Brian's story: grey, yay or ney?

Blog buddy Brian emailed the following story to uniquelyu@helloross.com:

"Here's my dilemma: I've gone grey. There are those who regard this as a sort of badge of honor for waddling through the decades I've managed to survive. They say it is what has been earned from simply living for a period of time that extends beyond the ability of my body to produce whatever it is the makes your hair not look like a corpse. And I'm not entirely in disagreement with that. Getting to wherever I am now was not all that easy. Suffering was involved and if it shows on top of my head. It happens.

Meanwhile, there feels like an "I-give-up" mentality to going with the grey. I'm old. I'm done. The End.

So I feel caught between the pull to let nature take its course and the idea that maybe if I tossed a little color in the mix I might feel a bit less played-out.

Ross -- I know you mentioned that the flecks of gray in your hair helped you feel a bit closer to your father. (My father, who died when I was in college, was bald, so I don't want to feel that close).

Could some color help spark a new energy for me, or should I be proud of the 'experience' that shows on my head? Please weigh in with your thoughts."

Share YOUR thoughts in our COMMENT SECTION and share YOUR story by emailing it to uniquelyu@helloross.com!

An email from 1 of U!

"Uniquelyu is so uplifting. My "friends" always made fun of my big lips. NOW, everyone wants big lips with getting injections in them and such. I ditched those 'friends' and took my lips elsewhere."

- Cindy

Be like Cindy! Email UniquelyU@helloross.com and share YOUR story!

Welcome to UniquelyU!

Hello, blog buddies!

By now, I hope you've also checked out Weight Is Enough and Pop Culture Report Card and watched what I've posted at HelloRoss.com. I am so excited about expanding our community and I hope you are, too.

Welcome to UniquelyU - the most personal and important "channel" in the HelloRoss "network".

Any success I've had in my life can be attributed to a simple reason - I turned what made me different, what many saw as a "flaw", into what made me stand out.

And it was no mistake. I've always known what I was doing. It was a lesson I learned at a very early age.

There was a specific moment (I'm not going into now) when I was about 12 that I realized that I was at a fork in the road. I have no idea where this rush of sudden wisdom came from - I mean, I was still playing with G.I. Joe's and scared to sleep in the dark.

But, for whatever reason, I knew. I just knew. I had a choice - hate myself for what made me different (the things that everyone made fun of me for), or embrace my "uniqueness" and celebrate it as what makes me special.

It sounds cheesy, almost. Even now, as I articulate it on my keyboard, it sounds very simple and borderline elementary.

But it's not - if it were, I wouldn't get emails from as many people as I do who have the same comment: "I wish I could live in my skin like you do and never apologize for who or what I am, but I can't. I've never been able to."

That's an actual quote taken from an email from one of YOU. And it's just one of thousands.

And, just for the record, I don't have it all figured out. I am still a work in progress. I kinda hope I always am... :)

So that's what I want to do here - I want us to rip the band-aide off and start saying out loud what our "flaws" are and, with the help of each other, turn them into what makes us all UniquelyU!

How are we gonna do it? I want YOUR stories!

Send them - whether it's a story or a picture or a video (uploaded to YouTube) - to me at uniquelyu@helloross.com and I will post them here so that your fellow blog buddies can be inspired to share along with you!

That's right - most of the content on these HelloRoss channels will be user generated (that means from YOU!). So step up and send me an email! I can't wait.

Life is too short, gang. We are what we are what we are. Let's celebrate it.

:)

Ross