I was young once with beautiful red hair. Every time I went to the salon, the stylist would rant and rave about my hair. They told me people pay big bucks for color like mine, and I should be thankful I have it naturally.
I was thankful but it was both a blessing and a curse. When I was young, I got teased so much because of my red hair that I hated it for a very long time. I wondered why I was the only one in my family to have red hair. I felt like an oddball.
Fast forward to my 20’s and I learned to embrace my red hair. I really started to love it. Mostly because of the stylists who made a big deal about it. Thank you to all the hairdressers who made me feel special. You have a gift.
I also had really curly hair back then. I still do, but not as much. It was kind of my trade-mark. A woman’s hair is usually how she defines herself. I was no exception. If I had a bad hair day, I withdrew and wasn’t as confident in myself. My good hair days often helped me be the bubbly outgoing person I am.
In my 30’s and 40’s, I went through various different styles and then went really short for a few years. Hair had always been in abundance for me. I had a lot of it, and it grew like a weed. I kind of took it for granted.
I seemed to go through these stages where one moment it was short, and the next moment I was growing it out. At one point in my late 40’s, it was the longest I’d ever had it and it was a long flowing curly mane.
I experimented with highlights and wondered what red hair would look like with blonde streaks in it. I had heard it looked like the sun. I looked at pictures online and decided to take the plunge. I got highlights.
Over the years, my red did not look red anymore. With years of highlights, my red hair slowly died out. I was no longer a redhead, I was a blonde and I can tell you, blondes do not have more fun than redheads.
Redheads still rock!
I started missing my red hair. In fact, it always seemed to make me mad when people asked where my son got his red hair. I would reply, “from me!” but they would seem confused. Obviously, they saw a blonde woman that thought she was still a redhead.
It’s funny how our perspective can be totally different from someone else’s.
If only I would have known then what I know now. Red hair fades. My lovely red hair only had a short shelf life and I didn’t even know it. I should have enjoyed my natural color as long as I could. I wish someone would have told me hair changes once we pass 50.
And it did.
As I entered menopause I noticed my hair changing color. It was getting darker. I thought at first it was just because it was winter, but I was wrong.
Something was happening to me.
My hair was changing.
Menopause causes a lot of changes to our bodies, but I never thought I’d notice such a drastic change in my hair. I was always told redheads don’t go grey, so I was expecting to keep my red hair for a while.
I just thought it would fade a bit, but not get darker. I know some people with red hair go lighter, eventually turning white. The difference depends upon what kind of red hair you have.
As all gingers know, there are many shades of red. There are orange-reds. There are strawberry blondes. There are light, medium, and dark auburn. There are so many shades of red hair, and shades ultimately determine what happens to your hair as it ages.
My hair was always more of a penny color.
Regardless, I expected it to fade lighter, not get darker. I was not prepared to have dark brown auburn hair and I didn’t know what to do with it.
I kept it short in my early 50’s. I found that the curl wasn’t the same either. It seemed to flatten after a while and I wasn’t used to that either. For anyone who has naturally curly hair, you know what it’s like, and losing curl is something we don’t even think about.
But, as you age, you lose curl.
You also lose hair.
I was left with what I called ‘blah’ hair. I felt like I lost most of my curl and my color to boot. I was a sorry mess and I wanted ‘me’ back.
But I was nowhere to be found.
A new me was immerging and I didn’t know how to handle that. I thought the solution was to grow my hair out and have it long and curly like my younger days.
My sister and I formed a hair growing pact and vowed to let our hair grow long no matter what. We did that for a year and suffered greatly.
People don’t tell you the truth. They lie right through their teeth when you ask them if they like your hair. Especially spouses. They are the worst. They are so afraid to get into trouble they just become ‘yes’ men, even if it should be a great big ‘NO!’
My husband got himself into trouble one day when he made a comment about my hair. I was struggling to grow it long. It looked a mess. I couldn’t style it because the texture had changed so drastically.
I had lost my curl and my color, not to mention my ability to grow it properly. It seemed to grow in patches meaning some parts grew slower than others. At times I felt like I was going bald.
I WAS going bald.
As you age, you lose your hair. I’d wet my hair in the morning to style it (or at least try to style it) for work, and then the entire sink would fill with hair. What! The! Heck!
One day I was feeling very ugly, and my sister was visiting too. We were both trying to grow our hair long again and get our natural color back, but it had backfired. I asked my husband what he thought of my long hair, and his answer was, “Well… I always did like your short hair.”
WRONG ANSWER!
