Hi all -
Have been lurking on and off for a few months, envying the joy many seem to experience during their "natural" dreadlock journey. My journey, so far, has not been very joyful.
I have a 9mo old micro-managed dreadlike hairstyle, I guess you might say. I had a series of very logical reasons for "needing" a maintained look and fairly quick results while dreading up last June - haha now that I say it, the only thing that is logical is that "maintained", "quick" and dreadlocks don't really go together at all do they? But thats what I did - backcombing, some wax, bands, blunted tips, a couple of deadly looking tools, and so much rubbing and rolling that I have damaged the tendon/ligament between my shoulder and bicep, according to my chiropractor.
My journey has been pretty negative and focused on constantly fixing "problems". They look OK - of course never as good (whatever arbitrary thing that is) as they should, and it seems like I'm forever dreading - pun not intended - some formal event or another because I fear that they'll be having some sort of tantrum that day or someone will disapprove, blah blah blah.
I'd like to turn this experience in a more positive direction. Thankfully I never did bake the wax into my hair - don't own a working blowdryer. And I did a few hot rinses in the first two months, with BS and also with a biodegradable dish detergent. Wasn't faithful in using the pricey shampoo - prefer the BS/ACV because I'm cheap and we use a water recycling system so using toxic shampoos is a no-no anyway. Have been using the yummy bar soap from dreadlocksoap.com since December.
The first thing I'm going to work on is getting any remaining wax out of my somewhat stiff and scratchy ropes of hair. Providing that I have any real knots left in there, what do I do next - haha I guess I should ask what should I NOT do!!
Thanks for a great site with a positive focus
updated by @uma-j: 01/13/15 09:49:25PM