This is a bit of a departure from what I usually like to post here, but several people have mentioned wanting to hear about my “dreadlocks journey”. They want to know why I made this choice and what it’s been like, both getting and having dreadlocks. This is my (very long) non sequiter dreadlocks post, often without transitions and very stream of consciousness, because otherwise I’ll never get it posted. Without further adieu . . .

I got dreads because I like them.

I didn’t get them to promote a particular political or social agenda. Pretty much anyone who assumes that I hold to any one set of beliefs based solely on my hair will find themselves sadly mistaken somewhere. My politics are such a conglomeration right now that I’m pretty sure no political party would claim me and I certainly don’t hold a particular affinity for any of them.

I didn’t get them to be a rebel. I suppose I wouldn’t have them if there weren’t some part of me that likes challenging the status quo, that doesn’t mind being the person who makes everyone scratch their heads because I don’t fit nicely into any of their neat little boxes. But I’m not saying a big, “Screw you!” to anyone (Besides, how passive aggressive would that be? I’m more about direct conversation and, if need be, confrontation).

I’m not much of a hippie. I don’t smoke pot. I’m not a uber-practitioner of attachment parenting.

I just like dreadlocks.

Ever since I saw the story of a gal with hair more or less like mine who got them and realized they were a possibility, they’ve felt like a home to me.

I know that many people won’t like them. That’s ok. There are a lot of people out there whose hair style I would never choose, but they’re still my friends, colleagues, the people I do business with and hang out with and love. I hope that people can continue their relationships with me even if they really don’t get what I’ve done with my hair (I also suspect that many people will like my hair more when some of the awful myths about dreads are dispelled).

And about those myths…

• I still shower regularly.
• I still wash my hair.
• I can still dress my hair up if I want or need to.
• I can still look professional.
• I’m not any more prone to lice than anyone else.
• My hair is still healthy.
• I can brush them out whenever I want.
• I can still dye, style, and cut my hair if I want to.
• Dave likes them.

So far, the reactions I’ve heard have been largely positive. There are whole segments of friends who haven’t said anything, and I assume they either don’t care much what I do with my hair, they don’t really get it, or they don’t like it but they assume that I’m an adult and so have the right and ability to make my own decisions about my hair. I’m mostly fine with that. After all, I don’t say much when I don’t like someone’s hair, unless they ask me directly (though, in all fairness, I don’t always notice when people change their hair. It’s just not central to what I see when I see someone.) There are a few people I’m close enough to who I’ll probably ask what they think eventually, but I don’t feel like I need to do that right now.

When it comes to strangers, I’ve only had a few people mention them, and all of the comments have been positive. I’ve had people tell me that they tried them and it killed their scalp, or that they’ve always wanted them. Every once in a while, I see someone looking at me oddly and it takes me a few moments to realize they’re probably looking at my hair. I forget that I have the dreads, sometimes, so I end up returning someone’s weird look with a confused one of my own and usually they look away before I figure out what is going on.

I think a lot of people don’t notice, at least in brief interactions. I usually wear a scarf of some sort and I often pull them back because otherwise they get in my face (just like my hair did pre-dreads). I don’t know if I’ll continue that or if I’ll eventually want to wear them down more, when the kids are older and less prone to play/pull on them. Some of it depends on how they end up looking.

Speaking of which, they won’t always look the way they do right now. They’re new, and they still need to lock up. Once they really start that process, they’ll look better. There will be fewer loose hairs, fewer bumps, and more uniformity. The bare spots will largely get covered and they won’t stick straight out. The whole process will take somewhere between 1 and 3 years, though they’ll look a lot better (and different) at 6 or 8 months than they do right now.

With dreads, it’s about the process. It’s about the journey. It’s about waiting and seeing what happens. It’s about living with doubt and uncertainty and, at the same time, wonder.

You may think “wonder” too strong of a word, but I adore the dreads, and I love watching how they change and developing the skills to care for them well. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and look at the ones that like to stick straight out sideways and I wonder if I should have done it and I still adore them. Sometimes I think they’re already fatter than I wanted them to be and I wonder if my hair will do this right and if it’s normal to have quite this many frizzies and loose hairs and if the roots are really supposed to loosen this much and I still adore them.

This much adoration is probably a good sign. I’ve never liked my hair this much before. To paraphrase Anne Lamott, I finally have really, really cool hair.

As for why now, I chose to get dreads now because the time seemed right. I don’t have a job where I have to make them look good during their awkward, adolescent phase. I have a bit of time to baby them and work with them before the baby comes. We had the money and there really wasn’t anything else that I wanted for my birthday or Christmas or anything else.

