Today we’d like to introduce you to Charmeka Jackson.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I have lived with alopecia areata for 18 years and I’ve experienced the roller-coaster emotions associated with it. I’ve lost all of my hair several times and I’ve regrown it back in different areas. Both the course of the condition and the associated emotions can be unpredictable and the lack of control of your own body is frightening and intimidating. I have found that others accept me with my alopecia areata but only after I have accepted myself first. That wasn’t easy as I had to learn to accept the new me. It’s easy to glue on your eyelashes, draw on your eyebrows and to tape on your wig, but it’s hard to mend your heart and your spirit. This can only be accomplished when you accept who you are and how you are, only then can others help you. I’ve been fortunate to have a very loving family and a great support group of friends and they have helped me through the good, bad, the denial and the acceptance, loss, growth and the struggles and especially my successes dealing with my condition with alopecia areata.
As a child living with long thick black gorgeous hair to my mid-back section tender headed an all. I can always remember my grandmother doing my sister’s and I hair with washing and placing our hair into batu knots to dry overnight before she press our hair out with the old fashion hot comb from the stove. As I got to be a teenager and started to do my own hair, I would always use the brush then the comb for some reason and place my hair into a ponytail and that’s how I would always wear my hair unless when my mother would take us to the salon to get our hair done and when we did I was always the child who would always look into the mirror to see what and how they were doing my hair. When I was in the tenth grade, I notice a quarter size small patch in the nape area of my head. which I thought it was just my hair pulling from always wearing my favorite ponytail but then I figure that it wasn’t because the patch got bigger and bigger and started to spread overtime but then the patch grew back so I didn’t pay any attention because Its normal to shed between 50 and 100 hairs a day. But The question that I always ask myself to this day is where did my hair go. I will never know the answer to that question. As I got older and losing majority of my hair, my mother bought my first wig which we both didn’t know anything about wigs but I had to get one to cover the patches that I had everywhere in my head. I was never a low-esteem person with or without hair it was something that God already had plans for me and I had to accept it in learn from it so that’s when I took myself to see a dermatologist to actually see why I was losing my hair at a young age.
At my first visit, they did an exam on my head using a handheld microscope to exam my full scalp to see if I had any more live hair follicles which at the time of my exam, they were all dying so they had to put me on a medication called corticosteroids and that’s when the doctor told me that my diagnosis was a condition called Alopecia Areata which is an autoimmune disease that results in unpredictable hair loss. Your hair growth begins at the follicles, but the immune system attacks them. This condition is not contagious. However, the inflammation can lead to permanent damage to some people like myself. One of the questions the doctor asks me was if I had anyone in my family who has alopecia and if I do then it could be hereditary which I didn’t know the answer to that question until I got home to ask my mother and she stated that her first cousin has the same condition and that she lost all of her hair as a young child when she lost her mother. So now I see that it was passed down to me at an early age as well. Alopecia areata is more common among African American but less common among Asian, compared with Caucasians, according to a new study involving registry data for more than 11,000 individual alopecia areata does not differ by race or ethnicity, ratios 1.77 for African Americans, 0.4 for Asians.
As I walk through the valley of my hair loss, I will feel nor will I not fear for as my hair falls, I know I am stronger than when I started, I know I am more than my hair because I am not my hair. You might have taken my hair although I wish you wouldn’t but to let you know you won’t take my pride and joy because I am who God created me to be and that is my Crown and Glory. And that’s how I started my business Frances Crown and Glory Boutique
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
In the beginning, the ride was a roller coaster because I had to find myself and accept who I was and who I am today
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I am a wig designer who makes custom units (wigs) for hair loss clients like myself who knows how it feels without their own crown and glory (hair). I am the walking billboard marketing of my brand I know that feeling when others look at you and stare and wonder what disease do you have. I want to be that person who will make you feel like yourself again. I want to be the one who can education others on my condition. I want to be that person to tell them the 3 B’s when they look into the mirror that you are Bald, Bold and Beautiful no matter what anyone thinks of you. I want to be the one who will lift them up from the self-esteem and let them know that they are not alone.
What makes you happy?
My daughters and my grandson makes me happy for accepting me for who I am today and most importantly loving me unconditionally and also doing what God gave me to do and that is using my gift which is my hands. My mother and grandmother always used to tell me if you don’t use your gift that god gave you, god will take it away from you So I’m using everything in my power that god has giving me and that is to help others like myself.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Frances Crown and Glory Boutique
- Facebook: Francescrownandgloryboutique
- Twitter: Sensationalwigs
- Youtube: Francescrownandgloryboutique
