If you have landed on this page, then welcome and hello. As the blog title suggests, this is a shared space for navigating the murky avenue of ‘midlife’. I created this blog, so that I can share with you, all the weird and wonderful things I have trialled, adopted and dabbled in, during this strange transitioning time of life. My life now, looks 100% opposite, to how it was 5-10 years ago. There was a significant period of change for me and in all honesty, my transforming is still evolving. I’m now in a place where I accept that life is a continuous journey and we all have a story to tell, so that we can share, learn and support each other. Let me get straight to it – my roles have changed, my body (internal and external) have changed, my outlook of life has changed, what I place importance on has changed, my relationships have changed, my relationship with myself has changed and my priorities have changed. Please use this platform to recognise that you are not alone and we can
My midlife journey to the wonderful tribe of grey
My hair is one of the most significant changes I've
experienced to date (amongst the multitude of other CHANGES that is going on in
my midlife).
Around 3 years ago, I decided I was no longer going to dye my hair and just embrace my au natural, grey fox vibes. Let me tell you this
decision was met with some fierce objections that I don’t think I was prepared
for. Less than supportive….many people tried to talk me out of it, telling me
it would age me and ‘you will look like an OLD lady’ and ‘you're making a mistake…don’t
do it’. Well….anyone who knows me well, will know that these type of comments
just add fuel to my fiery feminist values and would result in the total opposite
to their “friendly” advice.
I had started to see grey in my hair in my 20s but had
always dyed it, so wasn’t sure how it would look coming through…but I felt
confident, that by now….it would be totally grey. I was not wrong. Although,
there's still some odd strands of ‘colour’ left, it's predominantly grey now and I
absolutely love it. Everyone comments on how nice my hair colour is. I even had
a random guy in the street cross over the road specifically to tell me how
amazing my hair was. I don’t know, maybe he was taking the mick but honestly…it
did seem genuine. I have no regrets whatsoever.
Going au natural, does come with some need to give extra
care and attention though to my locks. Again, something I was not expecting. I’ve
needed to change all my products to make sure they are free of Sulfates and Parabens
etc…. (mind you, we should all be avoiding these harsh chemicals anyway!!). I
really noticed the difference in my hair texture and the chemical build up was
evident, really quickly. Now I only use BODY SHOP products. The Body Shop
From Grey to Green
Oh my word…..hair horror, is an understatement, when out of
blue, my grey hair started to develop a yellow tinge which then developed into a greenish
tinge. I wracked by brain trying to think about why this was happening after 1 year of
being fully grey and all evidence of previous dye was gone. At first I thought
it was the products I was using, so changed .....and changed..... and changed them. Nothing
made a difference. Then my hairdresser commented on the fact that I live in a
hard water area and it was most likely to be copper in the water pipes that was
causing it. This seemed plausible so I invested in trying ‘metal detox’ shampoo
from L’oreal. Metal Detox
However, this still didn’t resolve the problem. I tried
charcoal shampoo too…and no success. I then decided to purchase a shower head
filter to see if that would help. No, it didn’t. Shower head filters
I was about to loose hope and felt I was just going to have
to accept that I would need to live with the discolouration but then had a
random thought that maybe my heat styling items were possibly burning my now, very fragile hair (even though I was using heat protecting sprays). I stopped
using my hair straighteners for a few weeks and sure enough the green tinge
subsided and no more yellowing. That’s exactly, what the problem was all this
time!!! Ive now adapted the heat levels on all my styling devices so that it's
very low and I'm finding that I can still style my hair how I like but no longer
at the expense of frying it!!
Over the years I have invested in good quality heated styling
equipment, so my frazzled hair was not down to using cheap products that don’t allow
for heat adjustments. I was just using the wrong heat settings, thinking that I
was protected by the heat sprays….clearly not!!! What's clear to me now…is
that my hair is very fragile, so I need low heat as well as heat
protector spray, to make sure that I keep my hair is healthy condition
Purple Shampoo
In a nutshell....no thanks, its not for me. I jumped straight on that trend train and did not like the results. I tried a variety of different brands, really hoping to find something I would like but.....nope, I didn't.
The purple rinse just was not a good look on me. I kinda hoped for a platinum cool vibe but instead got a very 'purple/blue' vibe. I know many of you out there use purple shampoo and have good results.... but it certainly did not on me!!
I will be talking about all things relating to hair loss, in a future post
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