50 shades of grey - why I'm loving the new trend in hair colour

Grey hair is a huge trend right now. Everyone from catwalk models to style mavens in their 20s seems to be rocking every shade of grey. And it makes me happy. Why? Because although I currently I dye my greying roots, too afraid to let my hair become flecked with white just yet, when I get older I want to confidently claim my grey hair and not allow it to define me in terms of age.

The science part
We get grey hair when an enzyme called catalase stops taking oxygen out of the melanin pigment (which is, in fact, white to begin with). As we age, or become regularly stressed or suffer a sudden shock, our bodies produce less catalase, therefore our hair remains white. But that's the science part. Culturally, grey hair is associated with age and going 'down hill' but this is all changing as the population lives longer and stays healthier. Women want to and quite rightly can stay fashionable and beautiful indefinitely - grey or not. 

At the hair dressers the other day, having a few inches chopped off for Autumn, I read the Schwarzkopf Essential Looks magazine (above and below) and was encouraged to see almost all of it  devoted to their new Age of Beauty collection,  about maintaining style and sass well into your sixties and beyond. The grey haired models features were beautiful, one of them, Tanya Drouginska (below) still walking the catwalks and looking every inch the glamour puss – and with an air of Jerry Hall about her, I felt, with her high forehead and prominent features.

Model Tanya Drouginska in the Schwarzkopf Essential Looks magazine

Feeling more powerful and self-assured
According to stats in the magazine, more than half of the beauty spend in this country is by women over 40. What's more, most of the women surveyed said they felt more empowered and less stressed in their 50s than they did in their 20s. I can fully believe this, as I was often inordinately stressed in my early-to-mid 20s trying to forge ahead into a career (on a typically low wage), worrying about getting onto the property ladder, and wondering whether my love life would ever work out. Although I do still find things to worry about unnecessarily, over the past few years I have definitely begun to feel more confident, self-assured about my skills, and less worried about what other people think - well, most of the time!  

From celebs to beauty journos
Watching Oprah's Super Soul Sunday last weekend with Ali McGraw from Love Affair fame made me realise you can actually look better with grey hair than if you dye it. She's now 75 and looked far more relaxed and radiant with her grey up do, plain white shirt and statement jewellery than the pictures they showed of her at 65 with dyed dark hair. She certainly sounded happier, more grounded and more in touch with her inner self now, thanks to the passing of the years.

Ali McGraw with her dark hair

Ali on Super Soul Sunday this year, aged 75

Caucasian skin fades with age, and so keeping the same dark hair colour only ends up looking harsh and, well, more aging, which is the reverse of what we want it to do. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a beauty journalist, who had decided at 50 to grow out her blond highlights and go fully grey. She said it was a big decision, especially as she'd spent most of her career working as a beauty director for the likes of Marie Claire and Easy Living magazines and had been surrounded by pictures of beautiful women and information about all manner of youth-boosting products. Going grey, she said, coincided with leaving her high-powered job and training to be a yoga instructor, part of which involved living in India for a while and connecting to her real self, not being associated with her surface looks.

A new paradigm shift? 
Perhaps embracing grey hair is a sign of defiance and self-control, no longer feeling we need to dye our hair to pretend to be younger, and be that girl we used to be. For decades the cultural message for women has been 'you are valued on your looks', and while that is still mostly the case, perhaps, slowly but surely, it is changing. Also, the definition of beauty is expanding, which is exciting to witness. So many more colours, ages, shapes and sizes are being embraced as beautiful. As the population naturally ages anyway, women need to learn to value themselves and embrace whatever stage they are at in life,  finding beauty at every age.
As for me, I hope I will embrace my grey hair one day. For now, I'm using the most natural dye I can, which doesn't sting my eyes, as some mass-market ones have done in the past, and contains as few harsh chemicals as possible (one by Tints of Nature, to be precise).
Grey hair might be having a fashion moment among teens and 20-somethings, who are doing it in a cool/ironic way, and it's bound to soon be replaced as soon as the next trend comes along. But, the positive thing to have come out of this has been to show women that grey hair can be bold, beautiful and striking. 