I was so upset, I ranted for the rest of the day. I couldn’t believe after all that time growing my hair out that he “always did like my short hair.” To me, that meant he didn’t like my long hair. He just didn’t know how to tell me that.
My poor husband. I preceded to torture him with what I called his insensitive reply. He knew no matter what he said, it would be the wrong thing. That’s why he never gave me an honest opinion of my hair.
Like I said, people lie!
That was an eye-opener. I decided to take a second look at my hair. Perhaps I wasn’t seeing it as others saw it? Perhaps I was just fooling myself thinking I would be young again just because I had long hair.
My sister started to evaluate her own hair. Were we wrong to think we could have long hair at our age? Up until this point, we both had insisted it didn’t matter what age you were, you could have long hair if you wanted to.
And that is true.
But something else was going on here. I had to determine what I really wanted. Yes, I wanted to have my long hair back because it reminded me of my youth, but at what expense?
If long hair meant that I looked older and felt younger, I was going about it the wrong way. I took a good look at myself and compared it to pictures throughout the years. I can tell you I had to really be honest with myself.
And that was hard.
I realized my dark hair wasn’t the tone I once had. I realized it wasn’t the ‘red’ of my youth. It was a cheap imitation.
It’s not that I didn’t want to embrace my natural color. I did. I am an advocate for virgin hair. We should all be proud of what God gave us. If that means grey hair, then so be it. If that means dark brown hair, then so be it.
I was prepared to embrace my natural look even if it made me look like I was stuck in a time warp. Sacrificing style, youthfulness, and beauty, was not what I was going for though.
I looked at myself in the mirror one day and asked the hard questions. “Why do you want to grow your hair long? Why don’t’ you want highlights? Why don’t you want a fresh new stylish cut?”
I think the answer to my question shocked me. If I was being honest, it was because when I had long hair, I felt young again. It brought me back to the 80’s when I was a young woman.
My red hair reminded me of being young too. If I grew my hair out in its natural color, I thought I would have it all back. But that wasn’t possible.
Reality bites sometimes.
I was not a young woman anymore.
It was a pride thing, yet it was something else too. I was confused. I didn’t realize that in my quest to look young, I was actually making myself look old.
I didn’t realize that it was the end result that I was really after. I wanted to look and feel youthful. I wanted something that complimented my face shape, and I forgot that.
I got caught up in a vision that was from the past. As soon as I realized that, I woke up to what I was doing. I couldn’t get my youth back. I couldn’t be 21 again, and that was hard to take.
It’s painful for older women to give up their past and re-create themselves. It’s not easy to push past the pain and loss we feel when we realize we have to give up our youth.
I felt as though I was giving up a dream. In my head, my dream was somehow telling me if I had long red hair again I’d get my youth back, but my thoughts were all messed up and twisted.
I had to turn this around.
As hard as it was, I realized what my goal was and what I had to do to achieve it. My goal was to look good at any age and that meant to get a cut, style, and color that made me ‘feel’ young again. That was the key.
TO FEEL YOUNG.
My idea of feeling young was stuck in the past. The new me discovered that ‘feeling’ young meant looking fresh with modern styles and cuts.
I always swore I’d never get stuck in an outdated fashion, and now I had allowed my hair to do that. This could not go on. I had to do something different and I had to do it now. I had carried on far too long trying to grow my hair out.
I went to my sister who is a trained stylist and she cut my hair in a lovely angled bob. I had it like that before, but I had forgotten how much I loved it. It had made me feel fresh and young before, and it did the same thing this time.
I got my youth back, but not in the way that I thought I would.
I thought it was with long red hair. Instead, a short modern hairstyle was all I needed. It seemed to transform me and showed me how far off the rails I actually had gone.
I even got highlights again. I had to give up my idea of youth even if that meant my red hair. My red hair was actually brown now anyway and it was holding me back. It made me look old and haggard and I didn’t even realize it.
I’m glad I woke up.
I’m writing this post so I remember the hard lessons I put myself through. I don’t ever want to make that mistake again. My goal was to look and feel youthful. I forgot that when I got sidetracked and confused with what ‘youth’ actually means in my 50’s.
Never again!
If you liked this blog post, you might enjoy my book called, The Funny Side of Menopause. You can buy it through my Amazon affiliate link in both ebook and paperback form.
We have to embrace the changes, and sometimes that means we need to laugh at ourselves. If you can do that, you’ll be just fine!
Even if your hair changes.
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Author Kathleen Morris
Kathleen Morris is a successful published author, blogger, and Youtuber. She enjoys writing about things she’s passionate about and making a difference in the world.