Hey hey everybody! The weekend is almost here, how lovely. I don’t know about you all but we’ve had a nice mild winter where I live. It’s been so nice to be out and about without freezing my tail off (or my dog’s) or having to shovel mountains of snow. That said, I hope, hope, hope this isn’t a negative thing (think: climate crisis, bugs, bugs, extra hot weather, bugs, crawling flying biting things called bugs…oh yeah, and mosquitoes 😉 ).
Let’s get started with today’s post.
It’s here, my first post pertaining to my personal life, getting it together and being a woman in her (my) mid-30s. Well it might not be the first, for real first because I’m sure I’ve gotten into personal stuff before…right, Elpy, keep it going…
Right, any who I’m going to start off with gray hair.
I have brown hair though I do love dying it and or highlighting it therefore sometimes it’s not so brown. So fun, love it. The first gray hair I found was somewhere during my mid to late 20s. I yanked that sucker out and held it up against the white wall in the half-bath of my apartment at the time. I was like WHAT! WHAT?! Oh my gosh no. It can’t be. This has got to be a blond, light-colored hair, whatever just not gray or white. But no…
In the last five years my gray hairs went from being a little sparse to hey what’s all that SILVER stuff at your temple? Huh what? As is apparently common, the new hairs that like to spring around and do whatever they please at my temple, just one side of course, are gray/silver/white. That patch is alive and well and out there for the world to see. There are also more stragglers popping up around my head than there used to be.
No worries said I the colorful YOUNG LADY (LOL!), I will dye my hair anyways. And away we go to the salon where we cover all those shining beauties up. Be gone! Away with you revealing truths of wisdom and maturity! How dare you give away my true identity!
Wait what?
Think about it; if it weren’t for our fear and frowning when it comes to aging we would not detest gray and/or white hair in the way that we do. In fact once you reach a certain age people begin to applaud your beautiful gray or white hair. I have long noticed my mother’s gray AND white hair is SHINY. It is so absolutely beautiful, kind of white in the front, framing her face, and gray in the back. It’s lovely. No offense father, your head is real shiny too! 😉
Did you happen to notice that gray was trending last year? That young people, women and girls in particular, were purposefully dying their hair shades of gray? Did you see that women of all ages and shades were ARE embracing their gray hair? Yeah, it’s true, gray hair is beautiful.
But there’s still that fact and that stigma that it represents a changing of the tides. That you are getting old. It’s not the same as when you looked in the mirror and there just was your hair (some of you lovely people are born with streaks or pops of gray or white hair so of course you have always seen the forest through the trees). And I’ll be honest, sometimes the transition from your initial color to gray/white is not so great. It’s just not all the time. But what does it mean that we are so quick to run from it? I’m in no way shaming either group. Don’t like your gray hair? COVER IT! Love it? Let it be. Not sure? Feel it out. To each their own. High five to you all for doing what’s best for your time.
But again, what about this automatic response? What does it say about our cultures and society that we spend so much time hiding our age instead of learning and teaching each other to embrace it? We are so obsessed with youth we neglect the value of aging. Will we eventually succumb to our obsession with vanity and just get old, neglecting lessons and wisdom to make sure we’re still beautiful?
Of course being young is easier than being old, but in what ways? Would I go back in time for anything? No, not unless I could go back with this brain, this experience and knowledge, this wisdom, this humility. Aging equals living. Aging equals experience. Aging equals lessons learned and knowledge gained. Aging equals gaining.
Perspective folks, it’s all about perspective. If you view aging through a negative lens only, then you will see it as a loss. Whereas by the above logic, aging can really be a gain.
Life is hard, it can be really hard. And as we get older a lot more things are bound to happen that might break our spirit. So it would seem to me that it is essential to learn to embrace it, not shun it. I know so many wonderful older people and their spirits’ are still so bright – LOOK right there, I say STILL so bright as though we’re guaranteed to lose our light as we age. That’s wrong no, it’s negative experiences that cause our light to fade, it is not age specifically. Our light does not leave us, but it can be buried or hidden or perhaps we lose the ability to see it.
I know I’m not all that old and some of you might say my goodness she does not know what she’s talking about. But I have aged and I sure do know what I’m talking about when it comes to having gray hair!
One moral of this story is, embrace what’s yours. That does not stop just because you’re no longer shiny and new. That advice does not pertain only to women and men who want to show off their bodies. That message isn’t for the young. Embrace your life. Embrace you. As long as you’re alive, you’re visible whether you realize it or believe it or don’t, you’re still here.
So you ask, what did you do? Well I’m still learning just how I want to embrace these lovely shiny things. I do so love their shiny quality. I used to, and still will, call them my sparkles. My stylist said she heard a client refer to her grays as her tinsel. Do we not love tinsel people!!!
I let my gray grow out without covering it for months (not intentionally). I kind of started to like it. I didn’t love it but I also didn’t hate it. I found that I could part it on the side a little and flip some of that gray over for a nice little funky style. And then my guy suggested I take control of it when I asked. And why wouldn’t I? I said hey, what do you think about my grays? He said well I think if you made it look even more intentional it’d probably be pretty cool. And that’s what I’m working on right now, playing around with having some gray over there more so than not.
I am so SO excited to get it right because I think it’s going to be so cool. And bonus, creative people have got to let our imagination show in all kinds of ways. 😉 I’ll keep you all posted on how this is going. Apparently dying even a little bit of brown hair gray is… tricky.
How do you feel about aging? Gray hairs? Do you embrace your age or are you struggling?
Please stay tuned for more talk on aging. Let’s get into this subject, gray hairs, wrinkles, creaks & cracks, the works!
In case you were wondering, gray is the common American spelling of the word, while grey is more commony used in the UK and elsewhere. 😉
2 responses to “Me, Woman – I have Gray Hair”
I’ve been fortunate with the way my hair has aged. Most people are surprised its natural, as the silver is evenly distributed among various shades of brown. My grandma had that colouring you mention, with the white framing her face.
I worried about going grey until I saw a barmaid with a glorious head of hair and I decided I wanted that for myself. Sometimes you really do get what you wish for!
That sounds lovely. A lot of folks are raving about gray hair these days and how beautiful it looks. It does help to have positive examples and by positive I mean other women carrying their silvery hair with pride and confidence. Which it sounds like both you and the barmaid are and were doing. That’s what I’m going for, confidence in my gray. Except now with the salons closed my plans for playing with and adding to the gray have been halted. Guess we’ll see what happens from here! Congrats on getting what you wished for! Did you just let it grow out silver then? Or did you take the route of having it dyed and blended, easing into the process? I’m guessing you just let it happen seeing as it’s wonderfully blended.
Oh your Grandma has the face frame too! Aw, I love it. My other grandma had a lovely salt and pepper blend.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment Christine, I do appreciate it.