Dr Tammy Jolivette

My journey into this work began with my own personal experience embracing my natural curly hair. As a hairstylist for over 10 years, I decided to go natural when the pandemic happened, and during that journey, I noticed psychological implications starting to rise because of my background in clinical psychology. I thought it was just me at first, but when I started having conversations with my clients, they had it too, and that's when I knew I had something. After talking with colleagues in the medical field about cancer patients and others experiencing hair loss, I realized this was a widespread issue that no one was talking about. There are psychological implications when women or men lose their hair, but these things that people deal with are not addressed. That's why The Texture of Me speaks boldly about bringing research to this field and bringing context to something that I say is silent but loud - it exists, but we normalize it so it doesn't seem like it exists. I coined the term post-traumatic care syndrome to name this experience, and we're now developing training for clinicians, therapists, and hairstylists to be educated on what it is and how to treat people who have it, while protecting them from discrimination.