Life is interesting. It is a remarkable journey with no real way to prepare for. When I turned 50 and started my journey to let my hair go gray, this blog was really a way for me to accept the fact that there are truly fewer years in front of me than behind me. I needed to embrace that fact and the perception that the color my hair somehow defined me or more correctly my illusion of age. It seemed that as long as my hair looked youthful then I must be as well - right - don’t we all think that somehow? What I learned was exactly the opposite. The color of my hair and truly my physical age really did not effect how I felt about myself. I learned that the color of my hair did not hurt my career and honestly that no one but me really seemed to care. Yes there were some comments, mostly positive, but people really did not base their acceptable of me on the color of my hair. More important than embracing the gray were the other things I learned along this journey.
I love to work, but once my kids started to grow into their new lives, I realized mine was lacking. Devoting myself to my kids was the best role I ever had and my job let me accomplish a goal I had set for myself in 1993 when my first son was born. That goal was to make sure my sons were able to get a college degree and come out debt free. I starting accounts for them the first month they were born and put anything I could into the funds each month. My career blossomed motived by this goal and seeing this fulfilled has been an enormous accomplishment. But with every goal once achieved, there is a gap that it once filled. What motivates me now is the question? I love to work and like my job but I do not have the same sense of purpose I did before. I found myself without outside passions, without making time for anyone outside of work, or even making efforts to build new relationships. At one time my days were filled with my family but that is not the case now. I have an amazing husband that I love to devote all my time to but that is not the best for us either. So I had to start again and re-engage my passions which strangely made me enjoy my job more, to want to spend more time with friends, have higher quality time with my husband, and it adds a little more sense of purpose.
Being gray is also a sign that I have spent enough time on this planet to learn a lot and to more importantly understand that there is still a lot to learn. Maybe it’s not just one journey but many that have various lengths and the time before us verse the time behind us does not really matter since the journey begins where we let it.