NONPROFIT
Giving Cancer Patients Back a Piece of Themselves
Laura Leatherberry’s halos infuse love into the treatment journey. BY SHARI HEGLAND | CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
H
air is personal, especially for women. Yet one of the daughter and niece both asked to also have their hair cut cruel realities for a woman undergoing treatment to donate to what would become the first “halos.” for cancer is that she may lose her hair to chemotherapy, Gabrielson was unable to tolerate synthetic wigs, but just one more way in which she may seem to lose herself what Leatherberry crafted from her hair and that of the during one of the most arduous journeys of her life. girls, stitched with cotton and Velcro on her home sewing As Laura Leatherberry supported her sister, Amy machine, was a headband that could be worn under a Gabrielson of Chaseburg, through that journey in scarf or hat. 2019, Gabrielson decided to take control of her hair. While those first halos were personal, for her sister, Leatherberry’s years of experience as a professional stylist Leatherberry says she was called to do more. “I was driving positioned her to enable that decision, and what she to my daughter’s house, and on my way, God spoke to me created has led to a ministry that has touched the lives of Laura Leatherberry, and said, ‘You need to share your idea,’” she says. Three Halos Ministry dozens of Coulee Region cancer patients. “My sister wanted to cut her hair,” Leatherberry says, rather THREE HALOS than waiting for it to fall out, and they made it a family event as A busy businesswoman with a family farm in Viola and a chair as Leatherberry shaved her shoulder-length hair. As she gathered the hair an independent stylist at City Style Salon in Viroqua, Leatherberry into ponytails, still not quite certain what to do with it, her teenage nonetheless took that calling seriously and began to let it be known www.crwmagazine.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 43
