06/14/2026
Being a Redhead
Tonight, My boys and I went to the Saskatchewan Roughrider home opener.
As we sat in the stands surrounded by Rider Nation, a memory surfaced that I hadn’t thought about in years.
It’s funny how healing works like that.
The memories don’t disappear.
They wait until you’re finally ready to understand them.
I was a little girl.
My mom, my sister Nikki, and I are all redheads.
We were sitting in the old bleachers at “Taylor Field.” I remember it being cold and rainy. We didn’t go often, so this felt like a big deal.
And on the cheerleading squad was a redhead.
Back then, redheads seemed rare.
At least it seemed that way, when I grew up.
So naturally, I watched her.
Not because she was a cheerleader.
Because she looked like me.
Then at one point, the ball bounced and hit her.
And from behind us, some loud guy yelled:
“Kill the bum, he hit the redhead!”
I still remember it.
Decades later.
That’s how deeply some childhood moments imprint themselves.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand why it stuck with me.
I just knew someone had noticed her because she was different.
And by extension, they noticed me too.
Growing up as a redhead in the 80s and 90s wasn’t exactly glamorous.
We were “gingers” before it was cool.
The comments were endless.
The jokes.
The stereotypes.
And as I got older, the questions became sexualized.
Questions no teenage girl should have to answer.
Questions that made me feel self-conscious about parts of myself that were never a problem until someone else decided they should be.
But here’s the thing.
At home, my dad told a different story.
He told Nikki and I that our hair was special.
That people spent hundreds of dollars trying to recreate a colour that nature had already given us.
That you couldn’t buy our shade in a box.
That we should never be ashamed of it.
That we should be proud.
Somewhere along the way, I lost that confidence.
I dyed my hair blonde.
I tried to blend in.
I tried to hide the wisdom sparkles that have started appearing over the last few years.
But lately, I’ve been finding my way back.
A little less blonde.
A little more red.
A little more me.
And what’s funny is that strangers comment on my hair all the time.
At restaurants.
In grocery stores.
Even tonight at the Rider game.
And every single time it happens, I think about that little girl in the rain.
The one watching the redheaded cheerleader.
The one who was still trying to figure out if being different was something to hide or something to celebrate.
At 48 years old, I finally know the answer.
It’s something to celebrate.
Always.
Dad was right.
A little side note…
As I sat in the stands tonight, I realized something.
This memory is exactly where the name Wild Ginger Rising came from.
Not from my hair.
Not from being a redhead.
But from finally reclaiming the parts of myself that I spent years trying to shrink, hide, blend, soften, or explain away.
The wildness was never chaos.
It was authenticity.
It was the fierce, untamed parts of me that existed long before life taught me to make myself smaller.
And the ginger?
Well… that’s obvious. ❤️
Tonight, sitting in Rider Nation, I remembered that little redheaded girl watching the cheerleader who looked like her.
The girl who was trying to figure out if being different was something to hide.
Forty years later, she finally knows.
It isn’t.
It’s something to rise into.
Wild.
Ginger.
Rising.