Why de-cluttering isn't always easy - but so necessary

In my last post I reflected upon reinvention and how sometimes you get the urge to clear out and start afresh. What with it now clearly being autumn, we can all take a leaf out of natures book and let go of old stuff that no longer serves us.

My first reminder of this came while reading the 'Declutter your life' feature in the current issue of Top Sante (October, on sale now @topsanteuk). More than just your usual 'how to throw things away' type of de-cluttering article, this one tells you what your possessions reveal about your personality, whether you're a hider, assurance seeker, nostalgia lover, ponderer, peacock or a house proud person. Unfortunately I fell into four of the categories: the hider, who has a tendency to create walls around them of books and magazines; the assurance seeker, who likes to display trophies and certificates of their achievements – not that I have many; a few journalist awards collecting dust, but I do have loads of certificates, not on display but squirreled away, covering everything from  vocational qualifications to decades old ballet certificates and school achievements. I was also a firm nostalgia lover, who has 'cases full of old knick-knacks, and dolls and teddies on the sofa' (thought in my case on the bed in the spare room) to remind me of 'happy and carefree times'; and lastly the ponderer, who has shelves full of diaries, old calendars, and photos galore, plus snippets of scrap paper with scribbled dreams and thoughts. This last one is me to a tee; I have dream diaries dating back about five years, private diaries from when I was 13 and up, which years later became digital documents when we all moved into the computer age, and about four identical green books containing the notes I took from all the talks at consecutive Hay House 'You Can Do It' conferences. I literally document every aspect of my life. The current diary is more of a health journal detailing my menstrual cycle, what I eat, and what my skin is doing ie the state of my eczema. But yet I can't bring myself to throw any of it away! I'm inspired by the likes of Danielle LaPorte, author of The Firestarter Sessions, who decided to burn all her old diaries, photos to start afresh, but I find it so hard.


Inheriting the hoarding gene... from Jean!
In this respect I take after my gran, Jean. She has always been a hoarder, keeping things 'just in case'. I suppose for her generation it made sense; the wartime years meant people had to make do and mend, and everything got recycled in some way. It was never really a problem, as my grandparents live in a pretty big house with plenty of space to store boxes of shoes, unused crockery, and 50 years' with of mementos and photos. But now this accumulation of stuff has come into focus as my gran may have to move. Sadly, my granddad has serious dementia and is in hospital, soon to go into a nursing home. This leaves my beloved gran rattling around alone in a huge house with a lifetime of memories, which she has begun whittling down because she may need to downsize.
So last weekend I went to help her. She'd mentioned her boxes of old photos that needed going through, and I love looking back at family gatherings, especially Christmases at my grandparents as they were so special (a true nostalgia-lover trait).
Culling the scenic shots of Welsh mountains, waterfalls and wildlife was the easy part, as they had no people in, but as soon as it got to pictures of the family, which was at least 70 percent of them, gran found it incredibly hard to let go. She kept apologising repeatedly for wanting to keep so many of them, and I saw her tear up on a few occasions when seeing pictures of granddad in his prime, though in a typically stoic, English fashion she held the emotions inside, kept calm and carried on.
She really couldn't find it in her to throw away photos of people she loved; it was as if she felt that throwing away a photo was akin to throwing the person out of her life.
By the time we'd finished, the mass of photos had only diminished a little bit, but it was a start. 

