While men might not look forward to it, hair loss can have a major psychological impact on women and children. Even the Bible refers to a woman’s hair as her crowning glory.

A bare head serves as a visible sign that says the individual has cancer or another illness.

Cathie Arens of Fairmont has experienced this feeling. During her battle with breast cancer, treatment caused her to lose her hair not once, but twice, so she decided to give back. Earlier this week, she donated her hair to Children with Hair Loss, an organization that provides wigs at no cost for people under the age of 21. Unlike the more widely known Locks of Love organization, Children with Hair Loss accepts color-treated and gray hair, which is why Arens chose it.

Arens was diagnosed with breast cancer on July 8, 2010. She was coaching girls softball, teaching the team how to bunt, when she got a call from her physician with the report from her recent mammogram.

The fact that Arens finished practice is testament to her courage and positive attitude that held strong over the next two years. She immediately started a 12-week series of chemotherapy.

“They told it would take about three weeks of chemo before my hair started falling out,” Arens said. “You get those stares from people. They don’t know what to say,” Arens said.

She participated in Golf for the Cure at the Rose Lake Golf Club in August.

“As I’m riding down the fairway in the golf cart, I could feel it fall out,” she said. She went to her long-time stylist, Twyla Williamson, at Aspire. “I told her to cut it off because I’m not pulling out these long strands of hair in the shower. Twyla did not even charge me. She’d been through cancer too. She was my inspiration. She’s such a positive person.”

“When you come back from chemo, one of the biggest things, for me anyway, was that I wanted that wind to blow my hair. I wanted to feel that again,” Williamson said.

Arens said her hair, which she hadn’t cut since chemo ended, grew back much thicker, curlier and darker than her original light blonde locks, which were fine and straight.

“It’s definitely a different texture now,” she said, expressing her desire to return to her original color.

“I’m gonna blonde you up. I’m gonna make you sassy,” Williamson teased.

“I like sassy,” Arens said with a laugh.

Williamson was excited to be part of Arens’ hair donation, and the two discussed the process. Williamson would section Arens’ hair into five parts, each at least 8 inches long, braid each section and fasten off the top and bottom with rubber bands.

“OK, are you ready?” Williamson asked.

“Yep,” Arens replied.

“Do you want to look?” Williamson asked.

“Nope,” Arens said.

In a few snips, Arens long hair was history, and by the time she left Aspire to return to work at Graham Tire, she had a sassy hair style.

Her hair donation triggered many memories for Arens.

A bilateral mastectomy and chemotherapy, which induced severe back pain, carried her through Christmas of 2010. In February 2011, she started 28 daily radiation treatments in Mankato, treatments that took less time than it did for her to undress and dress again. The week after she ended the radiation treatments, she bowled in a national tournament in Syracuse, N.Y.

Arens underwent reconstructive surgery in November 2011, using tissue and vessels from her lower abdomen for a more realistic result. The process left an ensuing wound as big as her husband Ron’s hand. Three times a day, the wound had to be packed with gauze, a painful process. A wound vacuum was applied, and she was on total bed rest for two months, after which the vacuum was removed as per insurance instructions. The following day, she went to Rochester where she was hospitalized for a week with a serious infection. She would experience two more infections, resulting in week-long hospital stays, over the next year.

Throughout her trials, Arens found strength in her faith, spending many hours in silent adoration and prayer at St. John Vianney Catholic Church.

“I do not look back on this time with horror in any way,” she said. “It was all necessary to give me the peace I hold today, thanks to God’s grace and all the people He put in my life during the daily struggles and victories.”

Her husband, Ron, and her parents were staunch supporters, as were her three children, Tieg, Trason and Tieryn, who were 19, 14 and 12, when she was diagnosed.

“They did great. Tieryn was my rock. She was the one that kept things going, but they were all great in their own way,” Arens said.

Tieg is now married, and he and his wife, Elizabeth, are living in St. Cloud. Trason is a junior playing soccer at St. Mary’s, and Tieryn is a freshman playing hockey at Midland University in Fremont, Neb.

Arens said cancer was a humbling experience, teaching her how to ask for and accept help, something that had been difficult for her in the past. In retrospect, the hair loss really didn’t have that much of an impact.

“I am not attached to my hair. It’s attached to me. It always grows back,” she said.