"real" meaning of dreads/king solomon?/negative encounters
General Questions
Or like Johnathon= Yehotnaton
Or like Johnathon= Yehotnaton
I learned all about that story. Never heard of him called Shimshon, though
I noticed that. That's why I deleted my post about it. I thought so, but wasn't sure when I wrote it. Then I checked and felt like I should just delete the post
I wish I knew more about king Solomon. I grew up in a jewish home, but never got the whole picture. Just the stories they push on you in hebrew school when I was 10. I;d have to look deeper into that one. But people have been known to have locks before his time anyway. Ancient Egyptians wore them. Prechristian Irish and Normans had them. People from all over the globe before and after the times of the old testament wore their hair in locks for one reason or another. So for that person to single out King Solomon is a bit short sighted on his part. Luckily he did not get aggressive with that conversation. If so, you could just say that you don't know and would need to go home and research it. But that you still have yours for your own reasons. I think you handled it well. Yeah, just keep smiling. Someone else's beliefs are not of your concern. As long as neither of your beliefs don't stop your from being civil and respectful of each other, if not even being friends, don't worry about it.
I do I do. I just checked, I have about 1/2 a jar left. If you use it lightly, you should be able to get a few weeks to a month out of it easily. If you didn't yet, message me with your address and I can probably get it in the mail in the next day or 2
If you star now, and are doing it naturally, I would assume that there is a hint of, if not entirely because of, spiritual desire. Most people who go the natural route are doing it for spiritual effects, rather than stylish ones. In that case, you should explain it to your boss just to ease the idea on them. But in reality, (sorry, I didn't check if you lived in the US or not) you are protected from being fired on the grounds of the first amendment. The freedom of religion covers "spirituality". The US census has a box to check off for that, so the government recognizes it.
That all said, yeah start now. Start washing 2-3 times a week with the BS soak and then follow it with a plain water rinse and then the ACV rinse. Shorter hair does tend to lock up a bit slower, just because there isn't as much hair to tangle, but you never know until you start. But Val's right, like usual, that you will see much less shrinkage with shorter hair than longer hair. If you waited till it was 6 inches, you'd probably be waiting almost another year to start. in that year, if you started neglecting it now, you'd have pretty mature locks. Why wait. They might be short when they mature, but they will be mature. And I've noticed, from my own experience, that once mature, my locks have grown much faster than when my hair was straight
The burts bees is not a good idea. Burts bees usually contains come type of hydrocarbon. Their shampoo has glycerin, which softens your hair by leaving a slick residue that will not wash out easily and will build up over time
Wax is the furthest thing from natural locks. In fact, it will prevent them from locking all together. Those who used wax find that even after years of having dreadlocks, they can still pull them apart by hand and them just palm roll them back together. Real locks need hours and hours of conditioning and brushing to remove them from maturity.
The next worst thing you can do is use a crochet needle. These only break your hairs into smaller and smaller pieces. In time the hairs at the tips of your locks will not be connected to your scalp anymore. They will be connected to more broken hairs, which are connected to more and so on. Finally they will connect to hairs in your scalp. This weakens the integrity of your locks and tends to tighten them so unnaturally that they can actually just snap off from very little tension.
If you want natural locks, just let your hair be. Stop brushing/combing it. Wash often (1-3 times a week) with non residue soap, and start separating as needed when they start to knot up. Some people see amazing progress within a few days to a week or so. Some people (myself included) don't see much progress for a year.
Check out the recovery forum for ideas on how damaging wax and crocheting is. And check out the timeline forums for ideas on how other people are coming along. You might even find someone with hairtype like yours to compare to
If you just see it getting more and more tangled, that's a good sign. I don't see it slowing down the process at all. What you might want to keep an eye on, though, is them tangling together too much. Much separate them when they start to grab hold of one and other. And keep an eye on it
The rubber bands shouldn't stay on longer than a few hours when you wash them. If they stay on for days or weeks on end, you run the risk of them being sucked into the lock. They can and will rot inside and can cause mold problems. But they really aren't needed at all. They do more damage than good if you leave them in long term.
And palm rolling only does 1 of 2 things. 1) It will do nothing. if you notice, you need to palm roll them every day or so. This means that none of the times you rolled them did anything. They just get frizzy again. So why do it. It won't harm them if you only do it once in a while and lightly, but that bring me to #2) If you palm roll every day for even 10 minutes a day, you can and will irrevocably destroy your locks. I have a video of me showing what a few weeks of palm rolling has done to my locks. They are 6 years old in the video and still are so damaged at the roots that I worry every day about them snapping off just from their own weight.
Palm rolling might seem like a good idea because a few people say it is, but in the end, you are actually rippin gout hairs that are needed make your roots strong. Then you are rolling them and tangling them into the lock. What this does is add more weight to the lock because every hair stays in the body of the lock. But while you are ripping out those hairs and adding them to the body of the lock, you are ripping them out of the root system that is supposed to support that weight. As time goes on, and you keep ripping out hairs and not allowing the root system to thicken up, you run the risk of the lock just falling out because of the excess weight. It might not seem like much at first because 1 or 5 hairs aren't as noticeable, but in a year, you will see that your roots are SO much thinner than the lock. This is a bad sign. Just that weight being pulled on such a thin root will prvent your lock from moving freely enough to tangle with other hairs to strengthen the root. You will have to go to artificial means to wrap loose hair around the root and pray that in a few months it will be tangled enough to start fixing itself. But like I said, after 6 years my roots on the 4 locks that I palm rolled in the beginning are still so thin and the lock is so thick that I expect it to either fall off on it's on in a few years or be yanked off in my sleep at any time