Surprising Comments And Reactions To My Gray Hair

Hey everybody: it's beth welcome to infinite garden if you've been watching my channel for a while. You know that i talk about a variety of things, but my gray, hair transition and the celebration of the authenticity of our natural state is the main sort of core of what my channel is about. It'S. What brought me to youtube. One of the things i haven't talked about a lot are the comments that i get in the last few months. I'Ve been in the mix more post-quarantine. One of the main reasons i haven't had a lot to say about comments. I'Ve received is that i've been in quarantine and my my sphere has been very limited, but it's widening now, i'm seeing way more people and i've gotten a lot of feedback, and i wanted to share that with you today. I want to talk to you about the types of comments i'm getting from all right, my friends from people in the workplace and from complete strangers on the street. If that sounds interesting to you, please stay tuned. Last week there was a fall festival in the city where i live and as we were, entering the festival, we saw some of our friends who we hadn't seen since before the pandemic exiting so we stood kind of off to the side and just caught up as Quickly as we could, while we were sort of both going opposite directions, my the wife in this particular couple um could not get over my hair. She kept holding her hands to her mouth and her eyes were wide. She couldn't believe it and she kept asking me to verify that my gray, the dark uh dark streaks were not salon, assisted that this is just natural. It was kind of funny. We were probably talking for a few minutes and i don't think she ever got over it in the entire conversation it's kind of funny. She definitely seemed supportive of it. It wasn't like a like a horror shock so that that was good, but it was. She was really impacted by it. I was surprised the other thing that happened this past week. So, just a couple nights ago we had some friends over for dinner and again this is a friend that i've maybe seen once during the pandemic, but we were out on the street and it was cold and i could have even been wearing a hat. I can't remember so she knew that my hair was in this transition phase, but she hadn't seen me at one point during dinner. She got up into the kitchen to set something down or do something, and she came around to my chair, because i had my back to the kitchen and she started actually going through my hair. She started kind of touching my hair and we're not close like that. This isn't a i, you know, i love this person, but we don't have a history of that level of intimacy. She helped herself to my hair and started. You know grabbing pieces of it and looking through it and at some point i said i said well what do you think and she said i don't know how you did it. Did it so fast, i'm trying to figure out how you did this so fast and it's kind of funny, because it's been almost two years. In summary, the reaction from my friends were shock and also skepticism or disbelief. The workplace has been interesting for me since the pandemic began. I have been working from home primarily, but in the last i would say six months or so it's been more. I'Ve been in the office more probably two to three times a week and the way our office is um, i'm in a public administration role, and so we have heavy security, lots of security staff, and you know there's like places that you need clearance to enter. That type of thing, so there's a lot of folks who guard the doors to things and whatnot who i've been seeing for years and years and pre-pandemic. They knew me as a blonde i'm coming back now and my hair is visibly different. So some of the people took a minute to recognize me, but then, once they did, i find overall that i'm finding the people in those roles seem to more readily recognize me. It makes me more obviously identifiable. These are folks who see a lot of people every day and i feel, like the silver hair has made me instantly more distinguished than the blonde hair dead and easy to recognize from colleagues. I'Ve gotten a couple of comments. I had somebody who i'd spent a lot of time on zooms with who knew that i was going through this transition from the screen when they saw me in person, said something like so you're actually going through with it. It was i'll say the closest i've come to a negative comment. It was interesting because the effect of that sort of like questioning the decision making so okay you're, going to go through with this risky decision huh it's interesting how those can tend to undermine your confidence, but unfortunately, for this person who, i think might have actually been Trying to do that um this counterbalance by all of these other sorts of feedback that i'm getting that i feel like are um much more spontaneous and authentic, so that one ended up. Not bothering me that much, it made it easier for me to weather kind of a sort of sideways negative comment, and one of the reasons why i don't feel bothered by those comments is because of the reaction from strangers on the street. I live in a big city with very real and serious big city concerns, so in the center of the downtown there's a couple of areas where there are fountains and people gather there. So as long as i've been living here, there's one fountain in particular, where you can always count on there being a crowd and if you cross by the fountain you're, going to hear from the crowd just a quick detour story in 20. I think 16, a group of women and i were crossing through that fountain area on our way to see beyonce on the lemonade tour and one of my girlfriends had this fabulous peacock feather jack and a peacock feather ostrich feather jacket that she'd gotten from this boutique. In london and she looked amazing and when we walked through the fountain, you know the group that had gathered there stood up and literally gave her a standing ovation for the look she was serving as we were heading to beyonce. It'S one of my favorite memories from living where i live anyway, so i'm at that spot in town and i'm walking with a friend and there was a man there who, as i crossed by him, he said and i'm going to just channel the energy. I'M not like mimicking him or you know like trying to make fun of him in any way. I just need to convey the level of energy that this comment included. He he sort of bear down and closed his eyes, and he said i love your hair. I love your hair so much so i had a witness for this. This was kind of amazing. He was pretty close to me too, and i didn't even have my hair down. I had it was kind of hot, so i had it like up and back like this, but he he felt it. He felt moved to. Let me know - and i was kind of like startled - and i was also appreciative and finally, what is very interesting to me is that i'm getting a lot of feedback from women in their late teens early 20s. There is an extremely enthusiastic and somewhat uncontrolled response to it from this particular demographic. I'M getting a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of questions about whether or not it's real and how they can get it. Unfortunately, ladies you're, just gon na have to wait. You'Ll, have it eventually and then i they're also, you know just like generally kind of standing there in awe. So i'm getting like overwhelming responses from strangers on the street, which is so interesting because if you kind of contrast it with people who maybe have a more controlled response like the friend who didn't say anything about it but wanted to like inspect it with her hands And look to see you know how exactly i pulled this off when i, when i'm getting these responses from people in the street and comparing it to people who maybe are a little more measured in the way that they they address me. I can kind of put together what's happening when i finally made the decision that i wanted to stop dyeing my hair. I had a sense that it might look pretty good because i had been watching a lot of the silver sister videos on youtube and following channels on instagram and i'd. Seen so many examples of women who looked fantastic with their silver hair. And i could kind of see how much silver i had, but i didn't really know exactly how it was going to look. I just knew i needed to be done dyeing my hair. I didn't want to do it anymore. I wanted to be free. I wanted to share this today because, if anybody's out there at the early stages of their gray hair transition, you may be bracing yourself for all of the negative comments and trying to get your body armor in place. So you can stay strong during your transition. I just want to warn you that you might also have to make some room for some from really amazing compliments if you're not used to getting them or not used to sort of receiving strong responses from people based on what you look like that might be coming. Your way, it's a powerful choice to let your grades come in, and people have a lot to say about it, so be ready for that too. The positive can be a little surprising, sometimes too. I hope you enjoyed my stories from the last week and i hope you guys all have a great week ahead. I'D love to hear any comments you guys have down below and i hope to see you soon thanks. So much talk later guys, you