. It will start slowly, so slowly that you won’t even know that it’s started. But the hair in the drain, the hair on your pillow when you wake up in the morning, and the hair collecting in piles next to your desk will begin to add up. It won’t affect you at first, though. You’ve never cared about your hair. You’ve never cared what people thought about you. But then again, no one’s ever looked at you quite like that. Like something was wrong with you. Like they couldn’t stop staring at you—and not in a good way. Those stares will start to weigh on your mind. You might start to wonder why they look at you like that. I mean, is hair really that big a deal? You might start to wonder why God allowed this to happen. You’ve always loved helping your parents at church and going to Sunday School. Is that worth punishing? You might wonder what boys think about dating a hairless girl - if being a conventional kind of pretty is the only way that you can be beautiful.

And eventually? It will all be gone. Your favorite teacher will suggest that wearing hats to school might make you feel more comfortable. Your parents will look through Locks of Love catalogs to find a wig with you. Your friends won’t ask any questions because you don’t know how to live without laughing and smiling, even if you would rather be crying. And one day, you’re going to wake up and it won’t be the first thing on your mind. Eventually, you’re going to wake up and you’re not going to think about it at all. There will be other things on your mind because other things are more important. Because this, this does not define you.

You are so many wonderful things. You are confident. You are smart. You make other people laugh. You are a good friend and you enjoy helping other people. You are more than what society thinks of you. You will go on to be the Vice President of your junior and senior class. You will be in a twelve-person cast for a play made up of only upperclassmen in your first semester of high school. You will get accepted into a great college and you will have so many amazing friends along the way.

And you will realize that these people that stare at you, they are the ones that are wrong. The boys who don’t think that you’re pretty because you don’t have hair? Those are the boys who aren’t worth your time. Life is too short to try to please people who put too much importance on the wrong things. You will realize that you were wrong all of those times you thought your disease was a curse. It wasn’t a curse, it was a blessing. You aren’t surviving despite not having hair. You are thriving because of it. Without this disease, you never would have understood the grace of God and the true meaning of beauty. Continue to make people laugh, continue to learn about God, continue to help people. When you look back on these years in school, remember the great people you met and the crazy things you did. Remember those times you went to Washington, D.C. for the work you did to help coral reef ecosystems. Remember that time you got a 26 on your ACT in the seventh grade. Remember that time you won “Most Likely to Succeed” at your senior prom.

My advice to you? Don’t change a thing about yourself. Because no matter what happens, you are so much more than what people think of you. Your identity is not found in the things that you do or the way that you look. Instead, your confidence and your strength is found at the feet of the cross. And that is what makes you so beautiful.