Did I feel sad about getting the last remnants of my youthful brunette hair (even if it was artificial) cut off? Did I worry about looking older, or like I’d “let myself go?”
I wasn’t always so free and easy about the whole concept of gray hair. In fact, I spent 25 years (or more – I lost count) frantically covering up the gray. Did I start dyeing my hair just for gray coverage? No – like a lot of young women, I started dyeing my hair for fun.
I started getting gray hair at 16, but just plucked out the gray hairs whenever they appeared and didn’t give them much thought.
I’ve tried to pinpoint when it all changed.
When did I feel like I HAD to dye my hair? When did it go from being fun to becoming a tedious chore?
Was it fun to go to the salon and choose new shades of hair color? Was it fun to sit there for two hours and chat with my hairdresser and read magazines and commune with other women?
Yes, for years it was fun – until it wasn’t.
The Expense… Oh, the Expense!Someone had to pay for all this fun – and pay, I did. Being a somewhat uncoordinated person, I usually went to the salon to get my hair colored. In Los Angeles, at not-too-fancy salons, this generally cost me around $85-$110 a visit.
To combat that, I used to use Joico Color Balance Blue Shampoo once a week to brighten my silvers and tone down the orange tones that occur in fading brunette dye.
But the good news? Once you get through the transition phase and are all-gray, it seems to be universally true (according to my fellow silver sisters in the gray hair Facebook groups) that most people LOVE your gray hair.