If you are in the perimenopause/menopause boat with me, I think you might very much enjoy this book:
(screen shot from Amazon.com)
Sandwich, by Catherine Newman (Target link; Amazon link)
It is recognizably Catherine Newman and her husband and kids from her various non-fiction writings, but of course fictionalized to a tantalizingly unknown extent. There is a lot in it about perimenopause and menopause, and about the joys and difficulties of being the parent of adult children, and about dealing with aging parents. I thought it was funny and delightful and sad and good. I had been putting off reading it (because I can only read it for the first time once), and then my sister-in-law, who did not know I will pre-order anything by Catherine Newman, emailed me to say she had just read this book and had I read it because she had to talk to someone about it. We both loved it. I have been wondering about maybe buying it for every middle-aged woman I know? Is that too pushy?
Speaking of perimenopause, my hair is suddenly becoming a problem. Some of it is changing to be different than the rest of it, and the upshot is that the changed hair is “simultaneously coarse and weightless”—that’s a quote from the Catherine Newman book. It STANDS UP over the rest of my hair, so that if for example I wear a ponytail (all summer I wear a ponytail), there is a halo of frizz. I do not like it. I have tried my usual taming products left over from the years when I used to style my hair: I have mousse, gel, an anti-frizz silicon (?) product, assorted leave-in conditioners—but haven’t found any of them to be The Thing. I have also tried scrunching up the rest of my hair,so that it’s allll textured and frizzy (mostly what bothers me is the part HOVERING over the other part), but that just made my hair look messy.
Do you have any products to suggest? I’m thinking of leave-in products but also maybe I need a heavier conditioner in the shower? (I usually use OGX tea tree peppermint, or Finesse moisturizing.) My hair is fairly thick (for now), somewhat/irregularly wavy, tends toward dry rather than oily; I shampoo and condition it every two or three days, and use conditioner-only in between washes; I let it air-dry. Now, I don’t want to prevent you from commenting if, for example, you are 34 and you are recommending an anti-frizz product that works for your non-silvering hair. This comment section is not just for me, it is for US ALL! So you should go ahead and recommend that product! But just so I don’t go out and buy a whole bunch of things that would have worked for my 34-year-old non-silvering hair but will NOT work for my current hair, it would be useful (not just for me, but for US ALL) if you include in your comment what SORT of trial you’ve given this product. Are you in your 50s and you had a silvering frizz halo until you started using it? MAKE SURE I KNOW. Are you in your 30s and you DO have a frizz halo but it’s NOT from greying/aging/changing hair so it’s hard to say if the product will work for a greying/aging/changing-hair frizz halo or not, but it works like billy-o for your current type of frizz halo? THAT IS GOOD TO KNOW ALSO! It might still be exactly what I need! And if not, it might be exactly what someone else here needs!
And as soon as summer heat is dying down, I am getting a CUT. My hair would be long enough to cover my chestal region if my chestal region weren’t moving the goalposts these days; even a high ponytail hits me below the shoulders. I think a nice mid-neck-length might go a long way toward fixing the feeling that my hair is driving me crazy.
This is not what you asked for, but…do you have a short haired woman in your life, possibly of an older sort, who might be inspiring enough to try short hair? When I had my second baby, and knew from experience that I was going to be shedding an annoying amount of hair, I went in and got my grandmother’s haircut (which, in all fairness, was the haircut she had had from her 30s on so it wasn’t exactly dowdy, just not what I was used to) and it is one of favorite things I have done. It was fun to feel a little less set in the kind of person I was, and also to be embracing my new age (I had just turned…gasp…30 and the short hair felt very adult and professional). And then a few years later I was sick of being adult and professional and wanted long hair I could braid again, which I had because I am not good at keeping up haircut appointments generally.
Highly recommend L’Oreal Paris Elvive 8 Second Wonder Water Lamellar. It has worked wonders for my own 45 year old hair.
I like the Garnier Fructis Anti-Humidity Smoothing Milk (from W@almart). I’m 43, but have always had the frizz halo, haha.
Use this hair wax stick to stick the frizzies down! I am 39 and have some coarse greys (though I dye them), and have thick unruly hair and it does the trick. No major scent that I’ve noticed.
Samnyte Hair Wax Stick, Wax Stick for Hair Slick Stick, Hair Wax Stick for Women Kids, Hair Gel Stick for Girls Hair Accessories for Women Fly away Hair Tamer, Hair Bun Maker for Kids Styling Cream https://a.co/d/ajSpRSb
I have heard many rave reviews for Sandwich and am currently reading it now; so far I’m really enjoying it.