Parting with the past
So, as I was re-reading the de-clutter feature, after having helped my gran, I was particularly struck by this section: "The loss of a possession is processed in the same area of the brain as pain. In other words, we are as reluctant to lose items as we are to experience hurt."
Suddenly I had one of those light bulb moment. It occurred to me that perhaps hoarders, whatever they collect, are ultimately all motivated by a need to avoid pain, whether physical or emotional. Perhaps they feel afraid of being out of their comfort zone, making hard choices, or moving into new phases of life. My gran hasn't even got a passport so she readily admits she's not led an exciting life. Although I do have a passport and have traveled to many places, deep down I'm still a lot like my gran and feel a need for security, certainty and comfort. Most of my big life decisions have been made based on these subconscious needs, whether my fun-seeking ego liked it or not.
I'd like to hypothesise that most, perhaps all, people with hoarding tendencies are of a similar ilk: fearful of change, needing security and with a strong tendency to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses, as I do most of the time – a bad habit that stops me living fully in the present.
So, maybe the 'stuff' we accumulate is just an outer manifestation of our inner beliefs. Perhaps the more we attribute meaning and personal associations to our possessions, the more we suffer as a result if/when we lose or have to part with them. 
I have a friend who always throws an item out if she buys a new one, so her possessions don't get on top of her. I admire that control, as I'm more of a 'stuff it all in the wardrobe/drawers/boxes' kinda gal who always thinks items will 'come in handy/come back into fashion' one day. I even have a collection, just like my gran, of assorted ribbons, remnants of wrapping paper and sturdy paper store bags for future use.
I also have a folder bursting at the seems with ticket stubs from almost every concert, theatre show, festival, art exhibition and film I attended from my early 20s and up. And don't get me started on old magazines: Zest  from 1997 anyone? Every issue of Vogue from 1999, including the special silver millennial issue? Might keep hold of that though, could be worth a bob. But why the need to keep these things? Because one day I want to look back and remember what I did, I suppose.
The only problem is, doing so, as both my gran and I are discovering, can bring with it as much sadness/lamenting as it does happy memories. I used to love riffling through my mum's meticulously annotated, plastic laminated photo documenting my childhood. But these days it just seems to conjure up feelings of regret that a) I no longer look the way I used to, and b) that I didn't seize that youthfulness and make the most of all the possibilities and opportunities open to me.

Editing as we go?
So what's the solution? Perhaps editing our possessions each season so we keep only the functional things and just a few select photos and special mementos would not only make our lives more streamlined and portable, should we need to move, but also less heart-wrenching and instead more present focused.
Seeing my gran struggling emotionally to wade through not only photos but ornaments, old clothes and enough kitchen stuff to fill an entire car boot sale, makes me think we'd all be better off if we accumulated much less stuff. 'Traveling light', as they say, gives us more physical space but also mental and emotional freedom, too.
But, for a die-hard hoarder like me, this can be a painful exercise. I'm tempted to hire a professional to help me out. Holding on to the past only keeps us stuck there. Physical possessions can make us feel safe and secure for a while but ultimately, nothing lasts forever and everything changes.
Perhaps it's time to get ruthless and edit down my stuff. After all, proponents of the Law of Attraction say nature abhors a vaccum, so if you create space in your life, new things will arrive to replace them.
Nature doens't hold onto its dead leaves, does it?

My message from Madonna (well, sort of)

Just when I decide there are no such things as signs and synchronicity, or at least not to look so deeply into such supposed things for hidden meanings, the universe goes and surprises me.
Last weekend is a classic case in point. I’d been working on a book manuscript for someone – a spiritual tale of self-discovery, just my thing – and after two hours of typing I felt a bit achy in my shoulders and needed to move. I felt a strong urge to dance to Madonna’s Ray of Light album, specifically the Nothing Really Matters song.
I went upstairs to my small mezzanine space, about 2mx2m, where I keep my crystals, incense sticks, meditation cushions, spiritual books and inspirational art, including a red Tibetan scroll I brought back from Nepal on which is printed some sage advice from the Dalai Lama about finding inner peace. There’s also my really old Sony CD player (with a tape cassette player - that’s how old it is!) and a selection of self-development CDs by the likes of Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer (RIP), and Cheryl Richardson. Madonna is my all-time favourite pop icon, and so I put on the CD and enjoyed whirling, twirling, twisting and arabesque-ing as best I could in the confines of the small room.

