I grew up in the lands where the sun bleaches certain patches of grass yellow, the sand white and my hair light. Between equatorial Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the beach town of Holland, Michigan, I was sun-streaked for my whole childhood. 

So my sophomore year of college, when I tried getting my hair dyed for the first time, I had no inclinations other than “just add a bit of blonde.” 

We went red, but with some highlights. We tried a mixture of highlights and lowlights for a long time. I was blonder than I had ever been for my wedding, which—admittedly—was a bit of an accident. We went dark, but with bright strands in the front. I felt beautiful, but it also helped me to recognize that girl in the bathroom mirror. This was the girl I was in Ethiopia, and she can still be around in the United States, even when she’s married and lives in Grand Rapids. 

During my most recent visit, my hairstylist—and close friend—told me that doing my hair requires zero emotional work. She had laughed as she said it. Hair is a vulnerable thing, she said, and often I have to ask my clients if they’re okay when we make a change. But you, she said, you come in and we do something drastic, and you’re totally fine. It’s very easy. 

I had glowed with pride.

And then I told her that I wanted to try something new. I had been getting blonde in my hair since my sophomore year of college, I said, and the blonde from my wedding had grown out kinda funky, and I was sick of growing out highlights. (You know those patches you get at the top of your head? The dark spots where the blonde is grown out? Hate that.) So I asked her to match the shade of my roots—a dark brown—and dye my whole head. 

No highlights. 

We both giggled through it, as if we were getting away with something. Dyeing is a mysterious, sticky endeavor that makes your skin feel slimy and forces you to trust the process. And as a client? You can only hope and imagine that it turns out okay. 

My hair came out a dark brown. It was nearly purple, not quite black, but shades darker than what I thought I had asked for. But Serena had told me that I was an immovable object in her chair. So I smiled and let her take pictures, and thanked the front desk girl who told me it looked “SO good” as I paid.

The next morning, I woke up and stood in front of the tri-fold mirror in our tiny bathroom. Who was this girl? This girl who thought she was untouchable, who wanted to go back to her roots–but away from her roots–who was now suddenly unrecognizable to herself? 

Perhaps you think me dramatic. It is, after all, hair. Just dead cells that we can dye and chop to look different ways. It will grow out, and the color will fade, and I will most likely dye it again. 

But this is the color of my roots, though I had never seen it on my head before. And I stood in the mirror, trying to reconcile what my dear friend Serena was telling me with this color. “This is you,” she had offered to me. “This is who you are.” So why did I feel like I was wearing a wig?

I suppose there’s a metaphor here, for letting other people tell you who you are. For listening to other people as they try to explain to you who you should be. That’s what we tell one another, at the very least, on the internet? To be who you are, to not let anyone make you someone you’re not? Right?

I have been a brunette for a week (as of yesterday). It took me two days and one wash to convince myself that this was my hair. It took me four days (two washes) to try taking care of it in a way I could enjoy. It took me until Sunday (three washes) to wake up in the morning, to give it a slight curl, and to love it. 

And I do—I love it. I love it because this really is the color of the roots that grow out of my head. And while it’s not the color of the roots of my childhood, it is the color I see on my dad’s head in his high school photos. It’s the color I see on my grandparents in the pictures of their wedding. 

Maybe this is dramatic. Maybe I’m making too much out of dead cells. But maybe, also, we can help each other remember what parts of us have forgotten. Of course it’s uncomfortable. That sort of vulnerability is a mysterious, sticky endeavor that makes your skin feel slimy and forces you to trust the process. I will admit that I nearly cried this week. 

But Serena could see what I could not (that is, the top of my head). And I would venture to suggest that maybe, sometimes, we should allow those who are close to us—who can see what we cannot—to remind us who we are. 

And Serena, if you’re reading this: I’m not the immovable object in your chair that we thought I was. Unfortunately. Fortunately.

Kate Wilmot

Kate Wilmot (’24) is a Grand Rapids resident who has found herself in the in-betweens of undergrad and post-grad life. She is an avid children’s fiction reader and a globally-minded cook who will feed anyone that walks in her door. You can find her losing to her husband in pickleball, weight lifting, or getting coffee with her mom.