I’m probably no help when it comes to hair products as my hair is curly/frizzy pretty much all the time. I do use a leave in conditioner which seems to help my 50 something year old hair though.
Not what you asked but I am embracing your ALL OF US direction. At 71, my post-menopausal hair, while still 95% dark, was clearly thinning. My dermatologist recommended Nutrafol capsules and rogaine. She was emphatic that I use the 5% rogaine (store brand OK) and not the lesser stuff, nor the stuff pitched for women. I am happy to report that the rogaine at my temples has noticeably improved my hairline, and I am guardedly optimistic that the Nutrafol is helping the rest of my hair. The Nutrafol is not cheap, but I decided to give it six months and then evaluate. The mfrs say results can be seen in 3-6 months. Fingers crossed. P.S. I am not a girly girl, wear no makeup or fancy clothes, but a widening part and thinning hair sent me spiraling. Who knew that would be the sign of aging I am raging against?
This is the good info. I too will feel STRONGLY about hair loss.
Can we talk about aging parents. Because my parents are a real mess right now and I have no idea what to do or how to help them. I didn’t think at age 45 I’d have crisis calls with siblings about their mental and physical health or that they’d be making real stupid decisions with their money. Why can’t my parents be normal old people and age relatively normally? Instead my mother should be in a inpatient psych unit.
Jenny–she could perhaps keep my mother and father company there! My parents, in their late 80s/early 90s, refuse to admit they are going to die, and therefore see no reason to make a will, look at assisted living places, talk to me about advance medical directives. Also, they lie to me like teenagers, about things that don’t even matter, like who did the grocery shopping. It is beyond frustrating. I’m 55, so I guess I can expect it, but it’s not making it more fun.
My 80 year olds lie more than my teenagers ever have. And, despite practice, they are NOT GOOD AT IT.
My aging mom lied like crazy and was just terrible at lying- we brought her home after a visit to find her spare room had food on the floor that had not been picked up in some time. She claimed there was a band of vagrants in the neighborhood who must have been staying in the house and caused the mess (but didn’t steal anything). The whole weekend she would point to random things like a jar of pickles in the fridge and say “I didn’t buy these, the vagrants must have left them.”
My parents made a lot of good plans and handled things pretty well until their final years (my dad died some years ago, my mom is in her mid-90s), when denial/cognitive impairment kicked in hard. A large part of their planning was the result of seeing how things had gone for their parents, but at some point, self-awareness loses out to mental self-preservation, I guess? One of the things you can’t grasp is what you don’t grasp?
The other thing I have learned is that in almost every family, there is one child who is not pulling their weight at all and offering a lot of opinions about simple solutions to complex geriatric problems.
I am nonetheless trying to lay the groundwork for a good old are when I get there. We’ll see how this works out, I suppose.
My mom absolutely will not admit that she is disabled and needs mobility aids like a cane or walker. Those are for old people. So she falls, over and over again, and winds up in the hospital, and refuses to admit it was anything but a fluke. It’s making me and my siblings INSANE.
This phase of live is haaard! My parents fortunately did some estate planning and things went relatvely smoothly with the allocation of assets when my mom passed. My mid-80s dad with moderate dementia and lots of health problems refuses to leave his home with stairs and 3 bedrooms (living alone) to move to a more suitable place. He’s still ‘with it’ in a lot of ways, but got scammed out of a chunk of money last year. Its hard not to worry about his health and what’s to become of his house and all his stuff in the future. I’m hoping to be proactive and considerate to my kids as I age.
My mother’s cognition was declining noticeably but slowly until she fell and broke her ankle, and then she pretty much went over a cliff.
And although she had kept her finances reasonably well organized, she was handling it herself, until she wasn’t, and then her children were all scrambling to make things work.
I hope you have better luck. And I hope her In Case of Emergency binder is a work of art.
I know this may sound insane, but here we go:
Have the elderly who are talking crazy been checked for a bladder infection? My brother and I thought my mom (who has a host of complex, intertwined medical issues) might have been possibly rapidly deteriorating mentally (Think: Asking me if I could return her (worn) underpants to the store for a full refund as she no longer liked the color. Ordering a food at a restaurant and then losing it when she received the food as it was certainly not what she had ordered. Wanting me to water plastic plants she had for years.)
