unravelled

It's been a couple of months now since I went to Portland to get dreads. A lot has happened in those two months. I've followed dread journeys of two others before going to start my own. My friend Denise, and the lovely Sara. Both of them talk about how their journey with dreads parallel their lives and their personal journeys. Sadly, the same is true in my case.

My dreads started going crazy after just over a week of having them. I knew they would go through wild stages, but I had some pretty reckless loops of undreaded hair coming out. I tried to wait it out, thinking it would get better over time, and I scoured the internet (mostly flickr dread pools) for others who have experienced the same thing. I wished I were closer to Stephanie so she could take a look and help manage my crazy mess. I finally found Evelyn, an experienced dread stylist in Santa Cruz (about an hour & a half away from me) and made an appointment to see her. Brooklyn and I went to see Evelyn one day and hoped that she could tame my locks.. but after a careful observation of my dreads, she recommended combing them out and starting over. She said she could try to work with them if I wanted, but that it would likely take at least 5 hours. I decided to go home and start the work of combing them out.

(these photos were taken a week or two before going to see Evelyn... it actually got much worse, but I don't have photos of the final stage before I combed them out.)

(about half way through combing out... there were still a few in the back... it took about four days.)

Meanwhile, as my hair was coming unravelled, my marriage was too. Joe moved out this week. I'm not going into details here but I did want to let you know that this is happening. Please keep our family in your prayers, especially our four children: Brooklyn (nearly 13), Zeke (turning 11 on Sunday), Mercy (4) and Judah (2).