Embracing something about myself

For years, I’ve been hiding a secret about myself.  I started getting gray hair when I was 21, and ever since then, I have been coloring it.  I’ve had many different colors… light brown, dark brown, mahogany, red, and black.  My natural pre-gray color was dark brown, almost black, so most of the time I went back to that.

Anyway, one of the reasons I selected “Embrace” as my word of the year is because I’ve decided to stop coloring my hair and embrace my the gray.  I just got tired of coloring it every three weeks! So December 14th was the last time I colored it.

Progression from January through May 2015.

Surprisingly, it’s been relatively easy to adjust to the difference.  I’m lucky that my gray is closer to white and very sparkly.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Jim likes it.

I think the hardest thing to get used to has been cutting my hair. I cut it to a short bob and then to a pixie to get rid of the artificial color.  Surprisingly, I actually get people stopping me in the stores to compliment me on my hair. That used to happen once in a while when I colored my hair, but not nearly as often as it happens now.

I love the style of my hair in the picture to the left, but I knew I’d feel ugly if I tried to maintain that while growing it out. Plus, keeping that length would have made the growing out stage takes a lot longer.  But I do plan on growing it back to that style once all the artificial color is gone, which I think will be in another month or so.

Feeling good about how I look!

There have been some wonderful side effects to giving up the bottle… My hair and my scalp are healthier. I actually think my hair is growing faster and coming in thicker. I don’t think all those chemicals every three weeks to cover the gray was doing my hair any good.

So that’s me right now.  I’m Embracing the gray and feeling sassy!

Have you done anything bold recently?