Well, she had a bladder infection. Three doses in to the course of antibiotics she was COMPLETELY normal again. No crazy requests. No memory problems. Her PCP told us this frequently happens as people age. She really had no other signs of a bladder infection. So, whenever she starts talking crazy, I offer to drop a urine sample off at her doctor.
It has dramatically improved my feeling of impending doom. I have no idea if it applies to your situation, but it was such a stark improvement that I wanted to mention it.
I can confirm from job experience that this is A Thing. Fairly often I would arrive at a client’s house and they would be Suddenly Quite Off, and SURPRISINGLY FREQUENTLY it would be a UTI. Apparently elderly people don’t as often get the burning/urgency/frequency symptoms, but instead get kind of batty and/or disoriented?? I was of course supposed to call the staff nurse about symptoms like this (“Um, she is asking me to return her 20-year-old bathroom scale to the store because she doesn’t like the way the vinyl is peeling? And she called her dog by the wrong name?”), and one of her very first things would be to arrange for me to drop off a client’s urine sample, that’s how common it was.
I just turned 50 (gasp) and have a lot of wavy, fine hair that frizzes. My greys are pretty sparse so far (fingers crossed) but for the frizzies I put a big squirt of leave in conditioner in my hair after washing when it’s still sopping wet, comb it through and then let it do whatever it’s going to do. If I need to look like I give a shit I dry it in front of a fan or with the AC on blast in my car because I’m late again and use my fingers like a comb so it’s more straight than wavy. I don’t own a hair dryer. My hair is shoulder length with layers
Leave in conditioner that’s working at the moment is Garnier Fructis Triple Butter Something, I think they rebranded it as Curl Nourish. I’ve had the same vat of it for a while because it used to be too heavy, now the frizzies apparently need 3x the butter to weigh them down so I don’t fly away.
I’ve tried a bunch of shampoos and conditioners out of boredom but I always go back to the giant pump bottles of Nexxus Therappe and Humectress. My hair still thinks it’s the 90s and that’s ok.
I hope you know I mean it as a compliment when I sometimes think that you and Catherine Newman are one and the same person ;) I have read this blog and CN for years and I love both of your “voices.”
I’m just delighted to know that you are a fan of hers, too!
If you haven’t yet, check out her home tour on Cup of Jo website :) you’re welcome
I started an estrogen blocker just over a year ago, so that’s immediate estrogen zero menopause. My previously very thick hair thinned a little, but stopped at a reasonable thickness. However, the texture changed and it was just a mess, no matter what I did. My hair has streaks of silver, but is still mostly brown.
I went to my hair stylist and said ‘I don’t know this hair, I don’t know what I need, but please cut it so it looks good. I can spend a couple minutes wet styling it and that’s about it.’ She brought it up to just below my shoulders, added long layers and sold me Cibu leave in conditioner. I finger style after the shower, including scrunching, and it looks great. When it stops looking great, I know to go in for a trim.
So, maybe push that cut up the schedule? I can still pull my hair up when it’s hot. The excellent hair dresser who knew just what to do is at Hair Cuttery, by the way. So, if you can find the right person it doesn’t have to be expensive. I do think it helps that she is African American and comfortable with a variety of hair textures. She also cuts my daughter’s intense curls and was the one to teach me how to manage them.
I am 59 and looking for some kind of change with my hair. It’s medium brown, and the grey is coming in reasonably consistently throughout. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve always had a short bob cut at a walk in place, and am currently letting it grow a bit longer to see if this is the change I’m looking for.
I use drugstore (Dove, Herbal Essence) shampoo and conditioners. Now I’ve added a Fructis leave in conditioner as well because it just feels dry and coarse. I’ve looked at some shampoo and conditioner lines marketed to grey hair, but I don’t get why they are more expensive than the other varieties (looking at you, Dove). I guess I’m hoping to have a hair revolution of some sort, to become the person who really rocks her grey and looks fabulously confident, but also without spending a crazy amount of money. That’s still a work in progress.
Back to the subject of elderlies. My husband and I are in our mid-70s and have been actively talking and planning for our decrepitude for several years now, including getting on (the long) waiting lists for continuing-care communities—while we’re still heathy enough in mind and body to make such decisions.