When I dance I feel free
The Ray of Light album came out right around the time I was heading off to university to study media and English. I think Frozen was the first single released, followed by the album’s title track. But Nothing Really Matters came out during my second year, when I was in America doing on an exchange programme. We had a TV in the apartment which played MTV – what a luxury, having just five channels back home – and two of the videos that played endlessly and became part of my summer 1999 soundtrack were Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen Song and Nothing Really Matters. Both songs moved me in a way it’s hard to describe; they spoke to a deep part of me that was much older and wiser than my body’s 20 years. And even though I knew the lyrics from Madonna’s song were about her first child Lourdes, the musical arrangement struck deep within my soul, so that whenever it came on the TV or was played in a club, I felt compelled to dance. I loved nothing more than dancing with wild abandon around the vast, light-filled living room in our second-floor apartment of what was named ‘the brick house’ (next to the blue house and the yellow house), with huge windows overlooking the tree-filled courtyard of the University of South Carolina. Though I was young and supposedly at an age to be carefree, I so often felt trapped within a cage of ‘shoulds’: I should behave this way, I shouldn’t do that or my parents/friends/boyfriend/life in general won’t approve and won’t like me. I was easily swayed by personalities stronger and bigger than my own. And I didn’t value or even listen to my own intuition, which was and still is my biggest work in progress. So, dancing to Madonna, whose videos and songs had inspired me since the age of eight, gave me sense of freedom somehow. Freedom from who I was to the outside world and a small doorway into the person I could become.
As the track drew to a close, I laid down on the soft fluffy white rug and began thinking about how incredibly long ago those university days seemed: 16 to be precise. I thought about how Madonna had transformed and grown as a person from the Material Girl years to the Earth Mother phase of the Ray of Light era, coinciding with her first child. And I thought about how many times she underwent a transformation, and continues to do so, not least during the Reinvention Tour - my first live concert of hers, in fact of anyone!





Synchronicity or just weird coincidence?
By now the album was on track 8 - the one in which she sing a Sanskrit chant - and I propped myself up against the wall with my cushions, and grabbed the nearest book, Change Me Prayers, by Tosha Silver. Tosha is a former astrologer and very down to earth in her advice and way of living. Plus she also has a lot of the same planets as me in her birth chart so I feel like we have some similarities. I devoured her first book, Outrageous Openness, on holiday earlier this summer, and loved it so much I ordered the sequel straight away. It’s made up of very short stories, 1-3 pages long. I must have started it two months ago, as I was reading a few pages at a time. So, I could have been at any point in the book. Imagine my shock and surprise when I open it to see ‘Just like Madonna’ written at the top of the page! I swear I’d not looked ahead and seen what was coming, so I had no idea. What were the chances of this happening? I’ve been reading this book on and off for months; I could have got up to any page. How did I manage to be listening to Madonna AND open a book with her name at the top of the page? The book isn’t even about her.

Madonna on the page

Tosha Silver's advice to reinvent ourselves

What’s more, the story then pretty much echoed everything I’d just been contemplating. It was about people being able to transform themselves and their thoughts as they get older,and Tosha had used Madonna as the ultimate example of reinvention. Synchronicity or what? I had to smile. Was this the universe giving me a little nudge to say that I am connected to intuition after all? That if I just stop thinking so much, and start doing what feels natural, starting small, I’ll be better at navigating life? Well, this was my interpretation at least. Funny, too, how the book I’d been editing earlier that morning, when I’d felt the inspiration to dance, had also been about cycles, patterns, and how we’re all interconnected.

Maybe it's time for me to do a reinvention, just like Madonna. With the arrival of September I'm feeling the urge to have a massive clear out at home, overhaul my diet, which has once again become too sugary, and perhaps cut my hair. As they say, the only thing you can count upon to happen in life is change, whether you want it or not.

Why is it easier to believe the bad stuff?

Why is it, that it's often easier to be negative about ourselves than it is to be positive? Think about it for a moment; doesn't it come more easily to point out your faults, talk about what you're not good at or reject a compliment rather than than big yourself up, speak of your talents, or believe it when other people say nice things to you?
The reason I got to thinking about this was from a chat I had with my deputy editor a few weeks ago as I sat composing cover lines for the latest issue of Top Santé. You see, in the magazine world, especially that of women's magazines, there is a tendency to play on fears or desires when enticing customers to make a purchase of your product. By this I mean you will see lots of cover lines that either use scare tactics such as 'stop eating this ONE food right now to avoid getting ill! Or 'blitz cellulite tonight!' Which on the surface both probably sound okay but beneath them are the implications that there is some miraculous new way to eat that will prevent you from ever getting ill, or that your body is far from perfect but by following this advice you'll transform into a supermodel (by the way, even models don't look like models in real life. They too have spots, cellulite, broken veins and bits of flesh in places they'd rather they didn't. And I don't say this out of trying to denigrate models, but just to point out that away from the studio lights, the hair and make up artists work and a dose of Photoshopping, they look like normal people). But I digress, as is so often the case with me! 

