uncover your grey

Updated 2023 & 2026

Lockdown did something strange to all of us. It stripped away the noise, the errands, the excuses, the endless motion we used to mistake for meaning. Suddenly we were home with ourselves — our thoughts, our fears, our roots, our regrowth, our unvarnished faces. And in that stillness, a question rose:

Is now the time to uncover your grey? Or anything else you’ve been hiding?

When life is uncertain, we cling to what we can control. But when everything stops, we’re forced to look at what actually matters. For me, that meant finally sitting down to write again — and asking myself the same questions I’ve been asking women for years.

I’ve always said ageing is a privilege, not a right. At 57, I look around at the people I’ve lost, and I feel that truth in my bones. So why do we fear the very thing so many never get to experience?

Why do we hide the signs of a life lived? Why do we worship “anti‑ageing” anything? Why do advertisers still pretend older women don’t exist?

Even now, so many women tell me they feel invisible. And I want to shake the world by the shoulders. Why aren’t we celebrating age? Why aren’t we showing it? Why aren’t we allowed to be seen?

Lockdown peeled back the façade. No hair appointments. No waxing. No nails. No camouflage.

Just us — unfiltered, unedited, unretouched.

Grey roots everywhere. Bush back in fashion. Leg hair long enough to plait. Faces that actually move.

And honestly? It was liberating.

Not “letting yourself go” — that’s a patriarchal phrase designed to shame women into maintenance. I’m talking about letting yourself be. Letting yourself breathe. Letting yourself exist without the constant upkeep we’ve been conditioned to believe is essential.

This pause forced us to ask: What’s worth worrying about? What’s worth keeping? What’s worth shedding? Who am I now? Who did I once dream I could be? And how do I get back to her?

I asked myself those questions too. If you’d asked me in early 2020 whether I was happy, I would’ve said yes. But lockdown cracked something open. I realised I didn’t want to live in Melbourne anymore. I wanted community, nature, family, meaning. I wanted authenticity — not performance. I wanted to stop talking about reinvention and actually do it.

So I did.

UPDATE — MAY 2023

I wrote this in April 2020.By June, I had packed up my life and moved back to Tasmania. Three years on, it remains the best decision I’ve ever made.

I found home. I found purpose. I found clarity. I'm finding myself.

UPDATE — APRIL 2026

I'm now 63 and looking back at the woman I was in lockdown feels like reading a letter from a past life.

In April 2020, I wrote this piece from my Melbourne apartment, staring down a world that had stopped. I didn’t know then that the questions I asked myself — about authenticity, ageing, purpose, and belonging — would become the fault lines that cracked my life open.

I didn’t know I would pack up everything and move back to Tasmania. I didn’t know I would become a full‑time carer, advocate, student, creator, and chronicler. I didn’t know I would rebuild my life from the ground up — community, family, work, identity. I didn’t know I would outgrow the industry that once defined me. I didn’t know I would become the woman I kept trying to be online.

But I did.

The woman who wrote this in 2020 was hopeful, restless, and quietly afraid. The woman writing this in 2026 is clear, grounded, and unafraid of her own becoming.

If lockdown forced us to uncover our grey, the years that followed forced me to uncover myself.

And I’m grateful for every inch of it.