Surprise, I’m silver!

Why am I letting my silver hair grow out? Because I want to.

Because I want to. Period. I could just end the article right now if I wanted to. But I’ll go ahead and expand a little bit. I’ve been having silver hair since I was about 13 years old. A strand or five here, a strand or ten there. When I was about 20 years old I began dying it. I’d dye it dark brown or black to cover the silver. Who the heck wants to walk around at 13 or 20 with silver hair? And so began the ridiculously long journey of hair dye.

Now I’m in my 40s. This is right around the time that one begins to notice wrinkles and such things. Yay me! I also noticed that I was needing to dye my hair much more often. Every other week to be exact. Grey/silver roots are not attractive, let me tell you. If I went a few days past my usual dye ritual, I felt as though I was starting to look tattered.

A friend of mine had stopped dying her silver for about a year already and I hesitantly thought (cringed) of doing the same a few times but thought I’d never really be able to go through with it. I thought about it more and more though and finally decided, ‘Screw it! I’m doing it!’ I dyed it one last time and told myself I was done. It’s been 10 months now and I’m absolutely loving it. For those wondering, yes, the first few months are rough. I won’t even try to sugar coat it. I was self-conscious at first and I felt like people were looking at me wondering why I had let myself go. Not only did I feel like that, I’m pretty certain people were, in fact, wondering just that. It looked like I forgot to dye it. It wasn’t a good look. But I let that part pass. After a few more months it was very apparent to anyone that looked, that this was actually intentional.

I came up with this silly ‘story’, printed it out and hung it up near my desk at work. In other words, “Don’t ask me sh**t about my hair right now. Thanks.’

Now you know!

I’ve had long hair forever. Long like super long, down past my back. It’s just been part of me. Well, along with my silver grow-out came a huge hair cut. It was inevitable. I had this ‘blorange’ color thing going on. Blorange: blood orange mixed with red and orange hues.Yeah, no. It was at the bottom half of my hair and also just past the silver roots. It’s the unfortunate after effect of the old dye fading out (and not being replaced with new dye during touch-ups). It was hideous. A layer of silver, a layer of blorange next, a layer of dark brown/black next, then another layer of blorange. No. Just NO. So I cut out all the blorange at the bottom half of my hair.That left me with a bob sort of cut. It barely covers my neck! A sistah truly has short hair right now! When I first got it cut, my hair curled up through out the day everyday and I looked like I had a Gilda Radner/Roseanne Roseannadanna cut. I love you Gilda/Roseanne Roseannadanna but this was just not a good look for me. At all.

I still stuck it out though! The cut has settled some. It’s still a little Roseanne Rosannadanna-ish but I just have to deal with it for now. I’m loving the silver. My husband really loves it which warms my heart. My children love it. And to my surprise, so does most everyone else. I thought I got stopped a lot for long hair compliments before! Well that was nothing. I get stopped by strangers constantly about the silver. People of all sorts — teenagers, men, women, young, old… Who would have thunk it?

I thought this transition would make me look old. And it might make me look older, but the thing is, I don’t care! I think the ‘I don’t care’ part comes along with age, but I also think it comes from this wonderfully liberating feeling I have that came along with letting the silver shine. I feel free! I’m loving it! I also get told constantly that it actually makes me look younger and how funny is that? It wasn’t my intention to look any sort of way, I just wanted to be free and let it grow out. I’m still transitioning, I still have another several months to go. So it’s still a little funny looking. However it is, I love it. It’s healthy and full and soft and it is ME. And it feels great not to ever have to think of the looming dreaded dye process every other week.

So I’ll end by saying this to all women: Own it! Love it! Be free!

Now that I’ve really taken the time to notice, everywhere I look I see men with awesome silver hair. They totally rock it! Why can’t we? Why do we try to hide our age? Why do we care what society might think? Although I did not start dying my hair for that reason (mine was more of a ‘why the heck am I only 13–20 years old but with silver hair?), later on in life, it turned into the exact reason why I dyed it. To not do it anymore is an extremely empowering feeling. I hope more women give it a go as well. Let’s do this ladies!!

Oh, and no I do NOT have grey hair. I have silver hair thank you very much 🙂

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Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on January 5, 2018.