Playing in to our fears?
Back to the subject at hand. My previous experience editing magazines led me to create the types of cover lines that make huge promises and play on fear to entice you into believing that the information inside could really change your life. But if you look at the world in general this is how marketing and advertising usually work anyway. Most advertising, whatever the format and whatever the product, will play on one of about 16 human drivers, such as acquisition power, status and bonding. Deep down we're driven by fear, or rather the drive to avoid fearful situations (if you don't get this product something bad will happen), the need to reproduce (this product will make you more attractive to the opposite sex), and the need to belong and feel part of a tribe (everyone else has or does this and look how popular they are, so you should do it or have it too).
Magazines, to an extent, use these fears and desires to sell themselves. They promise miracle diets, whole body transformations, advice on getting the perfect job or husband, and make want to be the woman on the cover (well, not always, it depends who it is!). 
Part of the reason it feels easier to write 'negative' fear/desire-based cover lines as opposed to more realistic, less 'miraculous' ones, is because this is the way I've been trained to think and it reflects our culture as a whole. It comes easily and more naturally to write something that taps into our fears or longings, because we're all so used to feeling bad about ourselves and believing we need something or need to change. 
Two of my close friends, one in her late 30s and the other in her early 40s, told me they stopped buying women's magazines years ago because they realised that despite the happy, empowering positivity these magazines supposedly represent, they as readers still ended up feeling worse about themselves and their lives by the end of consuming them. Is this because women's mags are really wolves in sheep's clothing? I could write a lot more about this topic as there's much to debate, but to save writing an entire book in one blog post I'll stick to my own mag for now.

Turning it around from negative to positive
When I first joined Top Santé I was writing the type of things that have usually been acceptable for a cover, along the lines of 'lose 5 pounds in a week!' 'Banish cellulite for ever!' 'Get a bikini body today!' 'Avoid this ONE food and never get fat!' (NOTE: for any journalists/editors reading this, those weren't actual cover lines I used, just exaggerated examples). It felt easy and natural to write them and didn't take long. 
So, it was a real culture change, but a welcomed one at that, to be instructed that ALL cover lines now had to be positive and make women feel good or optimistic about themselves and their health, and not play into what I call the 'Peter Kay 14 stone in a day!' fear-based tactics that have become so prevalent. (If you've not seen his comedy sketch take on a slimming club, do look it up on YouTube). 
The whole ethos of the magazine now is to celebrate living a naturally healthy life, not one that involves fad diets or impossible fitness routines, and to feel uplifted, inspired and motivated to make small baby steps towards improved health, rather than feeling by the end of reading it that your thighs are too big, you're getting old and wrinkly and you're definitely not part of the hip young fitness crowd. 

The women we've featured so far in the real life articles have all been inspirational, often overcoming physical limitations or inner beliefs about not being good enough, to prove to the world they are fantastic as they are and can follow their passions no matter what their body shape, whether that's through running, dancing, or ditching junk food. 
I'm excited to be part of this mini magazine revolution, as it were, to promote positive body image among women and talk about health, particularly getting older, in a positive way instead of playing to women's fears about ageing. But it does make my job hard when it comes to writing on the cover! Sadly, negativity is what people buy in to. It's what fuels the evening news and sells certain daily newspapers (I'm sure you can guess which ones). 
But I'm glad to be part of something new and with such positive intentions. The changes may only be small and at times a 'negative' word like 'avoid' may creep onto the cover – well, sometimes we just damn well DO need to avoid certain things, trans fats being a good example – but perhaps it's a small part of a larger revolution taking place, one in which women learn to love and appreciate their bodies and instead of focusing on what is wrong, celebrate what is right. Perhaps instead of buying into the whole culture of fear, worrying about losing our looks and dreading the future, we can embrace what we have been blessed with, and focus on maintaining health on the inside - for that ultimately a far more valuable and positive pursuit. 

