Moriah Plath talks to her dad about growing up with alopecia in a new episode of TLC’s Welcome to Plathville.Photo:TLC
TLC
Moriah Plathis opening up about her struggle with childhood alopecia.
“I would look myself in the mirror and I would say, ‘You are ugly. Nobody will ever love you,'” she recalls in a new episode of the TLC reality showWelcome to Plathville.
“When I was a little girl, when I was 3 years old, I lost all my hair for several years completely, not even eyebrows or eyelashes," explains Moriah, who at 20 is the second oldest daughter ofBarryandKimPlath’s nine children.
Barry and Moriah Plath.TLC
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
According to theNational Institute of Health, alopecia areata occurs when “the immune system attacks hair follicles and causes hair loss.”
It usually affects the head and face, with the most common type being “patchy alopecia areata,” where a person develops coin-sized bald spots on the scalp or elsewhere. But more severe cases can cause hair loss all over the body.
The disease’s cause in unknown. “Researchers do not fully understand what causes the immune attack on hair follicles, but they believe that both genetic and environmental (non-genetic) factors play a role, according to NIH.
While sharing a meal with her father Barry, the two discussed the mental and emotional impact of the disease on Moriah, who said in her confessional that she’d made sure “every single one of my family members knew never to show a picture of me when I was younger to anybody. And never to tell anybody.”
“I just wanted to completely block that as something that happened to me," she said.
And as she tells Barry, “Once I got my hair back, it was just like, ‘Okay, that’s not me anymore. Let’s forget about that.’ You know, I asked everybody to just not talk about it,” she says.
Moriah Plath.TLC
“Right, but now it’s okay to talk about it,” he says.
While she says she felt different, Moriah tells her father that “I mean, I was different. You didn’t treat me different.”
In fact, she adds, “I think you and mom were the only ones that actually told me I was beautiful. Her dad, clearly moved, says, “You remember that, right?”
But Moriah also told her father she had some misplaced anger and struggled with bullies at school, which contributed to self-esteem issues.
“For a while I was angry because you guys couldn’t fix it and you were my parents and you were supposed to fix it, but you couldn’t,” she says.
Barry Plath replies, “We were all helpless.”
“The doctor said you couldn’t, and they didn’t know what to do,” she said. “That’s not your fault.”
“I’m just sorry that children sometimes being cruel children did what they did,” he says.
“The words really affected me,” she says.
Her father agrees, saying, “They cut like knives sometimes.”
Welcome to Plathvilleairs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
source: people.com
