Thinking about thresholds

of life, death and hair dye

A candle for Con. Photo by Kyle on Unsplash

Yesterday, on the New Moon, my 104-year-old aunt, crossed over the threshold into the next world. She was my last remaining aunt, the last of my father’s siblings, and now my mum is the last of that line on the family tree. My cousins, my sister and I are on the next line - and I’m the youngest.

Aunty Con had no children of her own, so she had always been generous with her time and attention on her nieces and nephews when we were young. My sister, being the nearest geographically and also Con’s god-daughter, was the one responsible for her in her later life. Con slipped away peacefully in her bed, in the care home where she’d lived for the last eight years.

Here she is on her 100th birthday in 2021.

I’ve been thinking about thresholds all week. We are in the depths of winter and yet also stand on the threshold of spring on many levels.* The crossing of the threshold is not a single act but a progression of time. The passage of an elder through the threshold of old, old age is rather like the progression of winter – slow, gradual dissolution.

Con was very fortunate; her’s was a graceful dissolution. She was pretty robust in mind and body, coped on her own in her own house until she was 95, and was still on her feet albeit with a walking frame at 100. My own mother is still independent at 97, slower, less capable than she was, but determined (stubborn and cussed). There is something about that generation, I think - or maybe it’s just my family that have that stubborn, determined streak! Mum is facing another threshold of her own now – that of ageing to being old.

*The pair of wild ducks arrived back on our pond today for the first time this year. The snowdrops are coming out and I noticed tiny pink buds of peonies just peeking out of the soil.

Dyeing, not dying

As we’ve been crossing the threshold from the old into the new year, and to this new lunar cycle, I’ve been taking time to sort through old notebooks, extracting what I want to carry forward with me and releasing the rest to the compost heap or burning bin. And I came across an old article that I had written 13 years ago. It was about crossing the threshold of embracing my grey hair and ditching the hair dye.

I’ll share it with you now because it’s not just about to dye or not to dye. It’s about the journey of crossing the threshold, the passage of acceptance, the standing in your own truth while others are fearful of it. It’s about how we make transitions.

Written when I was 47 (post-August 2012, I don’t have the exact date I wrote it):

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“When a woman changes her hair, and I mean dramatically changes it, it’s usually a sign of some inner shift. A radical new cut or colour is often a reflection of the new woman she is becoming — or is trying to. Experimenting with hair is, after all, one of the quickest, cheapest and least permanent of changes we can make to outwardly express our inner sense of self. [And can be changed again when we go through another evolution.]

So there I was in February, sitting in the chair at the mercy of my hairdresser, allowing her to snip away my dark brown bob to turn me into a pixie.

I hate my hair very short. I always have. Whenever I’ve done the short short in the past I’ve regretted it. This pixie was the shortest short ever — barely an inch of hair left.

This time there was a method to my madness. It was part of a journey and a transition. I’d decided to stop colouring my hair and allow it to be au naturel, whatever shade of grey that turned out to be.

My natural colour was Gaelic black, and I’d developed a white streak in the front in my 20s. In my 30s, reflecting an inner shift, I’d wanted some red streaks. Then I went for multi-toned highlights with a chocolate brown base. When I could no longer afford the salon colours, I started colouring it myself and a deep reddish brown became my colour.

In my 40s I felt another shift in identity. I didn’t know who I was anymore and was struggling to discover who I might be. The white streak seemed to have advanced and the tell-tale roots suggested that I might be quite silvery underneath the brown. So in an effort to recapture the Gaelic black of my youth, I went ‘darkest brown/black’. In truth it wasn’t just my hair colour I was trying to recapture, it was something of the woman I’d been but couldn’t quite hold on to.

The challenge with black hair is that it is impossible to match with dye. Darkest brown isn’t black enough, black is too harsh and unnatural. Hair dye also fades and my hair grows quickly so it became a 3-weekly ritual of gunking my head to hold off the evidence that I was no longer who I had been.

Then one day, looking at myself in the mirror, I realised that the woman I saw just wasn’t the woman I felt myself to be. The incongruity between the image of self and the feeling of self was a ‘wake-up’ call. I knew then it was time. Time to let my hair be what it is, and time to stop grasping at who I was not.

Transitioning from coloured to grey is not for the faint of heart. There’s only three choices (I think): months of expensive highlighting and blending until the grey takes over; accepting ‘the hat line’ as the colour gradually grows out; or the pixie chop. It is a leap of faith and a courageous decision whichever way you go.
[And even more so back then, as media and societal attitudes to grey hair were much less accepting than now].

I opted for the pixie chop because it was the quickest route to authenticity. A short cut, as a short-cut to where I wanted to be. It was the hardest part of the journey, and the greatest joy has been seeing my 50 shades of grey grow out. It is nothing like as silvery white as I had expected.

Most interesting was the reactions of other people. Some thought I was brave, others advised me not to do it. Once I’d done it, some were inspired to follow suit and some still feared that it would make them look old. Really the only reaction I cared about was my own. Did I now feel the congruence of the woman in the mirror with the woman I felt myself to be. Unequivocally yes.”

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I’m at another threshold now. Nothing to do with hair dye. Everything to with my writing and work in the world; honouring the process, seasonality and timing of what must be allowed to depart and what is waiting to be born. Reuniting with the story I am here to tell with my life. The roots are waking up, the buds are just starting to peep through the earth. The energy is stirring. There is clearing of the twigs of last year to complete to create space for the shoots of this coming spring. Still early days though. The New Moon might ask us what seeds are we planting for this next cycle, but those seeds still have to germinate in the dark. Right now, I’m germinating.

Until next time… with love