I have no advice for grown children on how to manage elderlies who will not face up to it. What my husband and I see among most of our contemporaries is that they deny it, dig in their heels, and declare “I just trust God.” If pressed they say “Our kids will handle it if anything happens to me.” Also, “You’re as young as you feel,” “I’m living to 100,” “All you need is a positive attitude,” “I’m only 80, stop being such a pessimist.”
It’s a problem.
My MIL will be 70 soon. So far: no progress in the quest to get a hearing aid (despite saying many times a day, “What was that? I don’t hear too well!”); many years of hoarding-type behavior resulting in a house that is chock full of everything she has ever owned; un-dealt-with and mostly unacknowledged anxiety disorder that makes it impossible to bring up any of the above without creating an ENTIRE SCENE. I am the wife of the eldest son and we are the only kids who live driving distance from them. My husband has a demanding job. I can imagine what the future may hold and whom those responsibilities will fall to- and yet I have really no ability to suitably bring up the issues in advance! Troubling!!!
My mother is 91, and is very hard of hearing, but she doesn’t want to get hearing aids because she doesn’t want to look old. And really, it’s not a problem! Except she only hears about half of what we’re saying, if that. She also lives alone in a 3000 sq ft three story house and won’t hear of even looking anywhere else, and insists on driving everywhere. She wouldn’t plan ahead for my dad either, just assumed everything would always be the same. Then one morning it wasn’t the same, and he needed rehab and we had no idea what to do or where to go. Drives me crazy, but she’s never going to change.
Yep, that will probably be my MIL in a few decades…
“I’m living to 100.”–if I had a penny for every time I heard this….
Ok, fine, you live to 100 then, but do you really think life at 100 will be the same as life at 91? Or, since you already can’t drive, can’t walk unassisted, can’t dress yourself alone, and have ended up in the hospital for falls three times within a year, do you think life at 100 might be not as good as the life you are living now? And maybe, just maybe, one should prepare for this by considering assisted living and not leaving the entire burden on my aging mother (with cognitive problems) and the one child who is willing to be responsible, but who also lives 3,000 miles away.
Anyway, thanks, Susan, for not leaving your kids with this kind of situation. Among other problems. it is really destroying my respect for my father. That’s very sad.
Yes, and no matter how much money they have now, they do not have enough for round-the-clock in-home care until they are 100+.
I also have silver SPROING hairs of enormous thickness and intense… directional decision-making – and also of zig-zaggy-ness, or watch spring diameter curls, or just a couple of sharp angles, and while there are not a ton of them yet, they are indeed annoying (mostly when I run my hand over my head of pulled-back hair and it feels like there are weird little strands of rigid dried grass in it) and will be watching the comment section with intense interest for what products have worked for people, as I expect more Silver Frizz Halo to be in my future.
(my guess is that regular hair is floppier and readily bends to lay against your scalp after exiting your scalp perpendicularly, but that this hair just *really* doesn’t want to bend to lie down like the other hairs are. While I do sympathize with the desire to not conform and pretend everything is fine and normal when it’s definitely not, I also would prefer that it… not… do this. But! Hopefully things work out.)
Instagram knows I am in my old fart era (I am 51), and it has been advertising the Humby Purple Rain Shampoo bar. “Specifically made for blonde and gray hair, Purple Rain balances brassy tones, smooths frizz and repairs damage”. I love shampoo bars because of the no-waste thing, but I usually buy from Lush with Christmas gift cards (because their bars are $$$). Humby is really expensive too. I’d love to try it out, but I don’t want to spend that much moolah on it. Anyone have any experience with it?
Mid-60s and have had ‘the frizzies’ (I love KC’s term ‘silver SPROING hairs’) for quite a while, as my hair is now mostly grey. A couple of remedies that help somewhat: firstly NOT initially drying my hair upside-down as I have done for years – I now hold the hairdryer above, pointing down to encourage the little buggers to lie flat. Secondly (this one from my hairdresser), if there are still rebels, spray hairspray onto my hand and then stroke them down. The grey hair is badly behaved generally with weird kinks and angles, most unhairlike.
We got together with three other families for a vacation recently, and in fact I DID bring a copy of Sandwich for all the other women! I would like to read more books that make me feel like that.
I’ve never really found anything to work on my frizzy hair except for Colorado.
When we go there, I have much nicer hair. Too bad Colorado is not portable.
