Episode 36 - With Monique Blackwood

This week I'm chatting with Monique, who's based in Australia. Monique is 6ft tall, and I first came across her in Instagram, where she posts are about outfit ideas and pro-age.

Transcript

Happier Grey with Monique Blackwood

Helen: Hello and thanks for joining me, Helen Johnson, for the Happier Grey podcast. I'm pro-ageing and love my grey hair, but I know it can be quite intimidating to take the plunge, so each week I'll be chatting to other women who've chosen to embrace the grey in the hope of inspiring and supporting you, whether you already have silver hair, in the process of going grey, or just considering ditching the dye.

Today I'm joined by Monique Blackwood. She's a 51-year-old legal advisor, choral singer and ice cream enthusiast. She enjoys running and Pilates, and tries to juggle both with afternoons on the couch. 

Hello Monique. I was going to say good morning but for you it's good evening

Monique: That's right. Hi Helen, yeah, it's 7pm where I am in Brisbane.

Helen: and it's nine o'clock in the morning here.

Monique: Good morning.

Helen: I am going to start by asking you, when did you find your first grey hair?

Monique: I was thinking about this the other day, I think I was in my late 30s. I've dyed my hair since my mid-twenties, cause my natural colour was kind of very boring, mousy brown, so, I've been colouring my hair most of my adult life. And I think it was probably in my late thirties I noticed that I just started getting a little bit of a grey streak at the front.

Probably. About 12, 15 years ago maybe.

Helen: And how did you feel about those first grey hairs?

Monique: Not too bad actually. I thought, oh, I think that's a grey hair. Oh, my goodness, I'm going grey already. But I wasn't scared of it. I wasn't frightened about it. And I didn't think that it, made me look old or anything. I was just thinking, oh wow, I've got to that stage in my life where I'm starting to go grey.

Helen: Okay, and you were dyeing your hair anyway at that point?

Monique: Yeah. I started off with getting blonde streaks, you know, foils in my hair. And then that made my hair too dry and frizzy because I've got dry curly hair anyway. So, bleaching it made it worse. Then I went to sort of a mocha kind of mid brown colour. And I did that right up until I stopped dyeing my hair.

Helen: And when was that?

Monique: November, 2019 was the last time I had my hair dyed. And I'd been thinking about it for a while. But we were going to the U. S. and I decided I'll have one last root job done. And have my hair sort of blow dried straight, before we went away, to make it easier to look after. And then I didn't do it again after that.

That was my last dye job.

Helen: Why did you decide to stop?

Monique: A number of reasons. A couple of years beforehand I'd been at a party with a group of mums I used to go to the gym with, and one she's a little bit older than me, she'd stopped dyeing her hair, and she said, I just didn't want to keep putting all those chemicals on my skin, you know, and absorbing them into my body. And I thought, yeah, that's a good point.

I'd got to the point where I was having to go every four weeks, spend an hour and a half in the hairdresser's chair every Saturday morning, every four weeks to get my roots done. And it just looked awful, in between, you know, when it really started to grow out.

 And I thought, oh, life's too short. It's time to just embrace it and, let it happen. Just go with Mother Nature.

Helen: Okay, so you started just before lockdown.

Monique: Yeah. What I did end up doing eventually was to get some blonde foils done, around the border of where my demarcation line was, my dyeing line, just to kind of ease that transition, so I didn't have a really defined line between the colour and the grey.

I had to put that off for a little while. I did have quite a lot of regrowth, because my hairdresser shut down for about three months. I think our restrictions here in Queensland weren't as severe as they were in other parts of the World, so I was able to get back to the hairdresser after about three months.

Helen: Okay, and then you had some highlights just to help?

Monique: Yeah, just to blur that line, so I didn't have the really obvious line between my brown hair and my natural colour.

Helen: So, did it not really bother you through the grow out?

Monique: Not really, until it got to about halfway. I had maybe six to eight inches of regrowth. And I used to have much longer hair than I have now. And it was kind of half and half, and I thought that looked really odd. So, I went and had my hair cut off into the bob length that it's at now. It was pretty much all out at the back, because my front's slightly longer than the back, so it took a few more months after that for the final brown sections to be cut off.

Helen: Okay,

Monique: That was a couple of years ago now, yeah,

Helen: I think many of us run out of patience and end up having some kind of cut, whether we go as drastic as a pixie or whether, I did like a jaw length layered bob after about, a year, but a bit over a year. Just because I didn't want to see the blonde anymore.

Monique: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I had been thinking about having it cut anyway. So that hastened my decision to get it cut. Was looking at mousy blonde and silver mix and then brown on the ends. It just looked very strange. And it was almost half and half. So, I wanted to change that, ratio.

Helen: So are you now using a special shampoo for grey hair?

Monique: Well, it's a blonde shampoo. I use well not the shampoo but the conditioner, one that's got a purple tint to it that's meant for blonde hair, but also for grey hair. So, I just use that. That's all I use.

Helen: How do you find the condition of your hair since you let it go natural? Any different?

