The Spiritual Journey of Dreadlocks or A Learning not to Be Vain

So, a friend of mine has been writing about her journey with dreadlocks on her blog, Otherwise Quite Good.  She has sadly decided to end her journey with dreads.  As much as I loved her dreads, I understand that it's not a good choice for everyone.  It's going to be a different experience for each person.

In her blog she wrote about the pros and cons of dreads from a newbie perspective.  While I understand that's her experience, at the same time I'm finding that I don't recognize it at all.  A lot of what she's saying is pretty strange to me.  Every experience is different, and I guess mine is very different than hers.

The biggest reason most people I know do dreads is maintenance.  Dreads are supposed to be a pretty easy, care-free hair style.  Of course, when you ask people who have actually had dreads, you get a very different story, depending on the method they use.  They're also an exercise in patience.  I think if it weren't for the dread community I'm involved with on Ravelry, I'd be pretty lost right now.  I certainly wouldn't know what to expect and I'd be doing a lot of things I've now come to realize are just some company's way to make money off people with dreads.  In truth, I'd probably be combing them out by now too.

What most people don't understand is that dreadlocks are a spiritual journey.  It's not something you can undertake lightly.  You've got to seriously think into it before you do it because they're just not going to look the way you want them to any time soon.  They may never look the way you want them to.  It's going to take a while before they even look halfway decent anyway.  It's a long term commitment.  It could take a year or two, and for some people, that's quite some time.  You've just got to have faith that the dreads will come out okay in the end.

I've had to learn the hard way that having dreads means giving up on vanity.  It means letting go of preconceived notions of how we should look.  Yes, dreads tend to look wild and horrible in the first year.  I know a lot of companies that make dread products will tell you that it takes up to six weeks to have great looking dreads, but the reality is that's just not likely to happen.  I've gotten to talk to one woman with fantastic dreads that spent two years watching her dreads go through all kinds of evolutions, shrinking, thickening up, and looking wild.  Mine have been going strong for nearly six months and they've still got all kinds of crazy loops and things.  Some of them are flat.  Some of them have weird little spots that just aren't dreading the same as everything else.  The roots are pretty wild and I've got all kinds of fuzz.  I've attacked them with a crochet hook for the first time, but I'm not even going to attempt to get rid of the roots.  I'm not going to bind them down or crochet them in.  I just want to pull in the loose ends so my hair stays together.  I've picked up a bit of finger rolling, but for the most part, I'm just leaving them to be crazy.

Over the past nearly six months it's been a test of faith.  Because I used the twist and rip method for dreading I ended up having to hold my breath while they nearly fell out entirely at the beginning.  Over time they slowly started to dread up again.  I've been lucky enough to watch my hair grow, not shrink up through the process, but I think a large part of that has to do with the length of the dreaded hair.  Much of my dreads aren't very solid and haven't thickened up much, but I'm sure that will change in time.  I've had a few heart attack moments with my washing routine as too much apple cider vinegar caused my hair to start to slip and come undone.  For the first four months or so I just let my hair do whatever it wanted.  I ended up with one dread eating another, so I eventually went through and separated those that were starting to grow together.  That's pretty much the only maintenance I've ever done.  I've toyed with palm rolling, but my dreads are too narrow and short for that to be practical.  Like I've mentioned, I finger roll now and again, but it's done nothing for the shape and form of my dreads.  It's more just something to do with my hands than something for the appearance of my dreads.  I've got to release that vain side of myself that wants everything to be perfect and beautiful, kind of ironic since I wrote not all that long ago about my own vanity.

The thing with dreads and maintenance is it only takes as much as you let it take.  I know there are some people who are obsessed with it.  They palm roll daily.  I know some who crochet their hair once a month in order to get rid of all the wisps.  There are some people who go in for routine maintenance monthly.  Maintenance on dreads can, in theory, take a lot of time.  If you choose to palm roll daily, or even after every bath or shower, that can take one to two hours, especially if you've got long dreads or particularly thin dreads.  This can be a huge time drain often making people feel as though their dreads are like children, requiring so much time, attention, and care.

