I’ve had kind of a hate-love thing with my greying hair. First hate, then love. When the first strands came in, I just covered them up with my usual dark red tint. As long as I used temporary color, I could spend a few bucks every couple of months and have a fine (enough) looking ‘do. Then the stubborn greys popped up, and the temp stuff wouldn’t keep them quiet. That’s when I switched to permanent color.

At some point, I decided that a lighter shade would be more age-appropriate. I’ve been waffling back-and-forth between red, brown and blonde ever since. My roots mocked me. I told my stylist that I was ready to grow it all out into my natural color. To help with the transition, he gave me platinum highlights. (I wanted white, but it wasn’t possible.)

So it grew, and it grew. In a weak moment, I begged for bangs. Last week, I realized that what I should have done was lop off some of that length. I had sedimentary hair. My whole styling history was visible in those layers of color. The picture I took as documentation makes me cringe, which is why you have to click if you want to see it. Anyway, when I called in my hair emergency, I was horrified to discover that my stylist had disappeared. My desire for change outweighed my fear of going to someone new, so I took the plunge and went to a completely different salon.

Here’s my after, which is the closest I’ve been to my natural color in years. The grey patches aren’t very visible, but they’re there.