But then, at age 20, she was diagnosed with lupus, and she underwent nearly three years of chemotherapy. When she was hairless, she experimented with various wigs, but when her hair grew back, she reverted to trying to “fit in” by dyeing it dark brown. Then she got pregnant at 37, and her habits changed: After two decades of using treatments to manage her curls and cover her grays, she decided to avoid chemicals completely. “I thought, ‘Well, they’ll probably think I’m her grandmother,’” she says, laughing. (So far, no one has made that mistake.) Her daughter, Ella, is now 16, and if family history is anything to go by, her brown hair will someday bear a telltale stripe. The day Ondine met her birth family, eight years ago, her aunt looked at her and said, “You’re definitely a Fitzgerald.” She understood what that meant when they showed her an old photo of another aunt with the same gray streak: “Finally, my hair made sense,” Ondine says. “It’s who I am.” Ella too—her own grays have started poking through.
Ondine’s Go-To Products
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