I get my red hair from my mom. We have the same shade. We share the same texture. If only discernible by the hair, I am irrefutably my mother’s daughter.
I’m not sure where my mom got her red hair from. We are the only two redheads in our family. And as far back as my memory can go, I have always felt like my mom and I were in our own secret club – the two of us against the world, connected by our red hair. As a kid, we would walk through the mall on the weekends hand in hand. Inevitably, someone would stop to compliment my hair, and they would smile at my mom too, seeing exactly where I got my red hair from. I squeezed her hand a little tighter in those moments, feeling proud to have this special connection and bond with her.
Here are three life lessons I learned from my redheaded mother:
1. She instilled confidence in me
While I will always be grateful to my mom for sharing this hair color with me, I am more grateful for the confidence she instilled in me in response to it. There are endless stories out there of redhead children getting bullied for their red hair or getting pressured to dye it at a young age, but my mom made sure that this would not be my story.
2. She made me promise her I would never dye my red hair
She constantly asked me to promise never to dye my hair and assured me that red hair would always be in style. For as long as I can remember, my mom has reminded me redheads are special and it’s good to be different and I should feel proud to be a redhead.
3. She was a great example for me to look up to
She made these lessons easy for me to learn and live out because I saw how proud she was of her red hair. I wanted to be just like her, and that included being confident in my red hair, just like she was.
On Mother’s Day this year, I want to say thank you to my mom – not just for sharing these genetics with me but for being my original source of redheaded confidence. Long before redheads had the HowtobeaRedhead.com website, the H2BAR Box, or social media dedicated to high redhead self-esteem, my mom modeled for me what it meant to be self-assured and grateful for this gift I was given.
If you get your red hair from your mom, grandmother, or any other mother-like figure in your life, I encourage you to thank her today for bringing you into this little club of ours and for giving you something that is so uniquely you – something to be proud of and something that will never go out of style.
To all the redheaded moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!
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