About a year ago, I decided to stop dyeing and start living (so to speak).  Grey hairs had begun sprouting on my head when I was in my early twenties.  By the time my second daughter was born, I had a definite white streak through my black hair. I was Cruella De Ville.

My friends and family convinced me it was time to hide the grey.  I was 35 and at first it was fun picking out colors.  I’d always wanting to be a redhead, like those romance novel heroines … “her mahogany curls cascaded about her alabaster shoulders …, so I settled on Burnt Sienna. But after some years, a few wrinkles, and a lot of pounds, those ruddy curls had turned into freakish brown, orange, and yellow pieces of straw.  My white hair grew in so fast that I was coloring every other week.  I didn’t know what I was anymore.  One day I realized that, instead of a damsel from a paperback cover, I looked like an old woman with dyed hair like those old guys with really obvious toupees – I mean, who are we trying to kid, really?

When I turned 50, I decided it was enough.  No more coloring, no more burning my scalp, no more sitting alone in my bathroom for 45 minutes at a time in my stained “coloring robe” passing out from the fumes.

I walked into a neighborhood salon and asked for the next available appointment.  I had just ended a long-term relationship with Tino, my last hairdresser.  I’d grown tired of his negative gossip and bad moods.  Being a firm believer that there is no such thing as coincidence, I know now that the Universe led me to Jamie to fulfill my destiny.  Jamie, a gorgeous young woman, with bright orange hair, shaved up on the sides and curled on the top, with a pierced upper lip and eyebrow, and tattoos all over her shoulders and down her arms (not colored in, just outlines, like lace).  She is gorgeous in a sultry 1940’s movie star way.  She was dressed like a cross between a French maid and Cyndi Lauper and was the angel who would start me on my journey into the Third Act.

As she languidly ran her fingers through my hair, Jamie asked me what I wanted to do with my hair.  I told her I wanted to go grey.  She didn’t even bat an eye.  We devised a one-year plan.  To avoid the hideous skunkish white strip of roots, she began with discreet highlights.  As the months progressed, my hair began to be more blonde than brown.  The grey was allowed to peek out among the blonde stripes and soon, they were in the majority.  I was falling in love with the newborn grey and excited to see what they would look like alone, en masse, naked – unpolluted by the yellow usurpers.

After a little over a year, Jamie told me that it was time to decide:  I could cut off the remaining colored hair or go another round of blonde streaks.  I said “cut it off” like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.  To obliterate the dyed ends, the cut was very short indeed.  But when Jamie finished, I was a grey-haired woman.  I was a grey haired woman in my fifties.  I was a grey haired woman in my fifties with only a few years left to retirement.  I was a grey haired woman in my fifties with a daughter in college and another about to go into college.  I was … I am a grey haired woman entering a totally new phase in life and I don’t know if I am afraid, excited, sad, relieved or all of the above.

Passing through earlier phases in life, I was always caught by surprise.  When I moved from childhood into adolescence — I didn’t know where I was until I was just about drowning in hormones and drama and realized I was crying every day because merely I was a teenager.  There was no preparation for me, just a sudden fall off a cliff.  I passed into adulthood, marriage, and motherhood.  The changes always seemed to catch me off guard.  All of sudden, someone would say something like, “well, you know how it is being a mother” and then I would say to myself, “wow, I am a mother!” like as if I had just discovered America.  Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t as though I didn’t know I had given birth (who could overlook that event?), it’s that I had never applied the label “mother” to myself – never internalized the fact that I was a mother.  When I was first married it seemed so odd to apply the label “wife” to myself.  “Yes, this is Mrs. Smith …”, “Yes, this is his wife” … weird.  It took a while to really get used to – like catching up with reality.

I want to do it right this time around.  I want to embrace the change – be in charge of it.  I’d like to approach this “third act”, as Jane Fonda suggests (watch her TED speech on the subject http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHyR7p6_hn0), with grace, laughter, energy, and wisdom.  To succeed, however, I must begin with an honest version of myself.  Looking in the mirror I see a woman who has – not just grey hair – my hair is platinum.  I like this new hair and I am going to like this new me. So I began the Third Act with my hair – an outward symbol, perhaps, but one that is so important to all women – our vanity, our crowning glory.  I can be glorious with platinum hair.

I will share my journey with those who are interested and perhaps going through similar experiences.  It would be good to know that we are not alone in this trek.  In fact, this could prove to be the coolest, most mysterious, and even fulfilling part of our lives.  I would love to read thoughts and impressions from others who traveling along the same road.