I would love to just know more about you. Tell me what you do and what a day in your life looks like.

First of all, thank you so much for inviting me and asking me to be a part of your Silver Sister community.

I didn't start out wanting to let my silver hair show. In fact, I was one of the many people who said I would never let anyone see my gray hair, just a few friends knew that I had it. 

I’ve been in the beauty industry for 21 years and a makeup artist that entire time. I went into hair at first, but I was a beauty school hair dropout and realized it wasn't my cup of tea, but then I transitioned into makeup, which I was obsessed with from the beginning. Once I picked up a brush, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I love working with the human face. I love working with women and people of all walks of life, all ages, all genders. It's been so much fun.

How long did you dye it?

I was probably dyeing my hair for almost 17 years, since I was 22. 

So obviously you work in a very image-conscious industry and I can totally relate to that. I always thought I'd never go gray. But you had this moment with your sister that really compelled you to look at things again. How did you go about it while being a makeup artist? 

That's a good question. Interestingly enough, I did it six months before covid hit in March 2020. That's when everything shut down at least in the United States. I was already in the process of letting it show and growing it out, but I had bleached it in 2019, so it was kind of like a reddish brown and when I couldn’t stand the bleach anymore, I just cut it. I went short.

The bleach was an intentional part of your transition process?

Yeah, I couldn't do the ‘gradually letting it show.’ I know many Silver Sisters have done that where they just let it grow out… but I was too insecure to do that personally. I’m not saying that somebody who doesn't do that is insecure, but I didn't feel comfortable letting it show gradually. I didn't notice all of the women online because this was the very beginning just before covid hit and there were just maybe two or three silver-haired influencers like Luisa Dunn letting their gray show and I just didn't feel connected with them. 

I feel like Luisa is also one of the first Silver Sisters that I ever noticed. She was at the forefront but I didn't notice that many more, and now it seems like there's an explosion of us, which is really great to see. How long did the whole thing take from the moment you started until your hair grew out?

It's tricky because I cut it a few times, so I would say, overall two years. If I would’ve grown it out gradually, it might have been more like three. 

When it was done, was your hair a curly, wavy texture? I feel like a lot of women discover that they have wavy hair as they go through the whole grow-out process.

Yeah, that's an interesting question because I did notice that some people say their curl changes when they stop coloring their hair and mine stayed the same. In fact, if anything I felt like my curls worked better when I stopped dying it. I could see more of the shape happening. 

I have to ask this question because as someone who is actually a professional makeup artist, what did you change up? Did you notice that you had to go to different colors or palette?

I didn't really notice a change in the colors that I used, because I'm just a makeup junkie per se all across the board. So if I see a palette or a color I like, I buy it. I will get my hands on it and play with it. So I didn't really change that. The one thing that I did feel like I needed to kind of up a little bit was my lipstick color because I would wear reds and pinks a lot, but now that I have silver hair, I can wear oranges and orangey-reds. I still want to wear the brighter colors. I've never been a nude girl and I just don't think I would ever be a nude lip girl. 

Do you find that you get approached more by women with silver hair to do makeup when you're in-store? 

Yes, I just get approached more in general across the board because people think that I dyed my hair this way. They literally are like, “I was gonna ask you, where'd you get your hair done” or “What made you want to change your hair and dye it this color?” I’m like, “This is natural.”

You had a very compelling reason to go through this change, but as you were doing it, did you have any emotions about the process?

Yeah, lots of emotions. I feel like it's more than just the hair, which is what we love to talk about in the Silver Sister community. It's funny when I meet people in person who aren't part of the Silver Sister community, they'll ask what it is, and I tell them we talk about what it means to let our gray hair show and how we feel about ourselves, and I can tell that they're very intrigued because they've never really thought of it that way or thought of a community that could support it.

I felt like I was already going through so much personally and there was a lot going on in my life, I was about to turn 40. I was kind of feeling a little down and out with certain things in my life, wanting things to be different that weren't, feeling like what have I done with my life. I'm going through these changes and yet I don't feel like I want to stay the same, so I kind of felt the hair was a part of that journey. I felt the change happening internally and emotionally, which was reflected on the outside with no longer dyeing my hair. 

And I’d get comments about why I was doing that to my hair, but If people said mean things I would just laugh about it. It's just been such an incredible inner journey for me. I feel like I do want other people to understand that this is not just like a fad. It's more of a real-life experience of learning to love yourself unconditionally no matter what.

I can relate to a lot of what you're saying, because we both work in the beauty industry, so obviously we are women who care about how we present ourselves.

Especially in the beauty industry, as it's this dirty thing that needs to be completely hidden or it's a dark secret that no one should know. You should not let your silver hair show until a certain age.

It would have been such a different experience to go through it knowing there's a community. I didn't really know about the silver sisters either. I didn't know there was this hashtag that everyone used, and at first, I didn’t want to call myself a Silver Sister, but now I’m like, yes, I’m a Silver Sister.

When I saw so many women on social after I went through the transition, there was a part of me that was a little bummed because I wish I would have found them while I was going through it. I was so ashamed when I was letting my gray hair show. There was a lot of shame around it, and I did feel bad, so I didn't tell people. I just kind of wore my hair under hats, trying to hide it as best I could. But there were so many women on social saying, I'm not going to be ashamed of this, this is my hair.

Probably the biggest surprise was the amount of people that are supportive of this process especially on social, because I was not a big social person before. I never did videos before covid. It was, this is me at the mall getting a new handbag. I would just upload photos of my trip or something like that. It was very random what I was putting on Instagram and then when covid happened and I had no longer dyed my hair, I realized I could actually say something important or I could actually talk about things that matter to me. That's what I see my friends doing. That’s what I feel like my biggest surprise was, wow, there's a whole group of us. The Silver Sister community is very special and unique.