bogeyandruby

It was exactly a year ago today that I stopped dying my roots and I have five inches of silvery growth to show for it.

It’s been a trip. Honestly, making the decision wasn’t the hardest part. It was a combination of reasons really: my hairdresser of 30 plus years was retiring, my brown roots only lasted a meagre two weeks before the silvers would push their way through and I hated the way the brown dye stained my scalp and hairline, my pleasantly confused mother kept asking me how school was every time I visited her, and it was one step on the larger journey to self-acceptance.

It felt scary, a bit like stepping off a cliff into the unknown , but I was determined and ready. The announcement that I was letting my grey grow out was met with a variety of reactions from: it will age you, to: I’m not ready or I wish I could do that (from my contemporaries), and : you go girl! My husband and friends have been very supportive as have women who have already let their natural colour shine through.

Once I made the decision, nothing anyone said would dissuade me. Call it conviction.

The worst part was the first four or five months when it may have appeared that I was neglecting my self-care. At 4’10”, my roots are very visible and the difference in hair colours across the demarcation line was extreme. Bandanas helped as did winter tuques and a really good curly hair cut that took off several inches of brown and cheered me up enormously. Now when I wear it in a ponytail, I don’t even see the demarcation line.

Possibly it would have been easier to cut off most of the brown at the very beginning and don a pixie cut but my hair texture does not do well with short hair so that option was out. I have some friends who dyed their hair blond to ease the transition but the bleach would have done a lot of damage to already damaged hair.

You know the idiom a watched pot never boils? There should be one for watching hair grow. I cannot believe how long it took to grow five inches of grey. I must have googled, how long does it take to grow out grey roots, a million times. I never got the answer I wanted which was an inch a month. Ask my husband how many times I asked him to measure my roots and he will roll his eyes to the heavens.

Making this very personal choice comes with no judgement for women who chose to continue dying their roots. I miss that five inches of brown along with the blond hi-lights I treated myself to once a year.

We live in a society that judges appearances and it’s hard to push back. My East Indian father dyed his hair (what little was left of it) black the moment he started going grey until well after he retired at age sixty-five. He was very conscious of racism and ageism at his workplace and did not want to give his employer a reason to let him go.

An East Indian friend told me her father, working in the US for many years, also dyed his hair. I asked her if she thought he would have dyed his hair if he had been white and she replied, probably not.

A few months ago, my sweet mother stopped asking about school and instead remarked that I sure had a lot of grey. These days she tells me she likes the two-toned colour. Mission accomplished!

In conclusion, I am very happy to have arrived at this one year anniversary. Thrilled even. It feels completely liberating to be sixty-one and look my age. I am looking forward to next year at this time when I will have added another five inches to my hair length and can go back to wearing it a little longer.