One day, out of the blue, dreadlocks popped into my mind. I immediately began looking at pictures of people with dreadlocks online and then doing some research on them. I grew up in New Orleans, LA, so I always saw African Americans with dreadlocked hair. It was a popular style in middle and high school, from what I can remember. At one point I dated a black guy with dreads.

I'm asian with very fine, straight hair. I started to wonder how I would look with dreadlocks. I wondered if my hair would be able to lock, as well, butI really loved the way they looked!I hadn't seen many non-black people with dreadlocks, but the fewI had seendefinitely stuck in my mind forever. I thought it looked so awesome! But I never thought at the time of seeing them that I would ever want dreadlocks.

I began researching extensively beginning in June of 2011. My daughter had gone off to her grandparents' house for the summer, so I had plenty of quiet time to ponder life. The whole time she was there, I searched high and low for any and all the information I could get on dreadlocks. I looked at videos, pictures, and read things. I found dreadlockssite.com and never looked back. It was quite difficult to find a site thatdidn't promote wax or going to a salon in some shape or form. From the stories I've read here, it seems as if NONE of the people in salons knew a lick about product-free or organic dreadlocks at all! They only know theirproducts and whatnot, but dreadlocks? No. So many horror stories of failed, EXPENSIVE dreadlocks says a lot about "locticians"! PUH! (Venting, sorry.) Anyway, back to my journey!

After about2 months of research, I decided in August 2011 to twist and rip my hair into baby dreadlocks! This was about a week before a new semester began, so I was a little...nervous, but ready. I actually got a compliment the first week! Anyway, after about 2 months, in October 2011,my baby dreads loosened to where all my hair was straight again! I blamed it on the apple cider vinegar (ACV) rinse, since it's quite conditioning, and I didn't dilute it. My hair has always been quite straight and silky, so although I was careful when washing and rinsing, the dreads still didn't hold, probably because of my hair texture.

Okay, soI redid my whole head, twist and rip. After another month, the bottom layer of baby dreads came loose and straightened. The top 10 or so dreads, however, stayed, somewhat, in the form ofclumps of knots maybe an inch below the roots. Anyway, when this happened, I got tired of twisting and ripping and always looking in the mirror, trying to do what i could to fix them, or style them. I decided to stop all that andlet the rest of my hair dread naturally, by neglecting. I hadaccepted that my hair would do what it wanted to do.

One good thing about all this is that through all the falling apart, one dread on the top of my headpersevered and appeared to be quite mature. I'm assuming it was the only survivor from the first set of baby dreads, and it gave me a small piece of hope to hold onto, or to wear on my head :P I now knew that one day, through patience, I would soon have more and more dreads beginning to mature. Soon, enough, today, actually, I discovered that yet another dreadlock from the top is showing signs of maturity! Yay! I'm loving the journey so far, as my dreads have done a lot of changing since the beginning, and will continue to change over time. I love my messy hair, although mature dreadlocks are gonna be so beautiful and organic and spiritual! <3

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my dreadlock journey thus far.Peace and Love! :D