I’m Yomarie “YoMo” Castellano.
Founder of Hair Loss Bonita, a platform and coaching practice offering practical support for women living with hair loss.
I’ve lived with Androgenic Alopecia for over 12 years. Not as a sudden shock, but as a slow, quiet process that unfolded over time. My hair didn’t fall out overnight. It thinned gradually, and with it came a kind of unraveling that was harder to explain than the hair loss itself.
What shifted wasn’t just how I looked, but how I moved through the world.
I became more aware of my body. More conscious of light, mirrors, photos, and reflections. I started measuring my confidence by how “under control” I felt that day, how much energy it took just to feel present in my own skin. Hair loss didn’t announce itself loudly, but it asked something of me constantly.
When I went looking for support, I found no shortage of products, endless before-and-afters pictures, and plenty of solutions focused on fixing hair. What I didn’t find was language for the internal experience women were actually living.
There were no real conversations about identity, space for the grief, or acknowledgment of the mental load that we carry while navigating hair loss. There was no one talking about the quiet, ongoing self-monitoring that becomes part of daily life. Hair loss was treated like a cosmetic inconvenience, when in reality it was psychological, emotional, and sometimes existential.
At times, it made me question parts of myself I had never questioned before.
Living with hair loss for over a decade taught me something most people never have to confront so directly. I learned that you can lose something visible while fighting something invisible. The anxiety isn’t always overboard, but it’s persistent. The self-checking becomes automatic. Confidence starts to feel conditional, dependent on how much you can manage or hide in a given moment.
Hair loss doesn’t just ask, How do I look?
It asks, Who am I now?
I didn’t see that experience reflected anywhere, and I knew I wasn’t alone in that. So instead of waiting for someone else to create the space I needed, I built it myself.
That space became Hair Loss Bonita.
I support women navigating hair loss through coaching, advocacy, and education, with a focus on normalizing hair loss and expanding representation of women with thinning hair, patchy hair, and baldness.
What I Do
I support women living with hair loss as it starts to shape their attention, choices, and sense of ease in everyday life.
Through coaching, education, and advocacy, I help women rebuild confidence, identity, and self-trust while normalizing hair loss and the choice to wear wigs or alternative hair. My work centers the internal experience women are living not just how hair loss looks, but how it affects daily life, relationships, work, and self-perception.
My job is not about “fixing” hair, but helping women feel like themselves again, grounded, capable, and free to choose how they show up.
My work includes both direct support for women and advocacy to change how hair loss is understood, represented, and talked about.
This Work is Personal but it’s Not Just About Me
I didn’t create Hair Loss Bonita to tell my story over and over. I created it because too many women were carrying the same questions silently.
Am I still attractive?
Am I still beautiful?
Am I still myself?
How much of this do I have to manage alone?
Hair loss has a way of creeping into everything like how you get ready, how you enter rooms, how you relate to others, and how safe you feel being seen. Yet most of the support available ignores this part entirely.
Hair Loss Bonita exists to acknowledge this reality without minimizing it or rushing women toward acceptance before they are ready.
How I Support Women
My support is grounded, honest, and rooted in lived experience.
Through Hair Loss Bonita, I offer:
One-on-one coaching focused on confidence, identity, and self-trust
Emotional tools for navigating anxiety, self-monitoring, and decision fatigue
Support around dating, intimacy, work, and social visibility
Guidance for wearing wigs, toppers, or alternative hair without shame
Language for the things women feel but struggle to explain
The goal of this work is to help you feel more at ease in yourself as you move through daily life and make choices that feel right for you.
About
Hair Loss Bonita
Hair Loss Bonita was created because hair loss changes more than hair and almost no one talks about that part.
For many women, hair loss doesn’t arrive as a single moment. It shows up in how you scan a room before you enter it, in how you think about photos before they’re taken, and in the constant decisions about lighting, angles, weather, closeness, and distance. It changes how visible you feel and how much effort it takes just to feel like yourself.
Most spaces address hair loss as a cosmetic problem. Something to fix, disguise, or move past quickly. What’s missing is language for the experience underneath it: the anxiety, the grief, the self-monitoring, and the identity questions that don’t go away just because you found a solution that works.
Hair Loss Bonita exists for that reality.
This is a brave space to talk about these challenges and also a place to be supported. Through coaching, shared language, and practical guidance, women are supported in navigating hair loss in real life at work, in relationships, in dating, in social settings, and in the moments when self-doubt creeps in.
In addition to direct support, Hair Loss Bonita advocates for cultural change in how hair loss is understood and represented. Because for many women, the hardest part of hair loss isn’t the hair itself, it’s the silence around it. Hair loss is often treated as something to fix, hide, or move past quickly, leaving very little room for the emotional and identity impact women are actually living with.
This advocacy is focused on:
normalizing female hair loss as a common, human experience
challenging beauty standards that tie hair to worth, credibility, or femininity
expanding representation of women with thinning hair, visible hair loss, and alternative hair
reframing wigs and hairpieces as self-expression, not concealment
creating public conversations that reduce shame and isolation
Hair loss is normal. What’s not normal is how little space women are given to talk about it honestly. When experiences go unnamed, they’re often internalized as personal failures instead of recognized as something shared.
Hair Loss Bonita exists to change that. It’s where women come to stop carrying this by themselves.
Why I’m Qualified to
do this Work
I come to this work with lived experience, formal training, and years of close, sustained listening. I bring:
over 12 years of living with Androgenic Alopecia
professional training as a Certified Life Coach
graduate-level training in counseling (non-licensed, non-clinical)
years of personal therapy and focused self-study around identity, confidence, and emotional regulation
deep listening to hundreds of women navigating hair loss
experience in storytelling, advocacy, and higher education
This work is grounded in real lives, not abstract frameworks. It’s shaped by what women actually struggle with and what helps rather than pity, platitudes, or surface-level reassurance.
What Working with Me Feels Like
When we work together, you don’t have to explain or justify how hard this has been.
You can expect:
Someone who understands the constant awareness that comes with hair loss without needing you to explain it
Language for thoughts and feelings you’ve been carrying quietly and questioning yourself for
Space to talk honestly about fear, grief, anger, relief, and uncertainty; nothing is too much or out of place
Support that respects your choices, including the ones you’re still sorting through
A place where you don’t have to be strong, positive, or “okay” for the work to matter
This work is about feeling more at ease in yourself, so hair loss doesn’t have to take up so much mental and emotional space in your day-to-day life.
If any part of this feels familiar, you don’t have to know exactly what you need yet. Feeling understood is often the first step.
My Invitation to You
If this page put words to something you have been carrying quietly, you are welcome here. You do not need to know exactly what you need yet. Feeling understood is often where support begins.