Monique: Oh, it's definitely a lot healthier, because it's not having all those chemicals that strip the moisture out. And because I've got dry hair, it's definitely benefited from not having all those chemicals loaded onto it every four weeks. Yeah.

Helen: Have you found your style and the colours that you wear change, at all?

Monique: No, not really. I don't think so. But I really do like looking back at old photos, I think my silver hair suits my face a lot more. So, I've got a silver streak at the front and I'm silver over my ears on the side. I'm not completely grey, yet. I like a lot of grey scattered over all of my head, but I'm predominantly silver just on the sides and that streak at the front.

But I've just noticed that it suits my complexion so much more. My face looks brighter. But as part of the same process, I went and had my colours done. So, I make sure I wear colours that suit me. Although I think I was already on the right track a fair bit.

Helen: So, what colour suit you then, would you say?

Monique: Red. Red’s one of my main colours. I always get a lot of compliments when I wear red. Oh, it really suits you. 

And bright colours, so, sapphire blue and emerald green and black actually, both really suit me. They all suit me.

Helen: As you know, I'm a blue girl.

Monique: Yes, I know, yeah. Yeah, I like blue too. I have quite a lot of blue, especially navy.

Helen: In terms of ageing generally, how do you feel about where you are in the ageing process?

Monique: I'm in two minds about it. I like the fact that I'm maturing and getting older you've probably noticed from my Instagram account that I promote, positive ageing. 

But at the same time experiencing that sort of within my own body, like I'm going through. menopause or perimenopause at the moment. And the way that that's affecting my body has been difficult to accept, especially the weight gain. That's been really hard to deal with. Cause I've always had an issue managing my weight and that's just got that much harder now that I've hit menopause that that's been really difficult.

 But all the other changes I'm dealing with, HRT and all that kind of thing fairly well. Other things like, you know, running. So, I like to run, and that's been harder as I've got older. I didn't actually start until I was in my early forties, but just sort of in the last few years, I feel like it's really hard to make progress, and that's getting harder getting injured as well.

Helen: Yeah, yeah. I can run twice a week now. 

Monique: Yeah.

Helen: I used to run four times when I was younger, but if I run any more than that, I get injured.

Monique: Yeah. I started training for a half marathon two years ago, and I think about three months into my training program and hurt my knee. And then that led to getting plantar fasciitis in one of my feet. So, I had to take a total of about eight months off running and it was awful, not being able to run at all, just because I was injured.

And it felt like, I went from one straight to another. But touch wood, I'm all right this time around. I've got back into it.

Helen: Are you training for another half marathon?

Monique: I'm thinking about it. At the moment, I'm doing a little program on Runner, the running app. I just want to improve my five-kilometre time, because I found that after coming back to running, after having that break, I just can't seem to make any progress.

So, I'm trying out a training plan, to see if I can improve my Parkrun time. And get back to sort of close to what my PB was a few years ago, which I've been nowhere near for a very long time. 

If that goes okay and I don't get injured, then I'm thinking about there's a half marathon at Noosa in May next year. So, I might start working towards that. See how I go.

Because I'll be nearly 52 when that happens. So that would be, I think, quite an achievement to run a half marathon at nearly 52.

Helen: I ran one three years ago, so I would have been 56. And it was a hilly one. And I'm not doing any more.

I have osteoarthritis in my right foot, and down the hill really, really set it off. And that's really when I was aware of the problem. So now I'm just like, I'm running no more than about six miles now and that's fine.

I'm comfortable with that, but my half marathon days are over. 

Monique: Yeah, well six miles is still pretty good. Yeah. That's a quarter of a marathon, almost. 

Helen: I can run 10K, which is fine.

Monique: Yeah. 

Helen: What else are you doing to age healthfully? Obviously, I know you do some Pilates as well.

Monique: Yeah. So, I'm doing that, but I'm also, trying to introduce a bit more strength training. I've got a couple of five kilo weights, and I have been doing some work on that. And trying to increase my protein. I've done a lot of research into, you know, increasing my protein and the benefits.

But gee, it's hard, because I think the formula is one gram per kilo body weight. Oh, I can't remember what it is, but it's worked out for someone my height and weight, I should be having about 140 grams of protein a day. And that's really hard. That's a lot of food. I'm not used to eating that much.

I think over time, I've trained myself to eat less and less, because I'm always watching my weight. And now I have to try and pick things up, to get enough for what I'm trying to do. It's actually really difficult to eat that volume of food.

Helen: I find that I need to be really careful with carbs.

I do strength training two days a week, and on those days, I have, added a two-egg omelette to my lunch, so not tons of extra, and I'm gradually gaining muscle,

Monique: Yeah.

Helen: out of that, and that's all I want to do. I want to at least maintain it, because it is one of the problems as you age, is that you lose muscle.

Monique: Yes. And another thing I've just started doing recently is every time I go to the toilet at work, I do 10 squats. Because I think I need to strengthen my leg muscles as well, and that will help me with my running. So, there's the two sides of it there.

It'll help with my running, and also just help with general strength and metabolism, and the ageing process. So that was something I thought of every time I go to the loo at work. Do 10 squats. That's my little trigger to remind me that I need to do them.