Top Sante UK

My spiritual lesson from strawberries

I love how the smallest, simplest of things can remind us of life's most profound teachings. Today has got to be one of the hottest days of the year so far in the UK. My husband was out in the garden doing some weeding and alerted me to the fact that the neglected strawberry patch was looking rather fulsome. Neither of us are particularly into gardening – well, I would be, it's just I rarely have the time to do it. So, our garden most often resembles a wild meadow. Anything could be lurking in the long grass! 


The strawberry plants were put there by my father-in-law a couple of years ago, and the whole patch has become covered in bind weed, stinging nettles and all manner of other tall wild grasses – at least it was until hubby hacked them down just now. I thought the strawberries would probably have died off by now, but these little babies are hardier and more adaptable than I gave them credit for and have produced a bumper crop – all with no intervention! 

The overgrown strawberry patch AFTER it's been weeded (and still looking a mess!)

Not once all summer did I go out to weed or water. The plants have been left entirely to their own devices. And here is what I find miraculous: competing for space alongside all the weeds, the runners had to grow upwards instead of outwards to get their share of light, meaning the developing berries didn't touch the floor (hence no need for straw). The second benefit of being surrounded by overgrown weeds, was that the birds could get nowhere near them as they had nowhere to land. Only a couple have been nibbled by creepy crawlies. It's just taken me about 20 minutes to pick what must be a couple of kilos worth of juicy, ripe berries, and there are still more to come!

The plants are now flopping over, thanks to the removal of the stinging nettles 

Now, contrast this scenario with that of about eight years ago, when I had my own allotment. My mum, a keen gardener, would often come to help me out. We planted all manner of things, including a row of strawberry plants. But they took so much work and effort to look after. We weeded around them, surrounded them with straw to keep the berries from touching the ground, and had to fend off the birds. My dad ended up making a netted cage to protect them. And then there was the nightly watering during the summer. So much work went into maintaining that little patch and for very little yield – we'd get maybe a handful of strawberries all summer. 

And the point is? .....

I couldn't help but think to myself that perhaps life often works in the same way. When we intervene too much, or make too much effort, we often don't get the results we hope for. Conversely, when we leave things alone and let nature take its course, without any thought about our attachment to an outcome, we can end up pleasantly surprised.
Now, I'm not saying that in all cases we can sit back, do nothing, and expect results. Indeed, those strawberry plants had to have been planted there by someone in the first place for there to be such a bountiful supply now. So, sometimes we do need to plant seeds in order to reap the rewards later down the line. But it's so easy not to trust the process and interfere too much. I love Louise Hay's analogy of positive affirmations being like seeds. She talks about planting those seeds with love into fertile ground, tending to them carefully, and not interfering too much or getting impatient and digging up the soil saying 'where are you? why is nothing happening?!' She reminds us that all we have to do is plant our positive intention, then release our attachment to the outcome and let the magic happen. After all, nature knows exactly what to do. Those strawberry plants in my back yard got all the sustenance they needed from the ground, air, and rain. I didn't need to go meddling. And, they ended up growing bigger and more abundant than they ever would have had I started getting involved in the process.

I've experienced this very thing throughout my life: putting lots of effort or emotional energy into trying to create a particular outcome, only for that very thing or person to remain elusive. Conversely, when I haven't been so attached to a particular outcome, or haven't 'tried' so hard, things have come to me with much more ease. Deepak Chopra writes about this phenomena – the law of least effort – in his his book The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success. It's a good reminder that sometimes things don't have to be such hard work. 

So, what can you ease up on today? Are you striving and working too hard on something to 'make it happen'? If you've planted your seeds and are getting impatient for results, maybe it's time to take a leaf out of the strawberry patch's book, and let things grow how they want to, in their own right time. More and more I'm coming to realise that by trusting life, we allow ourselves to be directed to where we need to go, and bring the right people and opportunities our way.

Who would've thought there could be so much spiritual learning from simple strawberry patch?!
....And yes, I've just enjoyed a bowl of them, dressed simply with some organic double cream and a sprinkling of xylitol (it's low GI, actually good for your teeth and way better than table sugar, but that's a topic for a whole other blog!)

The first of two huge tubs. I'll be eating them for days! Who knew such abundance was right in my back yard?