Gray Hair

I remember my first gray hair.

I was 20.

I am not sure how I noticed it, probably while agonizing over my pimple covered face and telling myself at least my hair was sexy, and then looking up in the part at the front and seeing it.

My first thought was not, 'oh shit, wtf is that?'

My first thought was, 'Huh, that is a gray hair. Wow, that was unexpected.'

I pulled on it for a while to see if it was really attached.

It had a different texture to it, more spindly and wiry.

Still, the rest of my hair was very much wild, unruly and unkempt and so I thought, I want to keep this little gray hair. It has some significance to it somehow. I don't know what significance, but this is some sort of turning point or inflection point in my life.

I have a gray hair!

And I was proud (maybe after I convinced myself that it was a sign of the changing tides of life.)

That night, I was hanging out with a friend.

She was younger than me by a year or two, she must have been 18 at the time.

We were classmates in Vermont, taking acting, having a blast being silly and goofy and fun, and so we were pretty close.

So, I told her about my gray hair, pointing it out and saying, 'look look, I earned my first gray hair!'

She got really still, looking intently at my forehead, and then plucked the gray hair out of my head and proudly presented it to me.

"There!" She said, all better.

I was in shock.

"What did you do?" I asked her in alarm.

"I thought you wanted it gone," she said simply.

"That was my gray hair! I wanted to keep it!" I said, raising my voice slightly in annoyance.

She raised her eyebrows in confusion, "Why?"

"I earned that thing!"

She shook her head and apologized.

How is a 20 something supposed to tell a 19 something that that gray hair meant a lot?

I dropped the topic and laughed.

"Well, I'll eventually get more so I guess I'm not too worried about it!"

We went to rehearse our piece of Romeo and Juliet.

So that was my first gray hair. 16 years later, 2 children, traumatic life experiences, 2 major health issues, 5 major moves, 10 jobs, 3 degrees, 2 dogs, a cat, and a bird later, my hair was pretty tinseled with gray.

I looked in the mirror less at the pimples and more at the wrinkles, (small ones!) starting to form and the gray hair starting to become more prevalent. Actually, more and more I saw poking up! It's like, there weren't that many, and then the next thing I knew, there were a lot!

Shiznit, I look like Christmas tree over here!

Ok, I had my excuses! Also, I was getting older, what did I expect?

My mother does not have any gray, but my dad went gray at 25. Maybe it was just genetic, I am predisposed to be completely gray in my 40's!

Or maybe, its the stress.

The children! Being a mom is the best and worst thing in the world. But, whichever it is in the moment, it is very stressful.

"You see all this gray hair?" The parents yell to their kids. "Every strand is caused by you talking back, yelling at your sister, and not listening when I politely ask you to clean your room or do your homework."

So, maybe that was it. Just the natural reaction to having children and being a mom.

Or maybe, just maybe, the gray hair is an indicator of something more sinister.

I had been dealing with stress for a long time. I knew that I do not handle stress well.

I keep it bottled until I either squash it down and repress it to a single point, or I let it bubble over (rarely).

How is a person, a woman, a mother, supposed to hold down a job (and try to get a promotion?), pick up/drop off her kids, make them food, make sure that they are happy, take them to ballet and orchestra and piano and birthday parties and the store and go grocery shopping and pay all the bills on time and take care of the pets and clean the house and be a good wife?

When does she have time for her?

The one good thing about commuting is you can listen to audio books. It's the only good thing about commuting. More books.

One notable book I read was The Telomere Effect, because I like to read fun popular science books on health. If you haven't read it, telomeres are repeating patterns on the ends of DNA molecules - the book likens them to the ends of shoe laces. They enable to the DNA to be copied correctly with some margin for error. Oxidative stress can cause those telomeres to shorten and increase the risk for mutations when the cell reproduces.

When I google 'Oxidative stress' most of it comes up at just an imbalance between free-radicals and antioxidants in your body. Basically, Oxygen running around bumping into all the stuff we don't want it to - causing damage - and antioxidants that are there to neutralize those oxygens. The websites that I read talk about diet, environmental factors, and existing disease as risk factors.

But the book points out that prolonged negative thinking can have the same effect. Basically negative thinking can also cause oxidative stress. Therefore negative thinking that manifests as oxidative stress can cause all sorts of health problems BUT it can also cause gray hair. Remove/manage stress and some hair *could* go back to normal.

This was very vane of me. The oxidative stress that I may be inducing on my body and all I am worried about is gray hair?

But, maybe I could try and make my hair go back to normal and that would be an indicator that the whole system was overall in better health.

This was an intriguing idea. Gray hair go back to normal? Could it be possible? Maybe all my gray was not due to just genetics or natural stresses from motherhood. Maybe, it was truly this oxidative stress phenomenon that was damaging me from the inside out, was damaging my DNA?

This idea stuck with my a long time. It got me thinking of my life, and lamenting about how this is not the way people are supposed to live.

This is the situation I was in at 36.

Completely run down.

But I can't admit that! No, I must be strong and do everything.

If I ask for help I am weak.

And so, instead I would have weekends where I couldn't move instead. And on Sunday nights, I would get moody and depressed and could not focus.

The grind was literally killing me!

I had to really have a mini-mental breakdown before someone would say, you know Sarah you should just take the day off. When I blew up at a kid for something, my husband would raise an eyebrow and tell the kid swiftly to leave mommy alone, she is not doing well.

'She is stressed.'

Work has a program for stress management.

Like, its the person's fault that they don't know how to manage stress well enough.