Yes Colorado is the best for hair! I used to live in Seattle and honestly my hair was yucky, limp, thin, no body etc, due to the damp there. If I go visit family for more than 3 days I resort to wearing a hat! We moved to Colorado 16 years and what a difference…love my hair now. I am in my 60’s and am having none of the aging problems with hair yet. Sometimes I look at my hair and find it hard to believe it’s mine. Colorado is the answer! I wish I could bottle it up and send to people for their hair.
Experience talking here re: The Cut. My longish somewhat wavy hair turned on me during perimenopause and was waiting for me to cut layers to show off that it had turned very, very, very curly. WTH. Shocking plot twist and very difficult to style for almost a year. Finally back to a textured (key word) shortish bob with enough weight left in it so that it lays nicely for my face shape and isn’t stacked into a pyramid every morning.
Even the New York Times is acknowledging the Menopausal Hair situation. Too late to save me from a very unfortunate employee ID situation brought on by obliviousness resulting from decades of relentlessly limp hair. But now? The grays along my part are making a bid for attention, and my coworkers get to see it every time I send an email, thanks to Microsoft.
Anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/well/live/menopause-hair-loss.html?unlocked_article_code=1._E0.v97H.Og6LljZbn4GY&smid=url-share
I second the comment above about spraying hairspray on your hand and smoothing everything down.
I am in my 60’s and completely gray, fine, thick (as in not thinning), wavy. One easy cheap thing to try is plain aloe vera gel. Put a glob in your hand, add a couple drops of water and rub your hands, then smooth it through wet or dry hair.
I started going gray very young and I dyed my har for years, before deciding I was over it and just embracing the gray. I’m 49 and completely silver and I actually love it, but I have tested pretty much every product out there. These are the two that I swear by and I think they make all the difference in sleek, smooth, non-frizzy gray hair (I get them both on Amazon):
1) Elizavecca cer-100 collagen coating hair protein treatment 100ml
2) COLOR WOW Dream Coat Supernatural Spray
Do… men… get frizzy grey hair… and they don’t know because it’s usually quite short? Or is this a strictly hormonal thing? I never wondered this before.
*experiences sudden urge to grab husband and check whether his [short-hair] silvers are a different texture* *suppresses urge because husband has a lot to do today, but will attempt to remember and report back if a conclusion is reached*
(not all of mine are the new-to-me texture – some are smooth, but *almost* all are thicker than other hairs.)
I do think 95% or so of men’s haircuts would tend to hide individual differently-textured hairs, whereas 85%+ or so of women’s haircuts… wouldn’t (even our short haircuts often need “styling” instead of just a quick comb). So there is that, but also, yes, now I am curious!
Now checked. Did not find any silvers with strong kinks or curls to them, but some silvers were definitely thicker than spouse’s average hairs are. If I recall correctly, my father’s grey hairs are really just flat.
That said, this is an n of 2 for men and less aggressively textured grey hair, and I would bet there are at least two women out there with exclusively non-riotous grey hair (even for me, not all my greys are like that; some aren’t even vastly thicker than the average hair, and then only some of those thick ones are have a quirky curl/zig-zag/multi-sharp-bend thing going on)(the same hairs always have the same thing going on, though; I have tracked some as they make Interesting Artistic Decisions before and after a shower [which is usually a curl-reset for me]).
Anyway, all of that to say that I remain uncertain and also curious re: whether some/most men get this thing going on [apart from the ones who go bald before they go grey] and also what percentage of women have at least one riotous SPROING grey head hair and what percentage have all or basically all their grey hairs doing some variation of This Thing. (I think my grey/white hairs are running approximately half and half between “behaves similar to the non-grey hair” and “oh wow that is… a unique stylistic choice there.”)
I’ve been going gray now for a long time but I’ve only recently (in the last couple of years) noticed the texture change. I always had fine, straight and pretty smooth hair. But it’s become frizzy and weirdly wavy in a way that I don’t understand. I have worn my hair long for almost my entire adult life and it’s completely silver in the front now, but still brown in the back. I’m looking forward to the day I just have a waist-long mane of all white hair. But this texture is tricky. I do like the L’Oreal Elvive 8 second miracle. I also find that VERB Ghost Oil will tame the frizzies well when I remember to put it in while my hair is still damp. If I put the ghost oil in and then put the hair in a bun I find that when I take it out later I have something approximating beachy waves.
