Angel Hair facilitates healing

A while back, a friend of mine did something remarkable, an act not only selfless, but inherently dedicated to making someone else's life a little bit easier.

I realise that people do nice things for each other all the time, in fact far more often than we are led to believe by our endlessly nay-saying media. But my friend 's gesture seemed to transcend all the do-good hype and consolidate many of the positive elements that we are all touched by when we hear of someone giving someone else a break.

What my friend did was donate her hair to a foundation that arranges for the distribution of wigs to underprivileged kids who have suffered hair loss as burn victims or following cancer treatment.

Now I'll admit, I found the entire concept a little fascinating: the act of giving away something so very personal and key to one's own appearance in order to make someone else's appearance and life that much easier.

However, what really caught my attention was not only that the exchange would take place between two people who would never even meet, but that, even though the donation was effected as immediately as the hairdresser's shears sliced the strands, its preamble was lengthy and its impact lasting.

I don't mean to take anything away from the myriad of other forms of giving that organisations have come up with, nor am I attempting to underscore this one as better in any way. Blood and organ donations extend lives and financial donations certainly make life easier for a whole lot of people.

It's just that I feel there's a lot of credit due to a person –who does not have to be of the female gender– who specifically grows her hair for the better part of a year until it gets to a minimum ten inches in length, keeping it groomed and foregoing colourings and perms, only to have it lopped off and unceremoniously carted away.

Whether donating hair is a less painful way of giving than others is open to debate. What isn't debatable, however, is the good that it does. Just think: every day forty-six children are diagnosed with cancer. This year alone ten thousand kids will lose their hair to disease or accidents.

Less emotionally mature than their adult counterparts, children still have to contend with all the fears and pains that come with their condition, cope with the indignities of treatment side effects, and somehow endure the emotional scars their altered appearance inflicts upon them.

Thanks to hundreds of people like my friend, on any given morning hundreds of underprivileged sick kids all over Canada get up and face life just a bit more easily— though their lives must seem unfairly cruel more often than not. I know that there are many donors because each wig requires as many as twelve donations.

This facilitation of a child's life is the sublime result of someone having actually decided to do something rather than simply thinking that being nice is a nice idea.

Once removed from its social and psychological moorings, donating one's hair is, at least technically, a rather simple act. There are no health limitations to consider, it can be performed repeatedly, and there are no minimum age restrictions.

Now I haven't gone to great lengths to ascertain whether every hair of a given Canadian donor actually ends up on the head of a Canadian child, or whether it is mixed with other hair from other countries as it is handcrafted in China into wigs that probably travel around the world.

The one thing I do know for certain is that if no Canadian hair is donated, many underprivileged sick kids in Canada will have to face their medical treatment and condition without the self-assurance this donation can facilitate. Somehow that just doesn't seem right.

The holidays may be a good time to think this one over. Facilitating recovery for a child in need may be just what we need to make our own lives just that much easier to live.

So, to facilitate your potential donation, I should at the very least sign off with the co-ordinates of the Angel Hair for Kids Foundation.

Philip A. Godin