Fifty Shades of Gray Roots

Hello…my name is Jane…I’m fifty-eight years old…and…I have…gray hair…I haven’t always been this way…in fact…it was about thirty years ago…that…I noticed the first silvery intruder in my light brown locks…

I’d like to say that I am one of those women…who decided to age gracefully…to be exactly the way the good Lord made me…but that ain’t exactly so…

I’m scrappy…I put up a fight…

Now I know…I should never have plucked it…I’d always heard that they come back in multiples…but…it was so tempting…shining…all by itself in the midst of a sea of brown…I couldn’t help myself…yank

As you can imagine…it was all downhill from there…one gray…two grays…everywhere you looked grays…

Plucking was no longer a viable option…my hair was already thin enough…so I figured out another way…I highlighted with a vengeance…

By my forties…it took the heavy-duty all over dye…the only problem was…my hair really didn’t take to color very well…

I’d spend an hour or so in the salon…getting it just the perfect shade of light brown…only to hair colorhave gray temples and a strange shade of orangish-gold everywhere else within a week…

I’m also blessed with rapidly growing hair…AKA…it didn’t take a hairdresser to know…did I or didn’t I…everyone knew that I did…and I needed to…

So…a couple of years ago…after careful consideration…I took the plunge…I went gray…

Honestly…most of the time I’m happy with the results…but…seriously…if they can put a woman into space…can’t they figure out a way to hide her gray roots…

Jane

Originally published September 23, 2012