One of my greatest compliments is being told I look like my mother. I’m grateful to carry her grace and beauty with me wherever I go and grateful to be able to call her my friend—my best friend, to be exact. Catherine Mary is a woman of great intelligence and humor. After one brief conversation with the Brooklyn native, you’ll see she has a tight five-minute set that’s witty enough to land her on late-night television. Just say when and where, Jimmy Kimmel.

I’m entering adulthood and experiencing life post-grad, and like any appreciative daughter, I’m beginning to see my mother with new eyes, not with the eyes of the young girl she raised but with the eyes of the woman I am becoming. I’m witness to her strength, her wisdom, her age. My mother has always been one to embrace her natural beauty (my unwavering self-love is a product of that), but in today’s media landscape, where profits are made on insecurities, I’m so thankful to have her as my role model.

“I don’t dye my hair or look to run away from aging,” my mother told me. Her refusal to dye her graying hair has resulted in a stunning silver sheen. “I remember the grays first appeared as face-framing silver strands when I was in my mid-30s. At that time, I sported a Vidal Sassoon–inspired bob. It was fitting, but as the years passed, the black/almost-blue hair I had become so familiar with since childhood had turned salt-and-pepper,” she said. “Now, at 57, I’ve grown my hair past my shoulders, cut some bangs, embraced the silver, and have never looked back.” My mother isn’t the only woman north of 50 to welcome their gray hair. Fashion stylist Roz Kaur has seen just as much across her client base: “Over the past several years, there has been a noticeable shift. Many women feel that allowing their natural color to come through feels authentic and liberating. Gray hair is no longer something to hide. In many cases, it becomes a beautiful and distinctive part of a woman’s identity.”