When My Mom Dyed Her Hair Purple

Two decades ago, at 60 something years old, my mother shocked the family.

She dyed her hair purple!

I already thought it was enough when 10 years prior she leased a disturbing turquoise-colored car, but the purple hair was a whole new level.

Everyone knew my mom. But not because of her hair.

Often behind the scenes, my mother was always up to good.

Kids she taught 50 years ago at Ohio Elementary school, located in a poor neighborhood, still remember how much she impacted their lives. The extra tutoring attention she provided. How engaged she was with their families. The time she took before and after school to attend to an individual student in need.

Though we had little ourselves, my mom stood outside grocery stores every year raising money to take her poor students on field trips they otherwise couldn’t have afforded to go on. She asked everyone she knew to donate money so she could buy underprivileged kids coats and gloves to survive Ohio’s harsh winters.

She had kids with broken homes to our house for dinner, and then each time gave the clothes and toys we grew out of to them. I saw the grateful smiles on their faces myself.

When she got older, she baked cakes for each of the elderly men celebrating birthdays who were regulars every morning at the bagel shop around the corner.

She had an infectious loud laugh. She treated everyone as special. She craved human connection and made others feel important everywhere she went.

Her questionable hair color choice coupled with her human activism combined to teach a powerful lesson she practiced during her far too short 78 years on this planet.

That individuality is our superpower.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the purple hair wasn’t a rebellion against norms so much as an extension of who she already was.

My mother understood, instinctively, that when people feel safe being themselves, they’re far more likely to extend that same permission to others and excel in their own lives.

Individuality disarms fear. It makes difference familiar instead of threatening. When someone confidently occupies their own skin, purple hair, turquoise cars and all, it quietly challenges the idea that there’s only one acceptable way to exist.

Her righteous work in helping others operated on the same principle. She didn’t approach charitable activism as ideology or confrontation. She approached it as relationship.

She met people where they were. She insisted, without saying it out loud, that dignity wasn’t something to be earned. Whether she was advocating for students who were overlooked, standing up for Black colleagues who lacked a voice, or quietly showing up for families in crisis, she modeled a form of justice rooted in human recognition rather than abstraction or academia.

That combination, radical individuality paired with concern for others, is what made her impact durable. Individualism without social responsibility curdles into narcissism. Activism without room for individuality becomes rigid, performative, and alienating.

But when the two reinforce each other, they create a culture where people are both seen as unique and bound to one another. You fight harder for human dignity when you understand that the people you’re fighting for aren’t interchangeable symbols, but fully textured individual human beings.

In a society fractured by race, politics, and deep unconscious fear of difference, my mother’s lesson feels almost subversive in its simplicity.

Be unmistakably yourself. Make room for others to do the same. Build justice not by erasing our differences, but by celebrating and protecting them.

My mom’s purple hair wasn’t the point. It was the proof.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.