2-Year Anniversary

Incredibly, it's been about a year since I've blogged about my locs - tsk, tsk, tsk. And probably the only reason that I'm able to now is because I'm in between jobs. But even being off from a traditional 9-5 since early September, because I'm the kind of person who always has something going on (oftentimes too much!), it's still taken me a while to get to my blog. However, when I realized I was coming up on 2 years being Sisterlocked (Dec 8), I thought "okay BlessedGem, hold the presses; you simply must take time out for an update".

So here I am, at a place in time that once I thought I'd never experience. For newbies who may be as impatient as I was, it really does happen. A year finally gets here and then, before you realize it, two years have crept up on you. In the beginning, I was all about the SLs. Don't get me wrong, in a very real way I still am. Most days I love and adore my hair. On the rare occasions that I don't, it's because all I think I can see are my bunched ends (a result of my stubborn need to cover my patchy gray). But even when I think I'm having a "bad hair day", those are the days that I usually get the most compliments. Ironically, I think the decrease in my every day involvement and concern for my locs is because they've achieved my purpose in getting SL'd in the first place ... so that I could have beautiful hair with minimal involvement. Hair that would do it's own thing and stay beautiful without requiring me to jump through hoops. Shake it out and go -- y'all with SLs know exactly what I mean. ;-)

So ... even though I'm not completely locked yet, I'm happy, joyous and free with my SLs. Speaking of not being locked yet, last month my consultant suggested that I go back to banding and braiding - bummer! If you read my other blog posts here, you'll know that I started with about 3" of natural hair and the rest (about 5"?) was relaxed. Well, the relaxer was cut off at the beginning of this year and to my surprise, it was barely noticeable in terms of length, I loved it!! But because I chose that route to SLs, and because of my hair type/texture, I'm just now experiencing the process of the ends (ever so slowly) closing up, budding on the ends, all of that loc chemistry going on. It's truly amazing. I really enjoyed the few months I didn't have to band & braid, it was so freeing. But I'm willing to do whatever I have to do to work with the locking process and, once again, I didn't find it as difficult to go back to b&b-ing as I thought I would. I guess after doing it for so long, I just got right back into the routine.

If I've learned nothing else from this process, it's been "patience" and "enjoy the journey". Otherwise, I'd go crazy only focusing on the goal and wondering when (and if!) my locs and I will ever arrive to lock-dom. So overall, I'm just enjoying every day of freedom I get with my SLs. With a wealth of great stuff going on in my life, I'm so thankful that I don't have to figure out how to fit in a lot of time to make my hair look wonderful. Thanks to SLs, it just does.

Umm, for those that are new to SLs, I should probably state for the record that my locs don't just naturally curl like this (oooh, that might be nice though). This "do" is the result of just simply taking a section of my hair, spritzing it with Lotta Body setting lotion or Taliah Waajid's "Tight Hold" styling gel, separating that section into two and twisting it (hanging twists similar to hanging plaits), then rolling it about 1/3 of the way up with a SoftSpike curler. Actually, the day that I went to style it, the plan was to take out the SoftSpikes and then undo and finger comb through the twists. Well, taking the SoftSpikes out was as far as I got because I actually liked the way the twisted sections looked just staying hanging & twisted! Wish I'd taken a picture, but it was kinda cute, especially since I haven't had to report to an office during this time. The last couple of days I just pulled some of the twists back into a scrunchie, giving the style yet another look. Then, as I was getting ready to visit my best friend today, I remembered my SL-anniversary and thought it would be a good idea to ask her to take some pics for me ... so this was the first time I'd taken the twists out since I'd set them a week ago. I definitely plan on wearing those twists again.

Didn't my best friend do a great job taking these pics? See, I keep tellin' you, I'm just blessed comin' and goin'. :-)