My hair is turning gray. 

Well, it’s been turning gray since my late twenties, but now I seem to be shocking people with it. To be fair, when I left for chemo treatment in the spring, my hair was long and dark, with some nicely managed sparkles of gray here and there. When I returned home six weeks later, it was short, thin, wild and, yeah, pretty dang gray. It was a drastic transition, one that I decided to roll with because what’s the point of dying hair that was coming out in clumps. 

“Woah, your hair!” is the first thing out of about everyone’s mouth when they haven’t seen me in a while. “Woah, my hair!” is the first thing out of my mouth every morning when I wake up to find it standing on end and reminding me, along with my aching neck and stiff ankle, that I am fluffy, but not in a spring chicken sort of way. 

When I first moved back to my family’s ranch in my late twenties, I remember writing a piece on my blog about how I intended on aging out on the ranch gracefully and graciously. I was going to continue to wear my red wedding boots as long as I lived and let my hair grow out wild and free and as silver as it needed to be. There were other things on that list–like I promised to always make time to pick crocuses and bury my face in the mane of a horse and remember that it’s not about how you look, it’s about how you live. And that’s easy for a twenty-something to say I suppose, although I want to believe her. 

But that twenty-something didn’t know that her feet were going to grow a half a size with each baby. And she didn’t have an Instagram feed yet, not to mention one that’s constantly telling her that, at 43, there are a lot of cracks to be repaired and bumps to smooth out and plenty of money to spend in order to make you feel worth looking at. I have a couple of cosmetic shelves that prove they’ve convinced…

“I love your hair! I wish I could do that with mine!”  It’s something that has been said to me over the course of the last several months, but it’s also something I’ve said to other silver-haired women over the years, wondering if I’d ever be brave enough myself to just let it go, the way the twenty-something version of myself promised I would. 

Brave seems like a dumb word for this whole thing, but I’m keeping it in. My husband has been encouraging me to just let the gray fly for a few years now, reminding me that it’s no secret that people get older. Hair dye can only do so much work, he says. But could he really understand why the gray-haired thing is such a hard thing for many women? His beard turns gray and the world calls it sexy and distinguished (and I agree).

My hair turns gray and the world wonders why I let myself go.  I mean, women have been taught to fight against showing our age so ferociously that multiple million (billion?) dollar industries are built upon the very concept. I’m 43 and I’ve had forehead wrinkles and laugh lines pretty much since birth because when I talk, laugh, cry, sleep or breath in this world, I use my entire face, but never in my entire life have I ever been so aware of my face. Want to prevent wrinkles? Stop existing. 

It’s exhausting. 

I mean, I have better things to worry about—family and land stewardship and community and creative endeavors that fuel me. And for every ten-thousand anti-wrinkle and anti-mom-pouch messages out there, there are like one hundred women screaming into the void telling us to just chill, you are more than your body. 

And they’re right. But I was a girl the 90s and what was done to us then is not so easily undone. What they’re doing to us these days? Oof. And I’m a woman now and, dang it, is it wrong to admit I want to feel beautiful in this world, while simultaneously worrying about more important things.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that what we’re being sold as beautiful these days is not only such a complete and utter fabrication, it’s missing the whole point. Glass smooth skin and thick hair to our butts and thighs that don’t touch, the chokehold it can have on someone like me, a grown woman who knows better, makes me terrified for our daughters. 

If you were to ask me what I think is beautiful in a woman, I wouldn’t name one of those things. If you were to ask me what I like about myself, none of those things would come up either, for better or for worse. 

But I’ve always liked my hair well enough, although the relationship has shifted as I’ve let the gray show. Now I’m on shaky ground…

Because one of the most stunning women I have ever known is my grandma Edie, with silver hair and thick thighs and a laugh that lit up an entire county. I knew her mostly in cattlewomen t-shirts and jeans, or in her gardening shorts. Sometimes she wore pink lipstick and she became a queen. 

I wonder what my daughters would say if I asked them about beautiful women…

Maybe what I’m trying to say here is that I don’t want them to live in a world where letting their hair just be their dang hair is considered brave. I want them to exist beautifully without placing such a heavy amount of weight on a laugh line or a tan line. That weight can be saved for what they carry in a community. The bravery should be saved for that very same thing too. 

And then their hair! Their hair! Their hair can just be their beautiful hair.