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last night on the news there was a segment about a 49 year old woman in ny who went shopping in the nude, after walking into 2 different stores to shop she was arrested. When asked why she went shopping naked she replied "i believe in total and complete freedom". they then took her to a mental hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

I guess there's some irony in this.

If you live in america.. the land of the free..and believe in freedom...

then you must be crazy!

It's been a year now since my life was brought to an abrupt stop due to Fibromyalgia.At first I went nearly mad. I thought I was such a grounded follower of Rastafari haha. I ate only a raw diet and trail run daily after working as a carpenter. Then I found myself in an empty apartment unable to walk or open anything because my hands had no strength and would become locked up. I thought I had been humbled enough by life and was trying my best to learn from this. In the fall my best friend was in a "fatal" car crash and I handled it well until months later as I felt everything was falling around me. It took some to time to get back to myself but upon arriving I have realized the beautiful gift I have been given. Regardless of spiritualenlightenmentI cannever believe that I am right because I am only a sheep haha. Jah knows what's best for me, better than I ever will. Also that Jah will meet us halfway but we have to put in the work as well. I am now back to working full-time doing hard labor. My faith has grown ever stronger and with a combination of 5-HTP (griffonia bean extract), Potassium Chelate, B-Complex, Vitamin D, no tobacco, no alcohol and peace of mind I am able to function daily. I'm no longer running 10-20 miles a day, but unless you're on the run I don't know how necessary that is. I have found that anyone can have faith in the past. But true faith acknowledges the present and believes in the future. We are all family and one energy and there is no need to look behind us for tomorrow is a better day. There is enough love in this world that no one should ever have to feel alone. The gifts that this universe gives us can only be seen if we can look past ourselves, It is truly a beautiful day today and I hope that you all can see it. We never lose our loved ones if we never lose ourselves. We only lose what we chose not to keep. If we listen we find that nothing ever leaves. To quote my brother Ed Jones

"When our bodies die I imagine a rain drop, this tiny drop that is us. Falling back into the ocean."

May you have a blessed day, Haile Bless! - Cameron

P.S. My spiritual beliefsencompass all religions and beliefs. Jah has many names and faces and we all called in different ways,as we are all different people. Siblings never see their father the same More love.

So last Thursday I cut my dreads off. I guess this is sort of a therapy post to vent and stop feeling sorry about it.

I enjoyed having them and was really looking forward to them getting even longer and gnarly, and I was proud to have them, even though even close family and friends never liked or got used to them. I had them about a year and 6 months and not having them is very strange and kind of sad.

It's been a few days now, and I really regret cutting them off. It wasn't something I wanted to do, but I really need to find a job in my field, and over the past year it proved too difficult to manage both, and with so much on the line now, I had to choose. I have I guess a quieter personality and that mixed with my dreads and appearance gave the wrong impression to employers, not to mention family where there is a ton of pressure to succeed.

Cutting them off was a sacrifice I maybe didn't have to make, but decided on to to improve my chances at success professionally. I am in my mid 20s now and i noticed my hairline is starting to recede a little, and having short hair does make me look more professional for sure, so to an outsider it seems like I made the best choice for what I want to do.

I have waves of feeling like I let myself down, but I try to move past losses. Writing about it helps. In a positive light, I am still myself, I can always say I had them, and unless I go bald, they will grow back soon enough. It was only a year and 6 months of waiting and washing, I can do that again. To be technical, the second I cut them, I started growing them back.

If you're ever thinking about cutting yours off, really think about the reasons and what kind of personality you have to deal with the change.. I feel like I made a responsible decision for myself and that feeling is good, but I do feel like I cut part of my identity away with it, one that I will have to grow back slowly. Here's to success, though!

before

after

Also, I guess some tips for starters and things I won't do next time;Do not crochet hook, don't latch hook or back-comb either. I started my dreads by back combing and latch hooking, and even though I didn't over-do it, by the end, i noticed certain hairs were broken because those methods force your hair into dreading too tight. Let your dreads decide where they want to be on your head and don't rush it- it's a long term thing so you don't want them to break or look crappy down the road. Also, the baking soda/peppermint/tea tree wash works, when I cut them they were very clean. I was a little surprised haha, but there was nothing in there but hair.

So yea, in the end, don't cut if you don't have to, even if you think you feel like a little change will help. It's a big change you can't really take back, so make sure you know why you want to do it, and that it's really for the better. Looking forward to having both dreads and success in my life

Hello, It's great to be here!
I've been No-Poo for a little over 5 months now, I've just recently stopped brushing my hair in hopes to naturally grow beautiful locks.
I've been doing quite a bit of research and watching videos and was brought to this site and definitely love what I see.

I do wonder though, I absolutely LOVE my coconut oil and wondered if that would help the process of getting my dreads? Has anyone used Coconut oil?
I'm trying to keep this as natural as possible, But of course, I'm impatient :P
Feel free to add me if anyone likes, I look forward to chatting!

