Why I shaved my head before Starting chemo

Love Bombs
Written By Brooke Taylor, Board Chair

Portions of this post were originally shared on Brooke Taylor’s personal blog in fall 2019.


We all cry in the shower. If you don’t, well, you have another safe place I’m sure of it. Or, you’re lying.

I couldn’t imagine spending more than one shower crying because another clump of hair was falling out on cancer’s terms - and not mine. Add on weeks of picking up hair all over the house, and I’m not on board for those kind of shenanigans.

That’s a hard unsubscribe for me.

Cancer showed up uninvited, so I’m not giving it any wiggle room to run the show. That seems rude, honestly.

So, I took charge. Waiting for it to fall piece by piece was too much. Why would I do that to myself?

The day before my first day of chemo, I shaved my head.

My best friend who has been my colorist, stylist, and general stylist since we were 15 years old, took charge and found a few options online to send my hair for either a full wig or a halo wig based on how much hair we’d collect, sat me down, and shaved my head.

While I want to say “it’s just hair. it’s fine.” We both know that’s not true.

But, it is important to know I did it my way.

In Hindsight

There were two driving forces in my decision to buzz my head prior to chemo starting.

Primary: control. I was in the midst of hormone crashing from having a baby and from shutting down my ovaries via Zoladex injections only two weeks later. I couldn’t yet drive because of c-section recovery. And, I wasn’t sure how I would handle business ownership during the chaos of cancer treatment. In fact, I was in the middle of producing a large video shoot for a large organization and everything just felt too much. Hair loss, I could control.

Secondary: finances. In 2019, cold capping therapy was expensive and required so much research and coordination. As a brand spankin’ new mom and business owner with a full client roster I wasn’t sure how I’d even keep my clients during this season. The last thing I wanted to do was take on a vehicle-sized payment to maybe save my hair.

Looking back, I know I did what was right for me with the information I had at the time. Today, I would 100 percent try cold capping. And, for the love, I would have made an appointment to have my eyebrows ombre powdered and begged the scheduler to get me on the schedule before my first chemo session. Losing my brows was mentally more difficult than losing my hair.

Brooke Taylor, Board Chair

Brooke Clay Taylor is the founder of the Rural Gone Urban Foundation, a nonprofit born from her belief in supporting women who are tough as nails—women who don’t let the weight of the world break them.

A ranch girl at heart and a toddler mom, Brooke’s life has been anything but ordinary. Raised on a farm in Indiana, she learned early on that life isn’t fair, but it’s worth fighting for. At six, she lost her dad to colon cancer. By junior high, she traded her small-town roots for life on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, and by high school, was already proving the world wrong when a guidance counselor deemed her “not college material.”

Brooke’s journey hasn’t been a straight line. After over a decade working in agriculture marketing with internationally recognized brands, she bet on herself and started her own business from the ground up, with just one client and a lot of faith. In 2019, when she gave birth to her daughter, she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. After a season of intense treatment, she was declared cancer-free, but life threw her a curveball when cancer returned in 2022 for round two. And yet, through every challenge, she’s never had to face it alone.

Brooke believes that while you can do a lot on your own, it’s the people in your corner that make the difference. It was this belief that led her to launch the Rural Gone Urban Foundation in 2022, a place for women in need of support—whether they’re pursuing education, building businesses, or battling cancer.

As a self-proclaimed “B student” and a mom to a 5-year-old, Brooke wants women to know they’re worthy of support, regardless of their GPA or their business’s current state. Her foundation is here to help women write their own stories of strength, resilience, and success.

In Brooke’s world, there’s no such thing as too much support—whether you’re in the ring with cancer, starting a business, or just trying to make it through another day.

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