Becoming Platinum/My Gray Hair Transition Story (11 Months In)

Hey my name is beth, and i am here to share my gray hair transition story, which i am calling becoming platinum. I have been letting my hair grow for about 11 months, so this is where i am in the process currently and i felt like i wanted to help others who maybe are going through this by sharing my story, i know that in this process, for me, i've Relied a lot on the insight and advice, support and just general encouragement from this gray: hair silver, hair, platinum, hair. Whatever you want to call it this community, i wanted to contribute my story as well as a way of giving back. So thanks for watching. If that's interesting to you, please stick around. I found my first gray hair at 17 years old. I remember it so clearly. I was in a fitting room at a department store under very bright fluorescent lights and i saw it gleaming there in my head and i was 17 years old. I still had braces on my teeth. I was awkward and uncomfortable on a daily basis with my appearance and it was there under those harsh fluorescent lights, that i found my very first gray and i immediately plucked it out. I knew i was likely to go gray because it runs in my family and i watched my mother dye, her hair at home in the bathtub every four weeks. All of my life. There was nothing more natural than that. She had a special bathrobe that she reserved for this ritual. We had towels that were only to be used for this as well, and she kept her short hair, a beautiful, deep mahogany brown for most of her adult life. By doing her her color at home. I understood that that was likely to be my future, but i plucked until i couldn't anymore, and that took me all the way through college i remember obsessively getting into the bathroom sink. I would get up on the vanity and put my feet in the sink with my head right up against the mirror and the brightest light possible. And i would comb through my hair, looking for the white hairs to pluck out all through college. And it was about the time i was maybe in my mid-20s that i could not pluck anymore. By that time i moved on to box dye as well, and i had no business buying box die and dyeing my own hair. I just didn't. I had no training. I didn't have an eye for it. I didn't understand what the right color was for me and it was inevitable, but i eventually botched my own dye job and i did it so badly that i had to go to a salon to correct it at the time. I was living in the san francisco bay area and i went to a salon called diva in downtown san francisco, and the salon was owned by a woman called deva, and she herself consulted with me and then ultimately performed the miracle that was lifting the bad dye And then applying something that was much more flattering and it was at that appointment that i left boxed eye behind forever. So once i was hooked on salons, i started seeing a stylist i loved in minneapolis. His name was chris and he was at brian graham's salon and chris had a great eye for color, and he also introduced me to an oil-based color delivery system, which is a lot gentler on the hair, and my hair is hard to cover because it is coarse. It is thick and it is very stubborn to die, so he introduced me to an oil-based delivery method that was somewhat transparent. So, as my gray was covered, it still wasn't very light and sparkly. It would kind of like transparently glow through the color he chose, and chris brought me from the deeper brown. I came to see him with from my san francisco days to a lighter warm golden dark blonde. I like to refer to as kind of a nice lady blonde, and it looked really good on me. It was, it was a good match for me and i was comfortable wearing it, and i wore my hair that color for about eight years, and i re-upped that nice lady blonde for eight years, every four weeks until i'd had enough of it. I was ready for a change in my personal life and in my exterior appearance, and i got both. I asked chris to make me a redhead. He was hesitant at first because it was a significant change, but when he assessed my coloring, the coloring of my eyes and my skin and again i was a natural brunette. It wasn't that big of a leap to go over to an auburn, so he he was willing to do that and i kept my hair uh red for the next couple of years and in those years the changes that i was looking to make in my life. I made as well, i made a significant change in my career, leaving a job that was making me unhappy and selecting one that had a higher level of responsibility, a higher title and also i moved to a new city in order to take that job. And i also left behind a personal relationship that was not working for me any longer. I was channeling. What is the stereotype of redheads? You hear sometimes there's a very untrue, extremely unfair stereotype out there that redheads are nuts. I don't believe it. It'S not true at all, but at that time in my life i didn't mind it. If someone maybe thought that about me, i i was okay, channeling, some crazy vibes. At the time i enjoyed my period as a redhead, but all good things must come to an end. At this point, i had moved to a new city and i found a new stylist named amy, who was also a redhead, so she was really great at keeping that up for me, but i had to make a practical decision at this point to to do something. Different, my touch-up routine was coming close to almost every two to three weeks to cover my grade had gotten so advanced and amy, and i talked it through and decided that it was time to make a kind of a slow, gradual transition over to blonde, which we Did she started off by bringing me over to strawberry blonde for a while, and the strawberry blonde became a coppery blonde, which turned into just a golden blonde, and then, ultimately, we settled there for a little bit, but practically i couldn't really keep it up anymore. I needed to move over to platinum and so a couple years ago we started adding platinum highlights and we decided every six months. We would just add more platinum, highlights and start to move over. I didn't know when i'd be willing to officially ditch the die, but i was getting to the point where i needed to start making decisions based on practicality. I was spending two and a half to three hours at the salon every saturday morning, once a month, always on a saturday every four weeks, one of my saturdays, a month in a very busy life, was converted over to salon maintenance and it wasn't fun anymore. I was starting to lose my patience with it and it was. It was in january of 2020 that i couldn't take it anymore. My husband and i had scheduled a weekend getaway with another couple and we decided we'd go to miami for a long weekend in january and stay in south beach and just go and have some fun and between the holidays and my work schedule. I um messed up. My calendar and as we were checking into this hotel, i got a text message from my salon, saying that i had an appointment coming up in two days and or should i confirm my appointment and i had a meltdown. My husband was talking to the lobby at the hotel. They were asking if we wanted to upgrade our room. He was super geeked about that, so he was trying to get me to pay attention to him and the circumstances, and i was on the phone with my salon trying to get an appointment again, which is almost