I succumbed to the many ColorWow ads on instagram. I am 66 and have thick healthy blond hair. Of course it’s not really blond but I do go every month. It is probably one of the best products I’ve ever purchased. I’m so afraid it will stop being made/sold, that I bought 8 bottles when it was on prime sale. This is the silver spray bottle. It takes care of all the frizz and adds a LOT of body to my hair. I just love it.
Is it accurate that it only works if you blow dry? I don’t like to fuss with a blow dryer but if it’s really all it’s hyped up to be maybe it’s worth it?
I was so careful to always blow dry it but a couple times I haven’t and it seems fine. One night I went to bed with damp hair and I had nice waves. I do love it.
In my late 30s I started growing coarse, frizzy white hairs that hovered in a cloud above all my straight brown hair. The henna from Lush worked great to tame the weird texture and made the white hairs look more like highlights. Obviously this solution only works if you’re also willing to have red hair. :)
I’ve had issues with seeing a few grays here & there since I was 16. In my 40s, I started to “embrace” the gray, as they weren’t just hidden under my hair (to be seen only if I pulled my hair back) & were now showing up everywhere. As people talked about having to dye their hair every few weeks, I would just say that it was why I didn’t start. After menopause, my hair was thinning & I always had to deal with that cloud you were talking about. Now in my mid 60s, it’s more gray than brown, & I keep my hair shorter now. The shorter it is, the wavier it is, so I keep it no longer than the top of my shoulders & try the “crunch it when it’s wet & let dry naturally” thing. And when all else fails, I just go with the “I’ve got a halo today” comment. :)
I’m also having gray/curly/menopausal hair issues. I’m very tempted to cut my chin-length curly bob into something shorter all around, but then my wrinkly neck would be more obvious. But honestly, does anyone notice my wrinkly neck except for me? Who knows. When I have frizzy hairs sticking up, I use this R+Co Dart Pomade Stick and it does help to keep the crazy hairs down, at least in the morning when I first notice them.
Love Catherine Newman! I was able to attend her US book launch in Northampton, MA, near where she lives. She is as delightful and funny in person as she is in writing. I took my teen who said afterward, I think Mom was more the target audience than I was, lol.
I’m mid 40s, frizzy, graying, fine, wavy, dry yet greasy at the roots at time hair. If I brush it, it would be a poofy triangle. It’s been harder to deal with the past few years. So recently, I paid to see a curl/wavy hair specialist. It was amazing and delightful. A three hour appointment where she taught me how to deal with my hair, sold me some products, gave me a gift bag, and detoxed, cut, and styled my hair. It was three hours long and I honestly loved every minute. She told me that to avoid frizz, I need a light styling cream followed by gel and then completely dry it with a diffuser (air drying works for some people, but our summer humidity is off the charts). I do this probably only once a week. Too much hassle in the summer. But in between days I just wet it down and add a little gel and it’s made a big difference for me. Ouidad Advanced climate control featherlight styling cream and the advanced climate control heat and humidity gel.
Oh my gosh, I love when you bring up things I think are weird to me but apparently lots of people are dealing with! I’m in my early 40s, had a lot of hair loss until I finally got a referral to a dermatologist who put me on meds and I started seeing hair regrowth. YAY! Except the new hair is almost all grey hairs, which I don’t mind AT ALL if it was just the color we were talking about, but in this case it’s like someone transplanted a whole different KIND of hair onto my head. So if I get my hair damp and use gel to smooth the fly aways into my ponytail, all my normal brown wavy/curly/frizzy hair stays in place, but those gray ones just immediately sproing out in every direction! They do NOT want to fall in line with their neighbors, which is incredibly frustrating. I’ve found I need one product to put them in place, and then a light hairspray to (mostly) hold them there. Getting my hair damp and then using gel works as long as I get it wet enough to force them to stay down. I’ve also had luck with those hair mascara things (essentially like a clear gel/serum/pomade/hair smoothing product thing on a mascara wand) that brushes the hair into place and then following that with hairspray. I find it hard to make everything fall nicely into the ponytail sometimes that way, but it’s an option to try!
Ack! I’ve missed the last couple of posts. They weren’t posted on fb nor did I get an email. Might be on my end. Breaking the lurk to say this and thank you! So much of your writing resonates with me. It makes me smile to recognize myself in your posts. My older daughter is near the same age as yours and has scoliosis. Beyond grateful for your explanations on those procedures. Also, I used to work at a library, more recognition! I think I found you through Catherine Newman’s blog ages ago. I traveled five hours to meet her on the book tour because she is just that good. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.