Edwards is usually busy running Restoration Hair Studio in Bowie, but she also takes time to volunteer with Look Good … Feel Better, a national program with the American Cancer Society that teaches beauty techniques to women cancer patients. Edwards spends time with patients at Doctor’s Community Hospital in Lanham.
How did you get involved?
I went to one of the American Cancer Society’s trainings for the Look Good … Feel Better for life program, and they trained us on the proper way of conducting a class. I got certified over a year ago. I was so excited about doing it and about giving back to the community.
What is your role at the sessions?
My job is to teach them how to put on the makeup, because some of them have suffered eyebrow loss and eyelash loss, and a lot of times chemo and the radiation affects the skin, and for some women, their skin gets very dry, very dark, or it just loses a lot of oils and things of that nature. So we’re teaching them how to get back that glow back into their skin. My main job is to bring out what’s within. I’m there to enhance, not to cover up.
Where does the makeup come from?
Each woman is presented with a cosmetics bag full of different types of makeup ranging from foundation to eye shadows that cosmetic companies have donated, from Chanel, MAC and Mary Kay. So you have all these different cosmetic companies donating different things.
What makes this program so powerful?
I don’t look at it as a death sentence. I look at it as a life sentence. As they’re going through this life journey, I think it’s so important that they have something that will make them feel good about themselves, because you’re stripped of so much. So anything to help build these women who are surviving with this, I just consider it a privilege that they would even let me in to do so.
— Ben Giles