It's like the government telling everyone they need to recycle their water bottles and not drive as much, instead of acknowledging the system is fundamentally flawed and that corporations that pollute are somehow innocent because we, the consumer, bought the stuff.

Am I trying to do too much? Am I putting too much stress on my kids and family? Do I have to high standards for myself and my future? All I want is to live my dream life! What's wrong with that?

So, finally, I made some changes. Convinced my husband that I needed my mom, and that we needed to move. California was too expensive and too stressful. How could we expect to live a dream life if we were just slowly getting swallowed up by the machine?

So we moved to Texas.

We both got new jobs.

The stress lessened. My mom was there. I was getting help! I was greatly relieved.

I checked my hair for signs of the brown transition on the gray hair, when the Telomere Effect book was still greatly on my mind and the DNA destruction that I had wracked on my body would show signs of healing. But I did not. After a while, the idea wore off and my enthusiasm and faith in the gray hairs ever going away faded.

But a year in, I was still extremely irritable and depressed. Not feeling like I was doing enough for myself, my own passions, my own interests.

Still, I felt like a domestic slave.

And then, something happened.

Society shut down.

They told us the schools were closing.

All after school activities were closing.

Work from home for a few weeks.

Do not go anywhere unless you absolutely have to.

And then, suddenly, true relief hit me.

The initial relief at least.

The morning chaos was now quiet. The rushing everywhere. The stress... slowly started to melt away.

Of course, the stress of getting sick was there.

And worrying about my children getting sick. Was there of course it was.

But as we sheltered in place for a small while, I felt myself, a small piece of myself, untense.

I had been searching for a remote job forever. Well, for the last 4 years anyway. Why? Because I knew I couldn't do it all with that added commute and the lack of flexibility. I needed more flexibility in my schedule, and it had been a back burner project. Get a remote job.

And now, it came to me.

At least, a temporary relief.

So we hunkered down, we did everything we were supposed to do. We wore masks, the kids were home most of the time. We went camping!

I planted a garden, started making soap regularly, and learned how to make wine, and even started writing again.

Now I rarely looked in the mirror, because why?

I didn't need make-up, I didn't need to make sure my hair was decent, I didn't need to make sure I looked decent at all!

It was amazing. The freedom I felt of not having to go to the office everyday was just something I hadn't experienced in a long time. Like, before children long time.

11 or 12 months later, as I was combing my hands through my hair, I pulled out some hairs (a habit I now get to do because of working from home). Yes, the shedding is real when you have long hair. Little stubbly gray hairs would come out along with the long normal brown curls.

But then, I saw something I hadn't noticed before.

A single brown strand with a gray wiry tip.

This was odd. I checked to see if the root was the brown side or the gray side. If it was the gray side, it would have been evidence of a hair that was 'young' going to 'old'.

But it wasn't! I was the other way around. I double, triple checked it. No, the root was decidedly on the side of the brown.

Ok, how long is it?

How fast does hair grow? Is this an anomaly?

Google of course told me that hair grows at about 1/2 inch per month on average. And this hair's brown length was approx. 7 inches, with the gray wiry side because about 2-3 inches.

I quickly did the math and tried to figure out if anything had happened 14 months ago.

I thought at first it was the move closer to my mom because that had melted some stress away.

But the math didn't add up. That was over 2 years ago, and even though it could have been that long, I felt like my hair did not grow half as fast as a normal person.

The pandemic hit 12 months ago Sarah. You started working from home 12 months ago and your stress level is orders of magnitude lower now.

I decided to look for more evidence besides just one stray hair.

I waited. I looked.

More hairs came out.

Long luxurious brown ones with tips of wiry gray silver.

Ok, this is not a fluke. This is actually a thing. My hair is going back to brown. I am finally finally reducing my stress enough to get some of my locks back.

It has now been 21 months

And I am still finding those hairs.

I am also finding evidence of shorter ones, as I look through my head.

This is not a fade to gray moment.

This is an OMG, there is physical evidence that my DNA is healing itself. I am healing it.

Healing is a process.

Sometimes a long-drawn out process.

I wanted to see immediate results when I moved the family from California to Texas, but I didn't. And then lost heart. My theory had been sort of disproven through my own haphazard observations.

And then, It basically took an act of God (or the Devil?) to shut society down enough for everyone to catch their breath.

I am a lucky one I know. Many people suffered during the pandemic and still suffer. Many people have crappy jobs. Many people have jobs that, now that people are working from home and the bosses can't spy on your directly, they spy by putting cameras on you and checking your keystrokes.

That is insane!

That would be more stressful than being at work!

But I am lucky. I do my work, I do a good job, and I am able to manage everything better now. I am managing stress better now. But I also have less stress to manage, because I do not have to manage my appearance, be judged every moment on my professionalism on the way I look or present myself. I am more judged for my contributions, my insights, my information, and analysis.

I am lucky.

How can we create a better world where more people can take advantage of the benefits of greater flexility at work? Of not just those silly work programs that say, your life is insane and we want you to be tiptop shape so that our insurance goes down and your productivity goes up but we also want you to be there so that we can spy on you!

Society has to change. Work has to change.

I think it has, slowly. I hope more people experienced what I did. I hope that we come out of this as a better, more gentle (less brutal) society.

I hope it continues to allow me to be a better mother and daughter and wife.

Oxidative stress is real. Let's reduce as much as we can, improve our health, improve our lives, and our future.

Yes, I earned my first gray hair when I was 20. I still remember my friend plucking out that hair. I think a lot of people pluck their gray hairs out because they are unsightly and remind them of the unrelenting tick of the clock.

But I am not plucking out my gray hairs. I'm watching them as I turn back the clock one day at a time.