2013 New Year's Resolution

Au Revoir, Loreal

I'm not one to make a lot of New Year's resolutions (which more often than not are forgotten by about March) but this year I am making a big one.  I have decided to let my hair revert to its natural color, which is about 75 percent white and 25 percent an odd kind of brownish color.  I did a full coloring  yesterday (my last) and this is how it currently looks:

No gray here yet....but stay tuned.

Not bad, but not natural either.  After all, I am in my early 50's and no one that age has no gray in their hair, except certain very lucky Asians or Native Americans, who don't seem to have much of a gray gene.  

Basically I am sick and tired of coating my head with chemical goo every few weeks in order to achieve a youthful look when I'm not all that youthful anymore.  I strive to live a seriously chemical-free life -- eating organic, reading labels, avoiding artificially-produced products when I could make my own natural ones -- so it makes no sense that every month I give myself an ammonium hydroxide swirly and then sit around letting it soak in for a good 45 minutes.  Surely this can't be a safe thing, long term.  So I've decided to go natural.  I do plan on having some help from a good professional colorist as my current color grows out, mainly so I don't get a skunk-like stripe down the center of my head for months.  But the days of coating my entire skull with hair coloring is over.  Finito. We'll see what color my hair actually is underneath the Medium Blonde #8...Even I am not sure, because I've been doing this since I was about 35 and a lot has changed with my hair since then.  But I'm excited to meet this new silver woman, whoever she is.

So Au revoir, Loreal and Miss Clairol.  It's been great knowing you. Not.