A year of staying just as I am

I was twelve the first time I dyed my hair. Cherry Red, which was quite a change from my mousy blonde hair. By the time I moved school a few weeks later, it had faded to an orangey hue which certainly made me noticeable as the ‘new girl’ {two and a half years later, when we were leaving school and friends were writing in my leavers book, most commented on how I had been the new girl with orange hair}.

In the twenty-six years since then, my hair has been almost every colour under the sun – only baring yellow and green I think. The green simply because I had a friend with green hair, and it was her ‘thing’ and she’d have fallen out with me if I’d have had green hair too.

It’s been normal colours, and rainbow colours, and combinations of the two. I stuck with pillar box red for quite a few years, until everyone in the world seemed to have the same colour hair so I stripped it out.

When Beastie was one, I went to a more natural-looking ‘do – darker roots, blonde ends. It stayed that way for over a year until I found myself in the middle of heartbreak. Trying to find something to make me feel again, I reached for the hair dye.

In the three and a bit years since then, my hair has been coloured and bleached, and coloured and bleached again. It always seems to come back to the blonde, it feels most ‘me’.

Yet still… there’s a part of me forever feeling the urge to change the colour. But I’ve realised that that urge comes when I’m feeling uncomfortable. When I’m feeling not enough. Or I’m feeling a little low or unloved.

When I feel like maybe I need to be somebody other than me…. My hair dying adventures are mostly centered in how I feel about myself and how I view myself. In the urge to run away and be somebody else completely.

So I’ve challenged myself to a year of no hair dying. A year of staying just as I am. I was going to blog this a couple of weeks ago, then didn’t. Then last night I found myself scrolling Instagram and stopping on a couple of photos thinking ‘oh! I need to try that colour’. But will a different colour change my life? Will it make me feel better about myself? Or feel more comfortable about what I see in the mirror?

Absolutely not.

And so it must be…. a year of no hair dyes. A year of being me and not trying to be someone else.

There is nothing wrong with dying your hair, and I think it’s fun to experiment and try different colours. Yet right now… I feel what I need is to work on self-love – and that’s self-love exactly as I am this very minute. Not self-love when I’ve made these changes/improvements.

Time to learn to just be me. To stand in my own power. To find myself and learn to love her ♥

{funnily enough… I went to find an old photo to put with this post, found this one and thought ‘oh I miss my red hair! Maybe I should go red again?’ haha!!!}