Helen: I guess if you do them quite fast as well, that's good for your breathing. Cause I think for me with the strength training and the running, they always put a little bit of cardio into my sessions, but they'll put like 20 seconds sprint on a bike, 10 second rest, 20 seconds sprint. And that’s it.

Monique: Ooh, that sounds like a killer.

Helen: It’s a total killer, but it really challenges your lungs. And I find for me, the limiting factor in how fast I can run is breathing.

Monique: Yeah. You just can't get enough breath into your body to go any faster.

Helen: Especially if I end up getting injured and having a break, when I first come back, my legs don't hurt. It's just, I can't breathe enough.

Monique: Mm. It's that cardiovascular fitness that goes, seems to go first, yeah,

Helen: When I started weight training, I had two goals. One was to be able to do a press up for the first time ever. I've never had arm strength.

Monique: I’m the same.

Helen: And the other was to try and run a 25 minute Parkrun. 

Monique: Have you achieved that?

Helen: I've done 25:50 this year.

A few weeks ago, so I'm making progress and that knocked 45 seconds off my PB. So, it was a big jump. But I think a lot of it is to do with the strength training and just looking at, okay, we'll do some cardio stuff. I do, quite a lot of weight when I'm doing squats and deadlift now.

Monique: Oh, okay. So, you're using a bar with those, are you? 

Helen: Yeah.

Monique: Okay. Mine's just my body weight at the moment, with my squats, which is enough. 

Helen: I'm gonna ask you about something completely different now. So, your Instagram project, talk to me a little bit about that because I find it fascinating,

Monique: I started the account a couple of years ago, because a friend of mine started a label for tall girls. We're not really catered for very well here in Australia. And when one of the biggest tall women's fashion retailers, Long Tall Sally, went out of business it was like a major crisis. 

Where are we going to get our clothes from? And so, she actually stuck her neck out and started up her own label. So, I started that account so that I could, just basically promote her clothing. But then I realized I'm going to need to post more often than just every now and then, when I wore one of her items.

So, it started off that way. Just here's how I dress myself as a tall woman. Every now and then, I'll find something that I want to tell people about. You know, how about this pair of trousers I've found, they're really long. Or this shirt's got really long sleeves. And that kind of thing. Just to sort of spread the word, and maybe give other tall women, it's sort of grown now too, it's not just tall women, it's women in midlife, some ideas about how to put outfits together.

Taking the opportunity a few times, to get in a few little kind of pro aging messages in there as well.

Helen: So, do you have a lot of fun with that, or is it hard work sometimes?

Monique: Sometimes it's hard work. Can be very frustrating. It's fun to create the little reels and things, and put things together. I've decided I'm just going to have a standard format with the way I do my posts. I'm not going to try get too creative, because it does take a long time to put them together.

But it can be very frustrating when you put a lot of work into creating something, and it doesn't get a lot of reach. And you think, oh, what did I bother? You know, hardly anyone's seen it, but it's still, it's fun. I like being creative like that.

Helen: And you're getting the word out.

Monique: Yeah, that's right. I had my first promotional item, a couple of weeks ago. I was gifted a pair of jeans from a label in New Zealand, that makes jeans for tall women.

And they sent me a pair of jeans and I did a couple of reels, and I also posted something on some Facebook groups that I'm in. And they told me today that their sales from Australia were up higher than normal over the weekend. So obviously the message had got out there, and they'd made some extra sales from it, which I'm kind of chuffed about that actually.

Helen: And you like the jeans anyway.

Monique: And I did like the jeans anyway. Yeah, that's right. They're really nice ones. So win-win.

Helen: Do you think you'd be doing more of that kind of thing or not?

Monique: I don't seek it out, but if anyone contacts me and says, if we send you a pair of jeans, will you post about them? I'll say, yeah, I'll do that. Quite happy to do that. I'm glad to help. I think, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, we need more labels catering to tall women.

So, I'm willing to do anything I can to help with that.

Helen: I'm going to ask you a question about going grey now, coming back to the topic. If someone came to you and said, I'm thinking about going grey, what advice would you have for them? What would you say to them?

Monique: Stick with it. I think the first couple of months are the hardest, and once you get past that, it gets easier. 

I would definitely recommend getting the foils done to try and sort of blur that demarcation line. But yeah, just stick with it. Don't give up. It does get easier. You get used to it.

And getting all that time back in your life, where you're not spending all that time in the hairdresser's chair, getting your hair done every month or however often it is. That's the best part of it, is getting that time back and the money too. It's

Helen: Yeah.

Monique: very expensive.

Helen: I'm going to say thanks so much for joining me then.

Monique: Oh, thank you for inviting me along. I've loved it.

Helen: And enjoy, I was going to say the rest of your day, enjoy your evening

Monique: Yeah, my evening, it's just time to go and hit the couch I think, yeah.

Helen: With a book.

Monique: Thanks very much Helen.

Helen: Thanks so much for joining me for this week's show. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I'll be back again next week, but in the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram at happier.grey. Have a great week.