Decades ago, someone told me that I was not the type of person that would ever grow to be beautiful, pretty or cute. That’s a cold hard truth to hear. Those words have always stayed with me.
I have always worked on bettering myself. Whether it was through through exercise, healthy, living, cut my hair, grow my hair, dyed my hair all sorts of crazy colors… But I did those things for me.
As I got older, I heard that women of a certain age, usually over 40, shouldn’t dress certain ways, wear certain things, or have certain hairstyles and colors. I gave those ideologies two lovely fingers and moved on with my bad self, doing whatever I pleased, fuschia hair included. Then cancer came along, took my hair, and some of my sense of who I was.
Cancer ages us. I’ve spoken the ugly truth. It can and usually does induce aging on a cellular and genetic level. As we unravel in chemotherapy, so does our DNA and cells die off a little younger. Frightening, isn’t it? Welcome to aging faster than you care for. So, what’s a girl in remission to do? I’ve been on a mission to fix myself, and it is tricky! Hair grows back, and life comes back, this is true. The question is, what do you do with both?
I was quite smitten with my little white tufts of chemo curl as it came back. I secretly hoped that it would stay that color. I thought about adding all sorts of crazy font to it since it was white. This time went on, and as my hair grew, I lost the curl and a lot of the white. It grew in pewter. An absolute perfect shade of pewter, so what was the problem with that?
I loved my pewter hair. However, I let the words of modern society, and things that I had seen in the media sway me into a different direction, a direction I regret. I dyed my hair to a youthful auburn. It was as close to my original hair color as I could possibly get.
Women are bombarded with the message, some overt and others subliminal, that youth is beauty. Grey hair and wrinkles are not. Eff that noise. There is a different kind of beauty of a cancer warrior emerging from the ashes of their former self. A little IDAF attitude intertwined with exhaustion, humor, hope and some pain. Don’t get me wrong, IDAF what beauty standards are out there but I still want to be the best version of me
The beauty, industry, media, and the words of others can wreak havoc on our psyche, if we are not careful. People are very consumed with anti-aging, I’m not gonna lie, myself included. However, I’ve come to the realization that gray hair, silver hair, white hair, even no hair…it does not age us. It does not mean we have let ourselves go. It means quite the opposite.
Our silver strands shine in our reflection of all we have done in our lives. They glisten and sparkle in the sun, reminding us that we can sparkle too. It is our time to shine. It has taken me this long to come to the realization that there is beauty in aging.
Five years ago, I lost my thick, wavy auburn hair and went without any for a while. Flash forward to now, it is straight, a texture that I’ve never had before, thinner, and pewter under this dye. It’s now a combination of auburn, teal, fuschia, and roots of an inch of pewter and white. I call it tropical ombré with a hint of demented peacock. It is a reflection of me getting back on track with my sparkly funky self.
I am not gonna grow old gracefully, I’m kicking and fighting it every step of the way. However, I am going to keep working on being the best version of me, whether or not it fits anyone definition of beauty. I am now seeing the beauty in me.