Many of you may have noticed that in the past few years I began a process to transition to my natural gray hair, after coloring it since I was in my mid 30s.
It had been coming on for quite a while in my 50s, when the never-ending battle of coloring my roots would have to occur every couple of weeks, and my frustration of my grow out of silver hair to brown hair was an ever-present reminder of my aging more quickly than ever. It truly was a battle.
One day, however, a photo was taken of me and some friends, and looking at my face with the dyed hair I saw a harshness in my face that I had never seen before. Bottom line, I didn’t look good anymore. It looked fake, and my skin looked shallow. I started foiling to soften the color, and that added even more expense, to the point where I was investing well over $200 per month just to fight the aging process!
Since February is about Health and Wellness, I wanted to share with you all about this process and how it has improved my overall wellness and quality of my life. Of course, not everyone is the same, and as I share with my friends, every single woman’s journey is different! You may, like me, reach a time when you say all that coloring is enough.
On my 60th birthday I gave a gift to myself. I was about to “embrace my authenticity.” That means no more hair color! I visited my hairdresser who informed me that this would not be an easy journey! Here I thought maybe they just could “dye my hair gray” and it would be over, but I was sorely mistaken! There is no such thing as a permanent gray hair dye because gray hair has to do with the absence of color!
When I made the decision to go gray, I had several friends say to me, “why would you want to look older?”, “It will wash out your skin tone!”, “I could never ever do that!” I also researched it a bunch, and I also learned that most women when they start growing out their gray, they reach a breaking point and end up dying it back.
Had I known then how long it would take, or what the process was going to be, I likely would have given it a second thought, but I kept up with the mantra that I created when I turned 60! “Embrace your authenticity!” My determination forced me to stay the course!
I had three options:
- Let it grow out and have two-toned hair
- To cut it really short- a pixie cut! (I have never been much of a short-hair person and I knew my husband would kill me if I did that!)
- To invest even more money initially- by foiling in low and high lights for a while to mask in the grow out.
The first two options for me at the time were not palatable. Thus, over many months, I sunk in even more money into foiling for several months- thinking it would make things easier, but really, what I learned was it was just spending a lot of money into things that really weren’t making a difference. My grow-out looked messy, and I had many colors in my hair!
I would come home from the salon, and my husband Keith would ask me, “What color is your hair supposed to be now???” Here, I was putting hundreds of dollars into something that really wasn’t making a difference!
Finally, I simply stopped coloring. I let the chips fall as they may, and over time I started to see what was emerging! Beautiful shades of gray and silver were weaved in like a tapestry! Being longer haired as I am, I didn’t ever want to cut my hair shorter, but as my silver grew in, I decided to cut my hair chin length, and finally, 3.5 years later, the transition is complete!
What is amazing is that I now have friends who tell me how beautiful my hair is! (Imagine that??) What is the funniest thing, as I will have women come up to me in the grocery store and compliment me on my hair, and the vast majority of them are 20-somethings! That gets me laughing every time!
Going Gray wasn’t easy. It was harder than I could have ever imagined. I hated looking at myself in the mirror, and every day I second-guessed myself, but that’s part of a journey, isn’t it? A real journey unfolds challenges, frustrations, and obstacles, but within it, are the many surprises and miracles and joys that it creates! By going through it, the blessings happen!
About a month ago I was sitting next to Keith on the sofa and we were watching a tv show together. He put his hand up to my hair and caressed it a bit, as a sign of affection. The greatest triumph came to me when he uttered the following to me: “Honey, I really love your gray hair. It’s really sexy!”
Embracing our authenticity can be scary, but when we do so, I promise you, it will be worth it!
