How going grey brought the colour I needed into my life...

I first dyed my hair aged 15, by 30 I was already grey, approaching 50 I had resigned myself to a life of costly colouring but a family holiday helped me get to the root of the problem roots....

Me on my 18th birthday - not a grey hair in sight.

That will be one hundred and fifty pounds please’, the hairdresser announced without a hint of embarrassment or shame.

My stomach flipped. A hundred and fifty pounds to dye my hair. A week’s shopping. The deposit on the new orthopaedic mattress we need. Ridiculous really. I tell my husband it cost £60 and wonder why he has never questioned the fact that my hairdresser has been charging the same price for twenty years. Could I really justify spending that much? Swimming upstream, turning my grey hair brunette. Temporarily. Until less than a month later when the grey pokes through again and I am back to square one? I did justify this budget breaking expense until the summer of 2022, when fate took over and forced me to examine the root of my relationship with my grey roots.

My husband was celebrating his 50^th birthday. Curiously he is exactly one year, one month and one day older than me so wherever he goes age wise, I soon follow. 50 was not far off for me too. My husband wanted to celebrate with a family holiday to Italy and, free from the stranglehold of covid restrictions, I booked a holiday for myself, Mr Mack and our two daughters (then aged 17 and 12).

Covid restrictions may had loosened their unrelenting grip, but covid was still a real and present danger. Four weeks before we were due to leave, I was struck down. My God, I was ill. Jabbed up to the eyeballs yet still knocked out for the best part of four weeks. All my holiday prep abandoned as I battled ‘the vid’. The evening before we were due to set off, I managed to muster up enough energy for a quick whizz around the pharmacy: sun cream, mosquito repellent, face masks and hand sanitiser for the family. A packet of pink razors and a box of hair dye for me. Sorted.

Languishing in bed I had been unable to visit my hairdresser for usual full head colour and half a head of highlights. I was well overdue a visit. Although my bank balance felt healthier, I could barely look at myself. With no time to colour my hair at home, I packed the box of hair dye carefully into my suitcase. Sod the breathtaking lakes, the beautiful mountain vistas, the scrumptious gelato and ice-cold aperitifs – all I could think about was dying my hair.

Our flight left at 6 a.m. Check in at 4 a.m. Leave the house by 2 a.m. By the time we reached passport control the girls were hanging by a thread. Imogen had gone overdrive. Chatting ten to the dozen, giggling at her own jokes, totally irascible. Her sister not so much. Emma was 17 at the time. Typical 17-year-old. Phone surgically attached to her hand. Spent more time out of the house than in. Living mostly in her bedroom, only interspersed with trips downstairs to stock up from the kitchen. Gone were the days of us settling down in the evening to cuddle up on the sofa. We still had a good relationship, but she was living the way 17-year-olds are supposed to live. Didn’t stop me missing her though.

Miraculously, the early flight fatigue was bringing her back into my arms. The lack of sleep had made her regress. Back to the unsettled baby that nestled her head into her mama’s bosom and refused to be placed back in her cot. My exhausted big baby squirmed uncomfortably on the plastic departure lounge seats, eventually leaning on me and finally snuggling her head into my chest. I enveloped her once again with my tired arms. She resumed the position once we boarded the plane and again on the hour-long coach journey to the hotel.

Despite my utter exhaustion and still suffering from the effects of covid, I was on cloud nine. Hours cuddling my normally froideur teenager. Worth the price of the holiday for that alone. For those precious hours I could gaze, without interruption and with utter love and appreciation at her. Or more precisely, the top of her head. Her dark roots struck me. Effortless, as nature intended. Her long, glossy hair, naturally dark and warm in tone forming a soft blanket across us. I recognised that hair. I remembered those days. I grieved for those days. That had been me.

Was I really approaching 50? Isn’t that my head that I am looking at? Naturally vibrant. Not a grey hair in sight. A head full of ideas, potential and promises. A beautiful head on young and healthy shoulders. Resting expectantly on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood. The world at her perfectly pedicured feet. Could that really be my baby? Am I really the mother? I was her and I blinked and now I am me.

I had passed the baton without realising it. It was never mine to keep. The colour belongs in her life, and I am honestly bursting with pride and happiness for her, but that time for me has gone. I can never be 17 again, nor would I want to be. At 17 I was a few years away from the mental illness that drained every drop of colour from my existence. It’s been an exhausting struggle to paint the colour back into my life. And keep it there. Now every inch of my daughter is so beautifully illuminated, as too her flame haired sister. I needed to find my own luminescence – I wasn’t sure that was going to be found in a box of hair dye anymore.

We arrived at the hotel too tired to do anything but sleep. The next day passed in a blur. I unpacked the hair dye and left it on the bathroom shelf. As the days progressed, I found myself too enamored with the beauty of Italy to want to waste time in the cramped hotel bathroom, so the dye remained untouched. Besides, I was worried about staining the towels, I was concerned that the sun and sea would react badly with the dye. I was, in fact, making excuses. Something had changed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to dye my hair ever again.

The week passed too quickly and on our final evening I began to pack. The hair dye had remained on the bathroom shelf. I was the greyest I had ever been by now. The sun seemed to have accelerated my hair growth, and my freckly tanned face provided an even sharper contrast to my soft white temples and brow.

I checked in with my husband. Not for his approval. I didn’t need that but for what I knew he would say. Should I let my hair go grey?

‘You look great either way, Rebek. If you want to go grey, go grey.’

Just as I had predicted. I told him that I was worried that I will look old.

‘You are old’ he replied, tactlessly pragmatically as ever. ‘We are both old. Dyeing your hair won’t change that.’

He went back to watching Italian TV (he doesn’t speak a word), trying to decipher the news stories by pictures alone. It’s a little holiday treat for him.

This was not just about getting old and looking good. I didn’t want to be told I ‘look good for 50’ or for any age for that matter. I wanted to feel good. To own the time and space that is rightly mine. To accept the grief of the life I lost, to work with it and not against it. Swimming against the tide of grief and ageing is exhausting. Much of my life has been exhausting. I am tired of being tired. I want to risk going with the flow. I began to feel invigorated, hopeful, excited, unstoppable even. I am letting go. I am moving on. I need that. Maybe we all need that?

I began to embracing the joy and the beauty of breaking that ‘half century and not out’. Passing the baton to the next generation and illuminating a positive and powerful path for my daughters to follow. Dye it or don’t dye it, that’s not the point (my mum’s first trip out of ICU following a stroke was to the hairdressers to get her roots done, good for her, whatever works for you).

The hair dye remained in my bathroom cabinet, until I gave it to charity a few months later. I just didn’t feel it represented me and where am I at anymore. I am not 17 and although I still struggle with that, the life I lost, I am at least trying to embrace the life I actually have. I have not dyed my hair for three years and I don’t miss it. I love it, it’s not for everyone and of course its what’s happening on the inside that counts.

Everything else is ‘window dressing’ as my dad (an actual window dresser) would say. Dress your window anyway you like, let it be a gateway to your beautiful soul. Women are intrinsically and authentically colourful in whatever way we choose to express at any age. Let our existence be a celebration of all that we are, an acceptance of all that has passed and not an apology for everything we are not.

Priceless ( well worth more than 150 quid that’s for sure).

Three years on. No dye. Looking ahead.

Please like, restack or comment to feed the hungry algorithm and reach other readers. How are you letting your midlife colour shine through? How are you processing the grief of the past? I would love to know and would love for you to join me here at This Woman’s Work. Rebecca x