I know you were in real estate right for your entire career. 

Tell me about when you went gray and how that happened. 

So during covid, in 2020, I turned 70. I was working right up to that point. Then I was on lockdown. I was really tired, like everybody else, of going to the salon every three weeks because when you have this much gray, it's showing. I got tired of it and then I'm like, “Oh my God, this is perfect. I'm home. I can’t go out. I'm just going to stop dying it.” Thank God, because it was hard enough anyway. But if I had to do it and be out, I don't know.

Now, let me give you a little back story. My mom was in fashion. I went to school for fashion. I never followed up in it. I ended up in two different long, sales-type careers. I've always been about image, the way you look from top to bottom.

I overdo it because it's a very important piece of who I am. When your hair is growing out, and your image is messed up, you're tripping because you don't look put together or the way you've always wanted to look. The first six months were easy because I was here, in the house. But then when I could go out, and we get that “skunk” thing. My friends hated me. My friends are like your age, or in their 50s. They're much younger. They don't even get it.

They're like, "Shut up, just get over it." I'm like, "I can't." I went to my friend who's a hairdresser and said, "Take this top section right here, strip it, and make it gray." I didn't want to do that to the whole head, but I said to her, "Just do the top to help me with that skunk." She had never seen anything like it. The hair, it disintegrated. It turned into this piece of jelly, and it just broke.

I had long hair. I went to her, then all these pieces ended up with all this breakage, all this wiring, and then it was a little yellow. It was a mess.

Wait, when your friends were saying, "Get over it," were they saying get over the fact that it's gray or get over the fact of not wanting to dye your hair?

Get over yourself. It was more, "We don't want to hear about it. You're doing it. Just shut up, and do it." But until you walk a mile in my shoes, you don't know how difficult that is, because they were not gray. They were not going gray. They were younger. They don't care as much about their appearance as I do. They couldn't identify with what this image was doing to me emotionally.

One, I was appalled at the way I was looking. Two, I had to really address the fact that, because I associate silver hair with old age, "Oh, my God, I'm really 70." Because I feel like I'm 12. Then I had to say, "Oh, Jesus, you really are this old." I had to accept my age.

Now, that isn't going to be the same for younger women going gray, but then there's the acknowledgement of you really are how old you are. Because we have that age-old concept of silver hair is the old lady.

Then I had two friends. One started calling me “Nana”, and another friend said to me, "Oh, you look like an old Italian grandmother." I wasn't getting any support. I reached out to the Silver Sisters on Instagram, and on Facebook, Silver Revolution. Then I started down that journey. What hair products do I use? How do I care for my hair? How do I deal with this grow out? How long is it going to take? What's the emotional struggle of going gray, and accepting that it's okay?

Tell me more about that because I feel like real estate is a pretty image-conscious industry. I also feel like you are unusual, because a lot of women your age are severely resistant to the idea of silver hair. Tell me, how did you get over all of that?

I didn't really get over it, but this is deeper. I don't want to go too deep, but it's important because I was always very confident in my workplace, in my business, but everybody has had their struggles in life.

I always used to care a lot about what people thought, because my mother was in fashion, and I was always like, "You got to look perfect." I was a little insecure.

When I let the hair go, I had to learn to embrace the confidence that comes from within, and not the confidence that you get from an appearance or an image. There was a second component of growth which was, the image, and all that, because true confidence comes from in here.

That made me more comfortable in my own skin. Once you get comfortable in your own skin, and you believe in what you're doing, then you don't care as much. I'd go to the office, and people would be like, "What are you doing?" "I'm going gray." They're like, "Oh, God, I could never do that." I'm like, "I'm doing it. I'm doing it." I think they enjoyed watching me go through it. Then when it was almost done, they're like, "Wow, your hair's fabulous."

And it is. It really is.

So that silver-hair journey really forced me to tap into some emotional growth in learning to be more comfortable with the person that I am, rather than the image that I am.

That is such a big part of the silver hair journey. You think you're just going to grow out your hair because you're sick of the dye, and then this whole other thing happens. I relate to you. I have always worked in beauty and I thought about going into fashion as well. It's just so interesting. You go through this, and I think you and I, we both still obviously care about our external image. Obviously that will never go away, but there's something else, as you said beautifully, there's that inner confidence that you develop.

The interesting thing is that it's prompted a lot more engagement with random strangers. People stop and talk to you. "How long are you doing this? Why are you doing it? How long did it take you? It's beautiful." Then you start to engage. I think you tell strangers more things than you ever tell the people in your life. 

Then people start talking their truths about, "Oh, I could never do that. Oh, my husband would never let me do that. I don't know why I'm afraid I'd look old."

It gets you into a deeper level of connecting with people because they're going in, like, "Why are you doing that?" That's number one. And people have asked me throughout this year and a half, "How are you so confident? Where did you get your confidence?" I'm going to tell you, part of it came from the gray hair.

When I go back and look at pictures of myself with dark hair and with lighter hair; I look at pictures of you and some of the other women with dark hair and lighter hair; we all look way better with silver hair.

Exactly. That's the irony.

I don't look older. Now that it's over, my friends have said to me, "The best thing you ever did was let your hair go gray." Because I'm dark skinned, I'm Italian. Dark hair gave a hard look. Gray hair softens you. It makes you more approachable.

Yeah, it gives you a light, I think, luminosity. So you were telling me that you went to your hairdresser, it sounds like she had not really blended out someone before, so it ended up ruining your hair.

She had never worked on my hair before. I didn't go to my normal hairdresser. I went to my friend who was a hairdresser. My normal hairdresser probably would've said, "I could have told you that was going to happen to your hair."

Then I had to get my hair cut and shaped. They took a little bit off the bottom, because now I had layers. Then I had to let the layers grow. I went through a year of even more hell because of the breakage.

So it took a year to grow it out from the time you had the blend attempt done.

Yeah, but my whole grow out really took three years. Because my hair's like yours, it's long. I refused to cut it and I refused to color it. If you cut it, you can get there faster.

Any advice for women who are going gray but want to learn from your journey?

One, don't cut it. 

Two, they could try a wig. 

Three, I did buy silver hair extensions, and rolled them into the back of my head to help diminish the intensity of brown at the end. 

Then it looked more like a foil… I went through a whole hair extension period where I was putting those in to cut down on the difference of the grow.

You're all about protecting the natural silver hair.

Right. Protecting natural silver hair, doing whatever you can to get you through the process. The healthiest way is probably to cut it, and let it grow, but we long-hair people don't want to cut it. Then the last piece of advice is you have to keep your haircut styled. You can't just let it go hippy style. You have to make sure that it is cut professionally, styled. It's going to be hard enough to let it grow, let alone to let it grow in an unkept way.

Last questions, your biggest fear and your biggest surprise.

The biggest fear was how I was going to deal with myself. It wasn't so much about what other people were thinking of me. It was what I was thinking of me. That it forced me into facing my age. Being fearful that it was going to make me look older. Was I ready for that? That was my biggest fear. The biggest surprise is how fantastic it is, and how much better I feel. I was also really surprised at the reaction from other people, that it was so positive.