Changing My Hair Color Used to Be an Act of Rebellion. Now I Know It Means So Much More

When I decided to dye my blonde locks brown in the midst of a painful divorce, I realized the act of changing my hair was less about defiance and more about manifesting positive change

Some of the many shades of Camouflage author Heather Sweeney’s hair over the years

I was 15 the first time I dyed my hair. It was the early 90s, back when it wasn’t commonplace to see a teenager with three-inch black tips on the end of otherwise naturally sun-kissed blonde hair. At the time, my motivation was pure rebellion, teenage angst turned outward so I could see a different person in the mirror. But 20 years later, when I decided to dye my blonde locks brown in the midst of a painful divorce, I realized the act of changing my hair was less about defiance and more about manifesting positive change.

A few years after my 15-year-old self got tired of the black tips and cut them off, I felt the urge once again to do something drastic to my hair. I was about to turn 18 and had just accepted an athletic scholarship for swimming at an out-of-state Division I college while nursing a shoulder injury from overtraining. Every single aspect of my life was about to change, and despite my brave face, I was terrified.

Heather Sweeney’s teenage black tips, her first foray into dyeing her hair

Could I handle living so far away from my family? Would my shoulders heal enough to perform as I was expected in the pool to keep my scholarship? Would I be able to make friends at a school where I don’t know a single person?

As I contemplated these self-doubts, I drove to the drugstore and bought myself a bottle of wash-out black hair dye. This time, instead of just coloring the tips of my blonde hair, I slathered the color over my entire head.

I’m pretty sure I thought I was being rebellious again, basking in the attention classmates and teachers gave me for suddenly showing up at school one day looking like a completely different person. But more than anything, , I remember the sense of confidence I felt. I’d dyed my hair black! If I could do that, I could thrive moving ten hours away from my family. I could be the MVP of my swim team, maybe even MVP of my conference. I could find my friend group in a sea of strangers.

Months later, long after the black had gradually washed down the shower drain, I accomplished every one of those things, my fear of those life changes long forgotten.

Of course, dyeing my hair didn’t cause me to mature as a young adult away from my parents, swim well, or make friends. But what it did do was give me a boost of adrenaline, a shift in perspective, a new image to see in the mirror reflecting a person whose confidence I could borrow until I could fully absorb it.

The hair dyeing continued from there. I went for black dye again right before my college conference swim meet. I opted for strawberry blonde when I was having relationship issues with a boyfriend. I used grape Kool-Aid mix to attempt a purple hue as college graduation drew near and I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My hair dye method never let me down.

But soon enough, the hair dyeing stopped. I met the man who would become my husband. He joined the military, and I became the wife of an officer in the Navy. I gave birth to a son and then a daughter. I was a grown-up, a mother, a military spouse. There didn’t seem to be space in those roles for spontaneous drastic alterations to my appearance. I had a certain image to uphold. I had to fit in with the other mothers at playgroup, the other officers’ wives at potlucks and our husbands’ work events. I couldn’t show up on the arm of my husband in his military uniform with magenta hair. So my hair remained the same for years, the familiar palette of blonde highlights on the agenda at every salon visit.

Until my marriage ended.

I had just moved out of my marital home and into an apartment, and after a grueling seven-month in-house separation, I was living on my own for the first time in my life at 37. Even though we were finally living in different homes, my husband and I were still dwelling in the limbo of a yearlong legal separation, a state-mandated requirement in no-fault divorces when minor children are involved. Not divorced, but not a marriage. I felt stuck in so many ways.

Despite the fact that I wanted the divorce, that I wanted to end my thirteen-year marriage and start over, the struggles of being a single mother of two elementary school-aged children hit me hard. Alongside the breakup also came an unexpected search for identity as I realized I had spent most of my marriage trying to live up to the varied expectations of being the wife of a service member. My entire identity revolved around my husband’s career as a Navy officer, and I no longer knew who I was without my title of military spouse.

That’s when I found myself at a salon.

Maybe it was the adjustment to co-parenting after my move into the apartment. Maybe it was the series of panic attacks that seemed to hit me out of nowhere. Or maybe I was so desperate to get unstuck that I needed to do something extreme. Whatever the primary motivation was, the result was exactly what I needed it to be: positive change.

I had never met this stylist before, but she came highly recommended by a friend who knew I was struggling. When I told this stylist I wanted to chop six inches off my long blonde hair and dye what was left brown, she did exactly what I asked for. I walked into that salon a blonde and walked out a brunette.

I admit the change was shocking at first, my initial look in the mirror bringing me to tears as I clutched a half-foot long strip of my blonde hair in my hands and fought the urge to beg the stylist to immediately reverse what she had just done to me. But as the days passed and I grew less and less surprised when I looked at myself, I fell in love with my hair. I saw myself with fresh eyes. I saw the woman I was becoming. I saw that change, no matter how scary at first, could be beautiful.

There were countless things out of my control because of the divorce, but my hair was one thing I had complete control over. I couldn’t change my custody schedule. I couldn’t change how my husband was parenting our children in his home. I couldn’t change where the military was sending him. But I could change my hair. I could change who I saw in the mirror. I could change the identity I had lost in my marriage and find the sense of self I needed in order to move on with my life.

I eventually grew my hair back to its original length, and that same stylist eventually colored me back to blonde. But my hair dyeing days to induce change continue to this day. While I haven’t had to face the drastic life changes that I did during my divorce, I still periodically feel the itch to switch up my hair color.

Purple hair was one of Heather Sweeney’s various pandemic hair dye looks

What began as rebellious black tips progressed into something more meaningful than I could have imagined at age fifteen. I got a splash of delicate pink after my six-week recovery from a hysterectomy. I chose blue tips when things were getting serious with the man I was dating and there were thoughts of moving in together. I swirled pink and purple during the pandemic and all the uncertainty it created. I went a sassy red when tough emotions resurfaced while I was writing my memoir. And while sometimes I dye my hair because I tell myself I simply want a pop of color framing my face, I usually look back later and realize the salon visit coincided with something bigger, like a tough decision or work burnout.

Whether I wanted to cope with change or induce it, the color of my hair has acted as my driving force, my motivation, my strength, my confidence.

Regardless of the reason, my hair colors are usually temporary, a reminder that whatever emotions I’m connecting to the life changes inspiring the dye—nervous excitement, discomfort, fear, downright dread—will be temporary as well. They say that change is the only constant in life. For me, that means life changes come with a little added color.

Heather Sweeney is the author of the memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage. She writes about divorce, life as a military spouse, parenting, and women’s health, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, Business Insider, TODAY.com, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Healthline, Reader’s Digest, Electric Literature, and Military.com, among many others. She lives in Virginia. Camouflage is her first book.