I mention gifts because I decided to have them done professionally. It’s a long story, but the short version is that I had a friend try to do them and I tried it myself and I could tell that I’d never get them the way I wanted them and I’d just be frustrated and hate them and get 2 or 3 in and then take them out again.

I chose carefully a stylist who had experience and who would put them in naturally, without wax or a dread perm or anything else. I couldn’t find anyone in my area who would do them the way I wanted for a price that seems reasonable, so I chose to work with Stephanie, in Portland, because I could see examples of her work online and because I could read stories of how wonderful she was as a person and to work with. Mostly, though, going to her felt right. She has a heart that welcomes pilgrims of all types, on all types of journeys, and I felt at home with her.

Still, that meant flying to Portland, which is no small feat with two little folk who need my attention during the majority of every day. With the help and blessing of several people, though, I got it settled. Simon has been struggling lately with being away from me so, while I left him with people he knows and trusts, I didn’t want to be away overnight. Stephanie works fast, so it wouldn’t be a problem as long as everything went according to plan.

I was nervous, though it was more about getting there, about catching all the public transport that I needed to catch, about making sure my maps were good and I had the right address and…and…and…

I got there about 15 minutes before my appointment, and so I went to one of my favorite stores, which was just down the street from the salon where I was meeting Stephanie (Queen Bee Creations FTW – I’d never been to the brick-and-mortar store before but I love their products online). It was calming to wander their little store, to buy a small something for the baby and take a couple of deep breaths and really begin to believe that this might actually be happening.

I think I’d thought about getting dreads for so long that actually doing it seemed impossible.

But then I found Stephanie, found Akemi salon, which was a warm, quirky, welcoming place. I told her what I wanted, showed her pictures, and we jumped right in. It was almost surreal, feeling her separate my hair into sections and start the process of making the dreads.

People say that getting dreads hurts, but it wasn’t particularly painful for me. In fact, I really didn’t notice the tugging. Mostly, I enjoyed talking to Stephanie and watching her hands as they flew through each dread, like they worked on their own.

And then, after just an hour and a half, she was done. I paid her and didn’t realize I was shaking until I hit the pavement outside. It was something about having finally done it, having completed something that, up until then, I’d really only thought about, and having made a change that I’d wanted to make for so long. I walked for a few blocks, looking around, noticing and not noticing the houses and yards and shops around me.

Then I was able to decide what to do with myself. Since I had so much time, I went to Powell’s, which is pretty much one of the world’s most perfect places. I bought books for Dave, wandered a bit, sat a bit, and then it was time to go home.

It felt a bit like coming out of a dream slowly, the traveling back to the airport and then back home. By the time I came home, I felt like myself again, just me-with-dreads. And that’s how it feels now. Some people say that a woman who changes her hair is going to change her life. Maybe that’s true, though I don’t feel like I’m all that different. Maybe the changes happened a while ago, and I’m finally at a place where I can wear them on the outside.

{ 2 comments }

I looked in the mirror this morning and started to say something unflattering about my pregnant-again-3-babies-in-less-than-4-yearsbody. After all, it’s what I usually do.

But today I bit my tongue. I looked at the little blonde ponytail bobbing next to me and I shut my mouth. In that split-second, I didn’t care if I chewed a hole in tongue – I refused to speak those words

I don’t know if I can change the way I see my body. I don’t know if I can ever convince myself to embrace the soft, poochy tummy that means tiny people once slept inside me. But I darn well won’t contribute to her feeling that way about her body if she chooses to have children someday. Not if I can help it.

Lies get inside of us. The lie that I should look a certain way, no matter what, is already entwined in the ways I think and feel. I’ve bought into it, intentionally and unintentionally, and I don’t know if I can get it out. At the very least, it’s going to take some time and some energy to figure out, like untangling a child’s necklace.

Lies get inside of us. The worm their way into our hearts, minds, and into our very souls and take up residence, outlining their territory and building up little monarchies inside of us where they crown themselves king.

Lies get inside of us. We don’t want them to, we don’t mean for them to, and yet we still look up, sometimes, to find that we’re believing something false.

More often than we’re comfortable with, we know that what we’re believing isn’t true. I suspect that most of us have heard (or said!) something that we know is untrue enough times that, suddenly, we believe it. I know I’ve done this with my body. I’ve read the wrong magazines, listened to the wrong people, and even told myself, “I should look different” when I know that my appearance is a direct result of some of the best choices I ever made.

