Hello! New to forum and looking for opinion.
Introduce Yourself
Thank you all for your wonderful support and stories. I didn't realize how personal/spiritual is was for so many people.
I'm already pretty 'natural' in everything but letting my hair (all over, not just on my head). I attend an environmental school that's half full of scientists and half full of hippies, but there's still a lot of judgment here, not so much for dreads/facial hair but for all other places body hair likes to live. While I personally do not like how hair feels on underarms or down below, I wish I had the confidence to grow it if I wanted to, which I lack.
Dreads will pretty much just be me trying out a more natural hairstyle and to take the next step in my journey. I recently started growing a lot of herbs and fruits, and I plan on canning the fruit and making sachets and oils from the herbs, and for use to steep in tea. I practice yoga and I've started hooping. I practice a vegetarian diet, though I am trying my hardest to switch to a mostly raw diet to get those raw enzymes cooked food lacks. I've also given up liquid milk. I want to go backpacking more. I don't buy anything with plastic packaging unless absolutely necessary, only cardboard or glass. I've been buying broken solar cells off ebay, and I'm going to figure out how to repair them.. though I don't know shit about doing so!
I've got books on homesteading and I hope to buy land to practice permaculture and build a fully sustainable cabin once I get my masters degree, which is very far in the future (I'm just really excited about my future home so of course I've drawn up some cabin plans.) I've got some worms that I'm going to be composting with once they multiply enough. I'm going to be making my own drum so I can do drumming circles with my friends who do such, buying one just doesn't feel right.
I've always been okay with other persons being nude, but always self-conscious myself about my body... I'm an illustrator and painter and find the human form beautiful, and decided to take a leap and I've done some nude modeling photoshoots now, and I'm going to pose for art classes in the future. It's hard to be self-conscious about your body when you know that even though it's not society's construct of beauty that an artist (photographer) sees it as something expressive, natural, and beautiful. And that's reflected through the gorgeous photos you collaborate with the photographer to produce.
I just want to keep pushing myself to someone I'm happy with being so I can meet my own eyes and feel proud of who I am, instead of just settling to be content. 'Content' and 'settling' are concepts that terrify me.. I never want to do such. My parents have, and most everyone else I know. And they just don't seem happy with their lives, they all wish they had followed their dreams instead of doing what they 'thought' would bring in money and making them happy, or they got stuck in the consumerist style of buying things, needing a large house to keep their things in, and working 9-5 jobs to pay off their house and things.
(Congrats if you made it through my mini-novel above!)
Dreads just seem like the right next step for me. Whether I decide to keep them long-term is debatable, but even if I do so I am reverting to using shea oil, beer, and apple cider vinegar to wash my hair and keep it healthy. No more of this lauryl sulfate and parabens. Your guys positive feedback on your dreadlocks has made me decide I need to at least give them a go. I'm going to do some twist and rip halfway down my hair as my hair when it tangles doesn't really dread so much as mat into one enormous pancake. Then let nature take it from there. (I've watched a lot of youtube videos that talk about bad pain and balding when going all the way with twist and rip.) I've got one tiny dread now just from trying to figure out how twist and rip is done last night, and it's come out quite a bit but near the top it's holding together so I'm just going to let the rest do what it wants there.