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I have been coloring my hair for most of my adult life. I started coloring it forever in June of 1990 and continued on sometimes doing it myself and other times going to a salon. After Rick retired in 2012 I told myself that I would embrace my natural grayness after my 40th high school reunion. I colored it one last time before my reunion and then went to my stylist for help going gray.

She really didn’t know what she was doing back then and neither did I. It was a painful process. I researched online and discovered that if I just let it grow and have it trimmed it would take 18 months to have a short gray bob (the hairstyle I was sporting). I decided that the faster way was to cut it off really short. It looked better, but was still whitish with some brown splotches. Like I said, it was painful.

In March of 2013 I was diagnosed with Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma and started chemotherapy. I was going to lose all my hair. The Tuesday after my first chemotherapy treatment it started to fall out. Each day I’d lose more and by Saturday I was ready for it to be gone. Rick shaved it off for me. Now while being bald was interesting it wasn’t nearly as hard as it was to go gray. Sometimes I think that if I’d known I was going to be bald I wouldn’t have gone through the painful process of going gray. In reality, I think the process of going gray made being bald easier.