Since I began my dread journey about one year ago, I have experienced a major shift in my consciousness and witnessed many amazing changes in my reality because of this shift in thought. Not all of these changes can be attributed to my dreadlocks, but one significant change has a direct correlation to them, which is the categorization of people based on religious belief, skin tone, ethnicity, working class, and lastly and most relevant to my interests, style (particularly hair style).

This topic is not new to anyone whom is currently reading this because, well, everyone who has ever been in a social environment has witnessed this remarkable fallacy of human thought.This categorical way of thinking is remarkable because, though we are social creatures who are all in search of love and acceptance, we choose instead to build up metaphorical walls around ourselves to barricade us and the few others 'like' us within them, which, of course, leaves everyone else in your life somewhere outside of these walls and susceptible to judgement by you, leading you to push them further and further away from your being. In some cases, you may push people so far from you that you dehumanize them in your mind simply because there are so many differences between you and these people (i.e. resenting homeless people for being homeless even though you know nothing of their personal struggles, or our soldiers resenting the citizens of the countries that they are invading simply because their way of life is so different from our own).

These are blatantly fallacies of thought! We fool ourselves into categorizing people because we want life to be simple, we want PEOPLE to be simple so that we can better understand them, so that we can know before getting to know them whether or not we can relate to them. The truth is that life is not simple and neither are people. The truth is that you can relate to anyone if only you focus on what you share in common with one another instead of what sets you apart... Not all Asians are good at mathematics, just as not all dark-skinned women with kinky hair are crazy, not all business men are soulless prudes, not all environmentalists are 'hippies', and not all dread-heads smoke weed and discuss political conspiracies.

I have met businessmen that have done Ayahuasca with Peruvian shaman, dread-locked brothers and sisters that have gone to school to be businessmen. Each of us has something to bring to the table, some knowledge or trade that we can contribute to better the whole of humanity. When we focus on our differences, we separate ourselves from one another and lose the other's contribution in the process. Instead of having a well-rounded and balanced society, we have a society that prizes science but belittles art; Logic is rewarded while emotion and creativity are suppressed. My hope for those who are reading this is that you will embrace both sides of your mind, using both intuition and intellect to reach and maintain balance within yourself. Namaste`<3

Hi all,

So about 5 weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and start dreading my hair. After quite a bit of reading I decided to go with the Twist&Rip method because it was the fastest way I could find with the minimum damage.

These are the first 3 days of my dreads:

I will have to get some more photo's of the progress but my dreads are starting to loosen up quite a bit and I've researched ways to tighten them up but I can't find any that don't also have extreme consequences.

My hair: I've never been able to style it, it laughs at hair products and tools (curling irons and such); it's always had a mind of it's own and disagreed with everything I've done to alter it (dye it any color, even black, and in no time my natural red-gold highlights are shining brightly through.) So, dreads--it seems this is what my head has been waiting for. It's cooperating so well, with splitting into tinier sections and beginning to dread up with little help. I have been separating some of the bigger clumps, and TNR here and there, but really my hair is happy to be doing this and is moving itself along quite nicely. I've added some beads just for the hell of it, and I salt water spray it a few hours before I wash it (every three to four days.) I am loving it. <3

So as most of you know, I started my dreads as a partial head. I still had A LOT of loose hair in the beginning. Because of the way I started them as a partial, sectioning perfectly never crossed my mind. I literally just grabbed hair and twist and ripped it. Never thought twice about it until now that my whole head has been finished for about 2 weeks now. My sections are all woven together and they all want to congo. I spend a lot of time trying to separate them, and when I don't separate for a day I will have TONS of sections matted together. I don't want them to look real neat or uniform, which is why I like my random sections but it's becoming a pain. The sections are so woven into each other that it's almost like all my hair at the scalp is becoming matted. The only place it isn't matting together, and staying in separate dreads is at the very top of my head because I could actually sectioned it since that portion didn't already have dreads in it.

If this has happened to any of you, or if you have any opinions or things you would recommend me doing, I'd love to hear your idea's!

As much as I would like to avoid taking them out and starting over with neater sectioning, I'm thinking it's almost necessary. Otherwise I feel like I'm going to end up with one big lock coming off my head.

I'll try to attach some pictures so you guys can get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

So im ganna start my dreads today. Should i do a bs wash to start off?

They say ignorance is bliss, but I believe it is a burden. Being close minded about any one subject shows just how soulless a person is, in my opinion anyway. Today, while searching for pictures of beautiful hair and Dreadlocks on pinterest.com, I came across This Photo . The comments infuriated me. I know everyone has their freedom of speech, but I don't understand the point of leaving a negative comment just for the sake of being negative. I was going to look past it until I read further down and came across a comment left by hairstylist. I had to stay something. This subject is so near and dear to my heart I could not pass up the opportunity to possibly open someone's eyes to a new idea. You can read her comment and what I said to the her in the link above, or just read it here:

Enelrahc Etraud
Im a hair dresser & have been for many many many years.. It's impossible to clean you scalp to what I would consider "clean" & the matted hair is just a collection of hair & skin & blanket lint that should have been shed.. I've had the great pleasure of removing them from several peoples head over the years.. & might I add.. I was delighted to do so:)