Guest Post: Why I Decided to Comb Out My Dreads

Today's post comes from a college friend of mine, Simone. She was always one of my favorite loc rockers and when I saw that she chopped the locs, I was like, "Wow! Gorgeous!" I wanted to get her hair story to share with the Loc Rocker family. A lot of us may not understand why loc rockers suddenly chop their hair, and while it makes complete sense to me, Simone's view may provide some perspective.

Why I decided to comb out my dreads

I started dreads about 1 year after going natural. After all of the initial unfavorable criticism, people fell in love with my dreads as they grew, and I did too. I remember when I used to stare at other women with long dreads wondering if and when I’ll ever reach those lengths and I did! I got what I thought that I wanted…Long, healthy, gorgeous dreads. Unfortunately while others grew more in love with them, I slowly fell out of love with them. I think the switch flipped in my brain one morning when I was washing my hair in the shower and realized how tired my poor arms were getting. By this point I was about 4 ½ years into my loc journey. My dreads became a chore to me. They were HEAVY. I had a headache because they were heavy. They took too long to wash. A once-a-week wash wasn’t sufficient anymore. They started getting caught on my purse. I would accidentally lay on them. I had to put them up every day for nursing school, which was not my style. I was too tired to curl them because I was tired from washing them. The list goes on. I got dreads because there were convenient and this was NOT feeling convenient.