The Glory of Grey: Embracing the Crone

“Have you thought about colouring your hair?”

This is the question that I get asked every time I get my hair cut. And, without fail, my heart sinks a little lower whenever I hear it.

I explain that I actually rather like my hair colour. That I think it sets me apart. That it’s a part of who I am and that it’s an external expression of my life’s journey.

Silence falls in our little corner of the salon.

A wee while later, I leave with my new swishy hairdo, and I do have a spring in my step. I feel beautiful. I took the time and money out to treat myself. I feel good.

However, something still nags a little at my self-esteem. The cultural conditioning that tells me that my greying hair is somehow essentially not beautiful plagues my new hairdo buzz. And I resent it for doing so.

Now, I’m incredibly fortunate that I have a partner who cherishes my natural beauty. When I tell him (after he compliments me on my new hairdo) that I’ve come up against the colouring question (again!), he is insulted on my behalf. And then he says something really interesting that I’ve been mulling over ever since…

I had mentioned that I felt like I’d taken a bit of a hit to my self-esteem, and he replied by saying that he thought my self-esteem was perfectly healthy. In fact, he proposed, perhaps it was more the case that women’s self-esteem has been systematically undermined, so that we now feel less feminine when we don’t take the steps to tame our natural beauty by dyeing, waxing, plucking etc. And that maybe, it’s those that refuse to comply with this narrow definition of beauty that have a stronger sense of self-esteem.

I think there’s something in that, and it’s something that I’ve had a lot of personal experience with…

I’ve been going grey since I was 13, you see. Slowly at first, but by the time I had my 3rd child when I was 22, the grey was becoming more and more noticeable. When I completed my phd at the age of 30, I had developed sections of hair that were pure white. 2 years on from that and it’s greyer still. But I’m ok with that. This is me. And it’s a reflection my growth as a woman.

And I wonder if this is what’s at the heart of the issue. We live in a culture where youth is venerated. Particularly for women. We are taught to aspire to remain as young in appearance as possible. Our hair should be free of grey. Our faces free of wrinkles. Our bodies free of sag or even hair.

Does this not sound like a cultural aesthetic which is built around the infantilization of femininity? Where do we make space for the crone in our culture? Why are we, as a collective, so scared to make her visible?

The crone is the female archetype that is accessible to us all, and she has great gifts to share with us if we choose to integrate her into our psyche. She is the wise woman, the woman who has lived, and loved, and learned. She is the sum of her experiences and she honours the path that she has travelled. She does not seek to return to a physical incarnation of pre-pubescence. She loves and accepts the skin that she lives in.

So yes, I have grey hair. And, before long, I expect I’ll have white hair. And yes, I don’t have the figure I did in my teens. My skin is not the skin of a woman in her twenties. My body is fundamentally altered by the carrying and birthing of three children.

I have lived, and loved, and learned. And I will continue to do so throughout the years that I have left in this world. But I will not disguise the physical traces of this journey upon my body, my skin, my face, my hair.

I carry this ever-present map of my crone aspect in all her glory in my heart, and I wear it on my body.