A touching story out of Greensboro today:

For Julia Middleton, it was a symbol of friendship impossible to miss. Three girlfriends showing up on her doorstep one evening this week with a bottle of wine and newly shaved heads.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Middleton, who at 37 is starting yet another round of chemotherapy treatments for the cancer she has been battling for five years.

“They were saying, ‘You don’t have to go it alone.’ ”

For Middleton, who has lost her own hair four times and counting, the shiny-pate gesture by friends Karlan Barker, Judy Fore and Jessi Mathews-Rush was touching — and a bit shocking.

“I mean, most people bring by dinner. You kind of expect that,” Middleton says.

“But for three women to shave their heads …”

Barker, Fore and Mathews-Rush say the decision to lose their locks wasn’t so hard.

“I had told Julia about a year ago that the next time she had chemo, we were going to shave our heads, too,” Fore says.