impossible. If any of you have been salon goers, it can be nearly impossible to get a last-minute appointment, so i scheduled the nearest one that i could um that could possibly work for me two weeks later and it i scheduled it for an evening appointment, which i hate, Because i have unpredictable days sometimes so in january, two weeks later, i had more gray growth than i'd ever had because i was two weeks after the fact my hair grows so fast. I was at work and i had to literally leave a meeting that i was leading to get in my car and get in rush hour traffic to drive 35 minutes to try to park in a busy part of town. Where i was going to sit in a chair for three hours and cover the fact that my hair is going gray and on the drive out to this appointment, i i was just bathed in stress chemicals. It was winter. It was rush hour. I was trying to lead a meeting while navigating through all of that i had it and by the time i arrived at the appointment i was so stressed out. I decided i was done. I went through the appointment at that time because i didn't know what else to do, and just out of courtesy for the for the technician who was there to help me re-re-up cover those roots, and i took some pictures and decided this was the last time ever. I was going to cover my gray and that in my next appointment that i would no longer touch up the roots that we would get even more highlights put in and then i would begin my transition into my gray hair, which is exactly what we did and In february i got those highlights, i didn't cover my gray and in march my city went into a quarantine lockdown. I live in one of the cities that was impacted very early by the covet 19 crisis and i am very fortunate. I was able to keep my my job during this time, but my job includes working really close to the action. So, as my city was working to respond to this crisis and as we were losing community leaders and friends on a daily basis, it didn't it. It didn't go without noticing me that i had a freedom in my head where i used to worry. If people could see if my hair was going gray, i didn't have that fear anymore, because yeah, absolutely my hair is going gray. I completely removed that concern from the table and i noticed the way in which that cleared space for me to be more present in that moment to actually be helpful to people. I i didn't realize how much space worrying about my gray hair had taken up. In my life - and it was one of the first things i i noticed - i was able to let go of, and i was grateful to let go of. I um. I spent the next few weeks, just sort of quietly next few months really kind of just quietly letting it grow. I knew there were a lot of other women in the same boat with me who weren't necessarily planning to stay gray, but we we all kind of saw each other, and i even posted somewhere on one of my social media accounts, a picture that said in three To four weeks, we'll all know everybody's real hair color, and i posted that you know kind of announcing that that's true in my case, you know, netflix doesn't mean like for the next time. You see me, you know whatever and i didn't really say a lot about it, but what i started to notice was that my hair was more salt and pepper than i expected. I was assuming it was going to wind up being like snow, white and platinum. Like my mother or like my grandmother and maybe one day it will be, but what i'm actually getting right now is closer to salt and pepper. I was surprised by that and kind of pleased honestly it it's been a lot of fun for me, and i've also noticed in this time that my eyes appear brighter. If you look at my driver's license, it'll say that i have brown eyes and, of course, there's quite a lot of brown in them, but what they really are is a darker green and i'm finding that my silver hair, this platinum color, is starting to reflect and Highlight somehow my eyes are appearing much greener than they were, which caused me to look at all of the colors that i wear primarily in makeup, but also in my clothing. This return to my native coloring. I'M not introducing a color that i'm not i'm not a platinum blonde. Naturally, it's not my natural hair color, even as a little girl. My blonde was kind of a golden blonde. Returning to my native hair, color has helped me see my native skin tone and my native eye color differently, just been really surprising and i've had a lot of fun actually experimenting with lipsticks. I went through every single lipstick in my collection, which is like you know, not insignificant, and i tried every single color on again as if it were the first time, i'd ever worn them and took pictures of myself just to see which color is the most flattering. For me now you know i have three tubes of mac's velvet teddy. Is that really the most flattering color for me now or is it ruby woo? You know i i had to find out. I had to find out, and what i found out is that i do actually have some new colors that i like to wear a lot that i maybe didn't work for me before. Well, that has been really really fun too, and you know most of all, i've really enjoyed watching other people's videos and reading other people's stories about their gray hair transition. I feel connected and supported by all of you who are doing this. It has just been wonderfully encouraging to me and it's part of the motivation of why i am making this video i've never made a video before i certainly enjoy youtube, but i didn't really see myself as doing this as being a content producer, but this experience has Helped me to feel like it's my um, it's kind of my responsibility to talk about this. We have lived in a society that didn't make room or space for women who were showing signs of maturity, and i am going to do everything in my power at this time to advocate for the value of mature women, not just because i've become one, but because My life has been made better. All of my life by mature women, grandmas aunts, my mother teachers. There is more than just some value in mature women. There is, there is tremendous wisdom, power and light coming from women who have been there. Sometimes, when you let go of something that falls to the bottom of the sea, and that's how this feels to me, i'm letting go of the anxiety that i have associated with the fact that my hair is going gray in choosing to face it to acknowledge it. Accept it and even to love it that has replaced a source of discomfort in my life with something else, and these little changes we can make towards self-acceptance towards being gentler and kinder with ourselves. Those little changes won't change everything right away, but they do accrue and it adds to your own journey of self-acceptance. At least it has for me, and i'm only 11 months in i'm committed to this change. I'M not wishing for it to go any faster than it is, and i look forward to what it's going to look like when it's all over as well. Again, i think everybody who went performing and shared their stories and put themselves out there in a public way. I thank you so much that that has been a really powerful gift that you've given me. So, in that same spirit, i'd like to give my story back to you, maybe as a simple thank you for what you've done or to help someone else who's in the early early days of this process as well anyway, thanks so much, i i hope you enjoyed It take care