I started natural/patience/neglect in summer of 2012 – here it is 2016 and I am still not fully knotted yet. I have to laugh. But still going and this year I finally have enough knots to lose track of the count and have to separate daily to keep things under control.

I had difficulty figuring out how to manage the water here... it's a well and it's just weird water. I figured out with my hair texture (2B/2C wavy, brown/red/blonde, style-resistant) to NEVER use clay of any kind. It absolutely kills my hair–sucks the life out of it– and I had to cut a bunch of fried locks off at the mid-point back a couple of years ago which really sucked... and then I tried a different recipe this spring with much less clay and it happened again. I'm still finding massive tree-like split ends this week (winter) so I might lose my ends again in the coming year. And for shampoos unfortunately Vickie's bars leave a bad residue with my water so I had to stop using them on my head. So for washing these days I use Vital Goods shampoo bars (occasionally liquid) every 2-5 days with diluted ACV rinse and 1-2x per month BS with diluted ACV rinse to clarify because the shampoos still leave something behind. If I do BS too often my hair gets brittle but this occasional use seems to be a good compromise. And at least once per month I try to just soak and scrub everything good with plain warm water and no other cleaning agents, to give the hair and scalp a chemical rest.

I'm sorry there are no photos available right now – I just wanted to jump on here and record the progress before another month or year went by!

If anyone is having trouble with things taking "too long" I'm happy to answer any questions I can... Or just to offer some friendly support. I am happy that I didn't do much to try and speed things up, because it's really become a special journey to me. I've matured and I have been able to take a lot of time to reflect on the symbolism this holds for me, practice letting go of expectations, etc.

Cheers and have a happy new year