One day I looked in the mirror and my graying roots were showing. I said to my reflection, I am going to age gracefully! I said it with conviction. I saw the stunning transformation of women friends and colleagues when they stopped coloring and let their hair go natural. It was healthy, no more chemicals, and it seemed to enhance their beauty. I was on a path to better health - again, and this was another box to check. Another influence was the fact that gray hair was a trend – all the young girls were going platinum. Maybe I would look younger if I went gray.

It was the repercussions of covid that eventually reinforced my plan to stop coloring the gray, as the salons closed – and I had given up the at-home Clairol version a long time ago.

So, I did it. I stopped coloring and let my hair do what it was naturally meant to do. I had visions of my beautiful Aunt Pearl who had soft gray and white curls set around her lovely face in a chin-length bob style. I admired other women in my life in various stages of grays and white, and styles ranging from short pixies and wavy mid-length to long straight hair pulled into school-girl ponytails and farm-girl braids. In the years since I have experimented with all of the styles, some that I embraced and some that made me cry.

I went to my hair appointment one day and my stylist wanted to try some low lights, just to soften the harsh white that my hairline had become. I had been feeling like I looked older than my age, and I thought, sure, let’s live on the edge, let’s go rogue. When I looked in the mirror a younger me was staring back. I liked it. I struggled a little because I thought I was going back on my plan to age gracefully and naturally. But it was a good jolt of vanity that I apparently needed. 

Nora Ephron, American journalist, writer, and filmmaker once commented “There’s a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don’t look like they used to and it’s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye.” 

I do think that today it is certainly about better living – engaging in exercise and a healthy diet. But not just that. It’s also about the attitudes we carry with us, especially towards ourselves, and sometimes we need a little jolt of something to reignite our passion for where we are in our life cycle. We have to give ourselves some grace because aging isn’t easy. I will definitely take a salad, a good walk, reps in the weight room, and I will also take some low lights, please.