This simple website was set up for one simple reason. To help other cancer patients and family members or friends trying to support loved ones through the tough  road of chemotherapy and to help patients  keep their dignity and identity throughout the process.  

When our mother Joy was diagnosed with cancer back in October 2023. She was extremely concerned about putting chemicals into her body and amongst these concerns  she was naturally concerned about loosing her hair.

Not because of vanity but because of identity. She didn’t want cancer to take away her sense of self and she didn’t want to be treated like a patient everywhere she went.

We looked at many solutions and a variety of wigs however we found that although pictures on the internet looked nice enough when we looked and felt these wigs in person the experience was very different .

Wigs under £300 were really designed as costume wigs, ok for fancy dress or amateur theatre productions but they would not convince anyone they were real hair .They were simply too shiny and too perfect and looked like what they were  cheap synthetic hair.

We spoke as a family and decided that we would all be happy to put some money together to buy a real hair wig which costs started form £1200+ when we tried these however My Mother found they didn’t look or feel like her and they where also designed for people to wear over their natural hair with a wig cap which protects the wearer from the scratchy and itchy synthetic material of the inside of the wig which are not comfortable at all on the bare skin of a cancer patient who has lost all their hair.

After digging around online we managed to find a very small number of bespoke wig makers who could make a wig from our mothers own hair however as this is a painstaking process it would cost over £3500 and the uptown 3 months to complete which would have left our mother stuggling with complete hair loss for the first 3 months of her chemo Journey which seemed to defy the point.

My sister and I decided to look and see if we could find a solution to this problem and to our surprise we  came up with exact same idea completely independently which we thought was serendipitous.

The idea we both came up with was to cut our mothers hair off prior to it all falling out and finding a way to attach it securely to a very comfortable under hat that when worn would just look like she was wearing a hat but was small and light enough to be worn under almost any other style of hat so that she could change her look and style through the year.

We scoured the internet for weeks looking for YouTube videos or blog post ,forums,group’s and websites for others who had done this before but as hard as we tried we simply could find anything which amazed us as it seemed a obvious solution to us and information on  how to do almost anything is seemed abundant online but for whatever reason not this idea.

We researched which hats were most comfortable for women who had lost their hair and we looked for something that would fit discreetly under  under many styles of hats  therefore not limiting our mother Joy to only one Style of hat.

After much research experimenting the process and hat  proved successful and our mother Joy wore her hat everyday until her hair grew back some 8 month later.

It allowed our mother to keep her identity and dignity through her chemo journey and  it enabled her to keep her confidence making her feel more healthy and vibrant and allowed het to wear numerous different hats thought the months attending a funeral , wedding and  summer party without people even realising she had lost her hair.

We had experienced first hand how much confidence self worth and identity had been kept by simply allowing our mother to keep her hair that we couldn’t help this sense of duty to share this idea with the the world so that other people in a similar situation to our mother could benefit in the same way .

Countless nurses, doctors and oncologists constantly urged our mother Joy to make this available to other people in her situation as they had never seen anything like this before.

So after hearing this from so many different people and from the similar feeling of duty to share it that we had we decided that we were obligated to share our idea with the world.

We looked at several ways in which we could do this first looking at a done for you service but we soon realised that we would only be able to serve a small number of people due to having so many other commitments.

We looked at in person workshops but this would limit us to only being able to help people in a small geographic location.

We finally came up with a solution that would allow us to reach more much more people.

We decided to make an online course with detailed videos of each step with of the process and to make up kits that would be sent out to accompany the course with everything that a person would need to make their own wig hat which we decided to name “Hats Of Joy” after our mother.

Over the next 4 months we tested hundreds of materials , glues and techniques to try and perfect the process and make it as simple and easy to follow as possible for someone with no experience.

The result of this is this website  your reading which offers a full step by step course along with written instructions with photos of every step in the process. With every course a kit will be sent out with everything you will need to be able to make you very own “Hat Of Joy ” in the comfort of your own home in as little was 4 hours. 

We also thought it would be important to add a social element to the course so people going through the course could communicate with other people going through the same journey  everyone who goes through our course is added to our private FB group.

We have been in contact with several cancer charity and many of them have agreed to run in person course support days based on our course material where people can meet in person and go through the process with others for support. A list of some of the event dates are listed on our website below.

We realise that some people need some in person coaching through the process which is why every two weeks we do a like live stream course day where course members can ask questions live as they go through the process with other from wherever they are in the world.

We really wanted to make this available to as many people was possible which is why we have priced this course together with a full kit sent to your house ,inclusion in our social FB group and bi-weekly Live seminars all for much less than a cheap synthetic costume wig .