Step One

I was going to start the post off with a lovely photo of my graying roots (please season that last phrase with a great big dash of industrial strength irony if you would be so kind) but decided at the last minute to go with Miss Flora Pink, Standing in The Corner looking Lost and Lonely in a Beseechingly Melancholic Way instead.  You can thank me later.

I don't know how it is that you make sense of the world, but for me I do it by taking the known facts and throwing them on a canvas of metaphor and symbolism, moving everything about until some kind of a coherent story forms.  Which brings us back to the graying roots.

I have a lot of them.  Can't even tell you when they started exactly; I've been dying my hair since I was 16 and have never taken a lot of notice of what was going on underneath all that colour.  I've been every shade from black to blonde, and it used to be a lot of fun.  Now, not so much.  Now it feels more like just another covering up of a part of myself that I had decided somewhere along the way wasn't acceptable in polite society.  You can see where this is going.

I'm growing those babies out.  I'm growing them out as an outward symbol of an internal revolution .  I'm growing them out as a physical amulet against the times my courage will inevitably falter in my resolve to become the person, the whole person, and nothing but the person I was born to be. I'm concerned I'll look a great deal older than I need to, yes.   I'm certainly not about to give up on taste, and style, and really cute shoes.  But the looking old thing is not enough of a reason to keep me from showing my true colours anymore. 

I think I just heard some kind of cell door open up somewhere.

(I think I also heard Cyndi Lauper burst into song during some kind of pre-teen eighties flashback, but that's not nearly so poetic so I won't mention it.)

Comments

[emily]

megan, i'm thrilled for you about this choice. what a wonderful testament - gift, too - to your own self. hurray for the grey!

[Ali]

Blimey! Don't ask me for an opinion. My hair has always always always been dull as ditchwter dark brown.
I'm also from a line of late greyers - my mum is 70 next year and still has only a tuft or two of grey.
But to steal some of her favourite words - it truly is what's on the inside that counts anyway.

[Tanya Borchert]

YES! YES! :-) I have let my gray flow forward in all it's power....and it DOES feel freeing. Especially compared to the version of me at 25, when I tried to have everything appear so "together" on the outside -- so totally agree with post above on the inside being the most important. The really important things are usually invisible....

Great words -- great phrases, Megan -- I again have the impulse to memorize and "copy" ;-) -- and I'm sooooo with you on ageing with freedom.

[Katie]

Authenticity!! YES!!

[amanda]

i've been going back and forth with myself on this very issue for some time now. i've been dyeing my hair since a teen and now i dye to cover the grey that has been steadily sneaking in and taking up residence on my head for the last 8 years or so. i recently turned 36 and made a pact that by 40 i'd quit dyeing and covering it up. there is a part of me that is inspired to let it go now -- dyeing is such a pain whether i do it myself or have it done -- your words have clicked with my inner, wiser self. thank you :)

[katiecrackernuts]

You know, the kids used to pluck out the odd grey hair when they were little and liked to crawl all over me. They're teens now and long gave up the plucking and crawling, but I can safely say every one of those greys attached to my 34-year-old head (yes, do the math, I have a 21-year-old, 19, 17 and 14-year-old and am a wicked stepmother) is a trophy. I agonised over whether to hide them, but what for. People would know I dye my hair. They'd know why, and what's more I like my natural hair colour, what's left of it.

[Lexi]

More power to you! This is an empowering decision, fighting for all women on the front-line, there aren't enough soldiers in this battle - I salute you!

[Emma]

I hate to say this, but it hurts to read your latest posts. I guess I will love those greys in ten or twenty years. It the transformation phase that is bothering me. I do not wish to look and feel like a badly morphed mother monster. That said, I think you are brave!

oh, I just had another thought... The good thing about grey is that it matches with any other colour. So you can wear your true colurs - a different one every day.

[shula]

Oh GO you.

You'll grimace in the mirror, but you probably do anyway, and at least what you'll be looking at will be real.

I did it years ago.

It was about being honest, for me.

I got a bit of a shock, but then I felt MUCH better.

[Tara]

Oh, for a minute there I thought it was all about "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and then I realized it was "True Colors" . . . and then, having read the latest post, I'm thinking it's both. I'm cheering for you as you pursue the fine arts degree with your lovely gray hair and fantastic shoes. It all goes together well. And I'm straight on that final challenge in the last post. Going for it myself . . . good to have the encouragement, too.

Tara