A Little Background, and the Plan

It’s 2014, I am 60 years old, and I am finally ready to tackle the challenge of going gray. I have been so grateful to those who have shared their experiences – with photos and tips and challenges --  that I thought I should document my own journey in case it will help someone else. I have been thinking about this for a couple of years.  I have been permanently coloring my hair since the age of 27. When my eldest daughter was a year old, I began swimming 3 days a week at the pool where I worked. I was lucky enough to have my office in the same building as the Physical Education department, so I lost the last of the baby weight swimming on my lunch hour. But unfortunately I used temporary hair color and the constant swimming and chlorine took the color out almost immediately. That’s when I turned to permanent color.

Thirty three years is a long time to be putting those chemicals on my head. And as the years passed, and my real hair turned closer and closer to white, it became a bi-weekly event to be sitting at the salon for hours, or coloring it myself at home.

This was my natural haircolor – before any dye and before children. I was 17, and a freshman in college in this photo.

Over the years the color varied only a little. Sometimes I went a little lighter, sometimes more auburn. But essentially I remained a fairly consistent medium to dark brown. Here is a photo from 2013. You can see I have aged 40+ years, but my hair has not.

To begin preparing myself (and my husband) for this change, I decided in August to begin to let the gray grow in at the temples, just so I could get used to seeing some gray around my face. I actually liked the softness of the gray, though I was a little taken aback at how white my hair is now. You can see the temples in this photo taken at the end of September.

I colored my hair again just before Christmas, on December 21 -- and after looking at all the options I think that might be the last time. So now it is 3 weeks since my last full coloring. Normally I would have colored it myself on January 4. At 3 weeks, I already have quite a defined white 'skunk' line.

So today I went to the salon and had a few lowlights added, just a few streaks of the brown tones along the part to help break up the 'skunk' line and make the new growth a little more tolerable. It's still unattractive, but it's better. I'll check back with my progress in another month or so.