Sometimes we find ourselves assenting intellectually to these oft-repeated lies, but other times we find ourselves simply acting on them, body passing reason by altogether. When I look in the mirror and begin to think and speak critical things about the way I look, I’m not evaluating those things at all. I’m not deciding if they’re true and then whether or not they’re helpful to speak. No, my habits are passing reason by, without even stopping for a heigh-ho. It’s like a short-circuit in the mind.

But today was different. Today, by grace and practice, I was able to pause before I spoke. And that pause helped me – not to tell and believe the truth, because I’m not there yet – no, it helped me not to perpetuate the lie. It helped me to care for her more than I wanted to disparage myself.

The pause, I’ve found, is critical. It’s not a long pause, not even a breath sometimes. Often it’s a split-second where I’m conscious of nothing more than something saying, “NO!” somewhere deep inside.

I suspect that “NO!” is present in so many places where I can’t hear it yet, and I more-than-suspect that it’s inside of you, too.

We miss our “NO!” because of the short-circuit I mentioned earlier. When we act on habit without allowing thought, idea, and reason to play a part, we miss out on hearing our own voice. Further, we often think that we’re hearing our voice in the voice of the lie, which just tangles us up more.

Learning to pause, learning to hear ourselves and separate our own voice from that of the lie we believe, takes practice. It takes mindful, compassionate presence with ourselves even when we fail, and it takes more than that. This morning, when I paused, I felt like something stopped me. This was something outside myself, outside of the patterns that I get myself into, and that wasn’t the first time that’s happened. Pausing, in my experience, often depends as much on grace as it does on my own practice, and yet I’m not sure I’d even notice the grace if it weren’t for the practice.

Practice opens us to grace and grace takes us where practice cannot, and so we learn to pause. When we can take a beat between our habits and our actions, we’ll learn to choose differently, to counteract the lies inside. And when we can do that, we’ll begin to change what the people around us believe. Slowly, slowly, we’ll influence the small worlds around us. The ones we influence will influence others, and then maybe, just maybe, more people will stop believing what isn’t true, just because we paused.

Indeed, it’s positively revolutionary, that pause.

{ 2 comments }

I believe in the miracle of her hands, from tiny clenched fists to clumsy little mitts to capable and drawing and zipping and buttoning.

I believe in the miracle of his smile, how one little boy can win over a room, stop a game of rough and tumble tag, melt a mama’s heart.

I believe in the miracle if her motion, yet unseen, and how it rumbles up from deep in the middle of me, unexpected, welcome.

I believe in the miracle of a man’s heart, how the broadest-shouldered man I know is both the strongest and the gentlest, and how those don’t ever cancel out each other.

I believe in the miracle of light, how letting in the brightness of a day changes us, moulds us into a people softer, gentler, kinder.

I believe in the miracle of kindness, how a word or a touch can change a mood, a day, and even a life.

I believe in the miracle of welcoming, of opening self to self so we can love and live and change.

I believe in the miracle of bravery, that a person can stare down those things that make them most afraid and find glory on the other side.

I believe in the miracle of every day, the one that says there’s gold in these here hills, the ones right in front of us, if only we can find it.

Linking with Imperfect Prose today.

{ 8 comments }

Light is the way the sun shines through the living-room windows in the mornings, and the way we open all the shades even when it’s freezing to get just a little bit more of that heat.

Light is the way the newly-minted toddler talks on the monitor in the mornings, waking up slowly and getting louder and louder as he does. And it’s the way that, when I go to get him, he smiles and points to where he dropped his paci on this particular morning.

Light is the girlie’s face when she’s deep into telling a story, with her animals around her and her imagination spilling out of her mouth in the most amazing ways.

Light is the remnants of the day, just before it’s time to clean up, and the realization that I’ve never lived a life this colorful before.

Light is, and we can choose to see it or to pass it by, to embrace it or to name it something else, something different. But no matter the names we call it, no matter how well our eyes work and how much we let what they see into our lives, light is.

There’s comfort in that, comfort in knowing the light is there even when I can’t see it. Because the light is bigger than I am, it shines on, even when weariness or grief or illness close my eyes, or when sorrow and confusion make me turn away. The light is there, and one day I will see it again.

There is light, I’ve learned, even in the darkest of nights. In those moments of deepest pain, sorrow, shame, when I can’t find my way out, light is still there. It’s about believing that it’s there even when I can’t find it, about choosing to keep believing even when I can’t see.

When it comes down to it, isn’t that most of life, in one way or another? Aren’t we constantly asked to believe in things we can’t see, to choose between two things when we can’t see our way through either of them? Trusting that light is there isn’t any different.

Linking this with Emily today, because it fits.

{ 5 comments }