Discovering the Beauty of Going Gray
I was recently asked what was the actual thing that prompted me to go gray. And it was an interesting question because had I been asked this question three years ago, I would have had a totally different answer. There were a couple of catalysts that prompted me to stop dying my hair in April of 2017.
I had been searching for an organic hair dye for a while, and in the end, I was left empty-handed. The fact of the matter is, if your hair dye is working, regardless of organic label claims, it’s using the same health-compromising actives that conventional hair dye is using. And that’s the truth. There has been no new hair color technology that’s been developed in over 100 years. So if your organic hair dye is covering your grays, it’s employing PPD or substitutes like PTD – the exact same actives that conventional dyes employ.
I did find one alternative that I can recommend. It’s called Hairprint. It’s formulated with just 8 food-grade ingredients, and it really works. I know because I used it exclusively for 14 months, and I loved it. The problem for me here was, it’s only offered at very few salons across the country, and so for the majority of us, it’s a DIY solution. And if you know anything about me, I despise DIY. It’s more like DIWHY if you ask me. I mean, I want to go to the salon and get pampered. What I don’t really look forward to is bending over a sink for 3 hours on a weeknight. Take it from me, that gets old real fast.
The Catalyst for Change
I was sick of spending the time, and it just started really feeling like work to keep my hair looking – well, not gray. Then the other thing that happened is one day I came home and said to my husband, “What if I just quit dying my hair?” He was so supportive, yelling out “YES!” before I even finished my question. But he said it a little too loud and a little too fast, which left me wondering, “How long have you been waiting for me to ask this question?”
Anyways, those were all supporting factors in the moment that helped me take the physical leap. But I really think the actual thing that prompted me to go gray happened 5 years prior to that.
A1 Landscape Construction and I decided to grab dinner one night at a local Hingham, MA restaurant called Cafe Tosca. One of my faves! When we walked in, my eye caught this woman sitting at the bar with her partner. I didn’t know who she was – I’d never seen her before. She was sitting there looking BEAUTIFUL. Radiant skin, laughing, sharing a bottle of wine and a pizza with her partner. And she had a full head of curly gray hair. I couldn’t stop staring at her. It was one of those things where I was listening to my husband talk, but stealing glimpses of her over his shoulder. Like she was happy and beautiful and had a full head of GRAY hair. It was totally short-circuiting my brain.
And then the next thing I knew, my legs just got up and started walking toward her direction, and I was like, “OMG, stop Lisa, don’t do this!” And then I heard my own voice saying, “I love your hair. Was that hard to do or..?” And we talked for about 15 minutes. She told me how her boys hated it at first, how she wore a lot of scarves and hats at the beginning, and I forget her exact words, but the conversation ended with something along the lines of “it was the best decision I ever made.”
The Transformative Power of One Woman’s Bravery
And that. That was probably the most powerful moment for me. It planted a seed in my heart that eventually budded, bloomed, and now thrives with full conviction. By just BEING. Being brave. Being strong. Not conforming and living her truth. That woman ripped the blinders off of my world and gave me one of the most beautiful gifts of self-discovery I’ve ever known.
And the part that really gets me is, to this day, she has no idea the impact she had on me. Or the impact she’s had on the women after me. Because I have gone through this journey publicly, I get emails now from women who say the same to me: “I felt like I could do this because I saw you do it.”
Think of the impact we can all have on each other as women. I love this quote because it really says it all: “When each woman shows up and does her brave thing, she actually wins a thousand other battles because she makes a thousand other women brave.” You can impact the world by just taking that step. And it doesn’t have to be loud or big or persuasive. It’s just being brave enough to be you.
And I know today, there are more women who are living transformed and gray than there were just 2 years ago, and it all goes back to that woman sitting in the bar. She was the catalyst. She was my inspiration. She changed my world and the world around me, just by putting one foot in front of the other.
Embracing the Beauty of Gray
If I can be frank, I honestly started this journey thinking gray hair is ugly, less than, inferior – I mean, fill in the blank with all the negative adjectives here – and I’ve finished it with my head held high, no longer having to convince myself that gray is beautiful or that natural is beautiful. I look in the mirror, and I truly see it and feel it. It’s a part of me in a way that it never was. And I think that type of paradigm shift can only happen when we are willing to do something scary.
Yeah, going gray was scary. Especially when you have people in your circle tell you not to do it. At the beginning of this experience, I let the non-supporters take up a lot of real estate in my head. But eventually, I turned up the volume of the supporting voices around me, and the rest is history. If you take anything away from this post, don’t let one or two voices control your experience. And find community. Seek out support.
I had no idea going through this with an audience would be so impactful. It’s been a part of my journey, my healing, my transformation as a woman. The power of support and community along the way has really propelled my experience to a point where I live without a shadow of a doubt that my hair looks beautiful. Not even the tiniest wonder or “what if” – I honestly catch myself wishing my hair was whiter.
A very big key to my success was and is community. We need to see more of us going gray. We need to normalize gray hair so it’s seen as an option for women that is just as equally as beautiful. We as women can be each other’s community just by BEING. Like that woman I saw in the bar. She blew my world open because I saw myself in her. I saw a solution. Do you know that I’ve had women say, “I didn’t even know it was an option to go gray. I didn’t even know it was an option”?
You know what this is? It’s a societal construct that we’ve been conditioned to believe as truth. And you want to know how we change it? By changing our landscape. We need more role models, more women out there living their truth, whether that be with their hair, their body, their career. When women see women they can identify with DOING IT, they will know they can do it too. They will just KNOW. It won’t be a matter of “what if” anymore. It will be a matter of “when.”
If you are looking for community around going gray, check out The Gray Book on Facebook. I love this space for inspiration, role models, examples, support, and more. Because girl, you can do this too.
