I always said that when I turned 65, I would stop coloring my hair and let myself go grey. Well, I turned 65 this past July and I did, indeed, stop coloring my hair and let it go grey. However, at the time I was laid up and working on recuperating from the injuries I suffered in June. My hair was the very last item on my list of things to concern myself with. Then it was October and I was all involved with the move to my new home. Before I even had time to turn around, it was the holiday season and I was swallowed up in that. So imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror at the beginning of January and saw this old, grey, washed-out looking woman who not only had not colored her hair in 6 months, but who hadn't had a hair cut in that long either. Somewhere along the way I lost tract of exactly who I was and how I felt about how she looked, not to the world, but to herself.
It came to me that it was time to stop referring to myself as the woman still trying to "recuperate," and start moving beyond that. Looking at my reflection in the mirror I understood that my decision to go grey had something to do with embracing my age except that now, 6 months later, I wanted to redefine exactly what that meant. At that moment all I knew was that I wanted some color in my life, not only in my hair, but in my life in general. So off to the hairdresser I went. My, but she cut off enough hair to stuff a small teddy bear. By the time I was ready to lay my head on the pillow that night, I finally looked, and felt, like me, truly me.
Sometimes going with the flow isn't always the best idea for you on a personal level if the flow isn't going in the direction you want to go but think you should. In fact, I agree with Louise Hay who says that the word "should" needs to be dropped from our vocabulary because it always makes somebody wrong. The more I thought about things, the more I realized that I don't live in a black or white world, or even a grey world. I live in a world full of vibrant color and I want my life to reflect that. That even extended to the plans for my new garden this spring. I tore up the original plans and, instead, starting looking up pictures of gardens that exploded with color. Surrounding myself with color is an act of self love because it speaks to who I really am ... love.
Like the old song says, "color my world with love." And so it is.