Choosing my style of maintenance didn't take much thought on my part.  I know a lot of people refer to them as "dreads by neglect", but the truth is they're really just "au natural" if you really get down to it.  Dreads by neglect are one of three major ways to make dreads.  Backcombing, or backcombing and crochet are the most popular style of dreads.  Twist and rip are far less known about, but they're another common choice.  Dreads by neglect are simply forming dreads by neglecting your hair.  Don't brush it, don't comb it, and eventually it will knot up.  If you want to have some control in your hair's natural sectioning you rip apart and separate the dreads as they start to form, kind of sectioning them as they develop.  It's the most natural way to let your dreads develop, but requires a lot of trust and faith in your hair.  Your hair does what it wants and you really don't know what you'll end up with.

The natural dread maintenance plan pretty much means letting your dreads develop the way they develop.  Some people will let their dreads eat each other, forming massive dreads, but that's not my style.  All I do is rip them apart when they start to blend together and try and pick up the wisps when I can.  Some who use this natural method do use a crochet hook to weave the loose ends in once or twice, but after that wait for the hair to pull in on it's own.  Eventually it will dread.  They don't use any methods to pull the dread closer to the roots.  I've had dreads with two inches of undreaded hair at the root, but over time they've grown closer to the scalp.  Now I just have about a comfortable inch on most of them.  At the most I throw a little bit of nag champa oil in my hair to make it smell nice, especially if it's got a tinge of that vinegar smell right after washing.  Sometimes I use amber oil or dragon's blood for variety.  It doesn't take much and all I have to do is put oil on my hands and rub them into my dreads.  It seems like every time my hair moves the scent subtly escapes for days on end.

Styling has been a little more of a challenge.  I can't just tie my dreads up with other dreads because they're just too short.  I'm still in need of hair ties, scarves, and bandannas.  I have to do something with my hair in the morning because I don't have my friend's luck with gravity solving all.  I look like Medusa or that character from Starcraft.  I'm starting to rely on the things I can do with my hair.  Thankfully my hair is starting to grow so I'm finding I can do more and more each day.  I can finally pull it into a single pony tail!

In the end, I think the most important lessons any potential dreadie should learn is that the process takes time, potentially a lot of time.  It could take a year or two for your dreads to get out of the wild phase.  Maintenance is really not as necessary as some will try to tell you.  The dread product companies will sell you on the idea that you need their products to expediate the process, but honestly, you don't really need them.  The best thing you can do is let your hair do it's own thing and enjoy the ride.  These are the things I'm glad someone told me at the beginning of all of this!  I have to wonder how many other potential dreadies would keep their dreads longer if they only knew what they were getting themselves into in the first place.

I've still got a long way to go.  It's going to be at least six more months, I can figure, before my dreads look anything like I'll want them to, or more accurately, the way they want to.  They're still evolving quite a bit these days.  Maybe I'm unusual, but I love the wild, chaotic look of the dreads right now.  They seem very natural, very wild woman.  It's kind of freeing.  I wash them once a week, but I don't notice any of the scalp problems I've heard reported.  Maybe my hair is just responding really well to the soak I use, or maybe it's just what I'm doing.  No matter how I look at it, this is clearly the right choice for me and my hair!  On top of it all, I really am learning a lesson about myself.  Maybe I just need to stop being so vain.

Sometimes that's the biggest lesson you can ever learn in life, to release yourself from the things that are holding you back so you can recognize a new state of being.  I guess one could say that this is like the hanged man card in tarot.  You've got to look at the world from a different perspective for a while.  As a dancer so much has been built up on appearance.  I was convinced I would have perfect, maintenanced, clean dreads.  They were always going to look fantastic.  I would never have a single doubt about the end result.  Instead of getting what I wanted, I've had to learn to release myself to the outcome.  The dreads will be what they will be and there's nothing I can do but keep faith that they'll be beautiful, just like the other fantastic dreads I've seen before!