Monday, February 20, 2012

DREADIES ALL GONE!!!


So... they're all finally out!!!  And afterward I wet it all (my water bottle has olive oil in it left from when it was my loc spritz mix) and rubbed some Coconut Oil (which I ADORE) and Cantu Daily Moisturizer. So here's what it looks like. yaaaaay!








Sunday, February 19, 2012

Emancipating My Nappy Roots Pt. 2: PICTURES!!!

This is the 2nd post of two.

Here's the fun part!!! THE PICTURES!!! All pictures will appear in descending order of time taken.

First, a few with my locs....









Now for pictures of the transition

and it begins.... this was the first experiment























Just how long my hair appears to be in the pictures at the top is how long it actually is... at least 2ft long. In some places shorter than 2 ft, in some places 2ft or slightly longer. But with hair texture that many would most likely classify as 4c type hair, when you add water there is hella shrinkage. So, my hair draws back up to seem as short as you see it in the final pictures.

I'll soon post about other natural haired sistas who have provided awesome information on how to transition and how to care for my now free natural hair. I've learned some very INVALUABLE lessons in this short time on how to care for my hair and keep it healthy, moisturized and increasingly more so-called "manageable".

Emancipating My Nappy Roots: a journey in unlocking

This post is going to be in two parts. First, the backstory... and there's a lot of it. Then a 2nd post with pictures of the "journey".

So. I promised myself I would begin this journey probably sometime during the summer. I told my (then) boyfriend - we're not together anymore - first, then trickled down the list of closest friends Nana and then of course, facebook. I had decided that the next stage in my journey of growth would be to get rid of my locs that I'd been growing since sometime near Valentine's Day, 2005. However, I would not be cutting them off. I would be UNLOCKING them.

First the outrage came lol. Comments like WHYYYYYYY and NOOOOOOO etc, etc. Then came folks forbidding me to take down my locs and folks who thought I would be getting a perm. I had to reassure everyone that I'm natural for life... and explain what I would be doing, and why.

It's actually pretty simple. The purpose is to be moving into a new stage in life and the next stage of me. I had had these locs for 7 years. For anyone who knows me anywhere near personally - which few people actually do because I'm just not the type to whine and complain and make myself the victim, etc etc but that's another story for another time - they know at least a morsel of what I mean when I say I HAVE BEEN THROUGH A LOT over the last now 8 years pretty much. One could actually stretch it out to probably a good 10 or more years, in fact or 15. I won't go into the grand details of all the main things that have made my life growing up tumultuous but I will highlight that what caused the most turmoil over the last 8 years or at least since I left home in Newark, NJ to go to college - as the 3rd person to ever attempt to do so and yet the 2nd to do so at a top tier Division I university - at Boston College in 2004 was drama with my biological parents, drama with relationships, family members and myself falling ill from time to time and close loved ones passing away. And yes, you read it right. I got here in 2004... and I'm still here finishing the same degree. So if that's any indication of the craptasticness that's occurred since me being here, then imagine as much as you'd like. Let me just say that for the majority of my life thus far, my parents have been batshit crazy. I grew up one of those kids caught between "family" disputes because my parents were teenagers who had no business doing WHATEVER they were doing and I ended up being raised by my grandparents - again, a story for another time - and there's also all the child support business involved which in and of itself is extremely hairy because my father also owed tens of thousands in arrears because he was a vagrant drug addict till I was about 15 and just an all around deadbeat douche. And then there's my mom who I love with all my heart but my entire life she's been crazy as a bag of cats and vindictive as hell and purposely sabotaged shit while I was in school (and I'm going to leave it at that). Most of that mess I would have never had to deal with if it had not been for the requirements for filing for financial aid... having to use your "custodial" parents' tax information. Apparently, my grandparents never had custody of me. Ohhhhh joy.

So in brief, hella drama with my parents - which actually became a brawl almost to the death between my mother and I, once - that almost drove me insane, court appearances that got so frequent that school administration gave me a leave of absence for nearly two years after my first junior year in college, faculty at BC and North Star Academy (my high school alma mater) assisting me with those court appearances and even testifying - shoutout to Dan Bunch, Mr. Kendis and Mr. V - on my behalf, my final EMANCIPATION from my parents leaving me as an independent student and person altogether, having to always work to support myself because I had no other support - not even gonna go into how ridiculous the child support shit was because even when it was coming, my mother would keep it on purpose -, having built up a life and credit for myself only for my parents' bullcrap to tear it all back down and throw me into huge debt, having periodic illnesses some of which the doctors still have no idea what they were and being left with the medical bills for all the testing for them, shitty boyfriends one of which was sexually abusive and a few of which were psychologically abusive, watching my grandfather who raised me as his own both develop and die from an extremely rare, aggressive cancer, and the same for my uncle and other grandfather, all who helped raise me as their own being more father figures than my actual father ever had.......

THERE WAS A LOT OF SHIT TIED UP IN THIS HAIR! I'd experienced ALL THAT and then some in 7 years. Even an aborted pregnancy.
I'm one of those folks who believes that my energy and the energies of all that I experience is tied up in everything that is in, on and grows out of my body. To that end, I needed to get rid of all that dead hair that contained all that dark energy. I have grown into a place where I am much more stable, have rebuilt almost entirely and have grown TREMENDOUSLY as a wombman! I have grown politically, emotionally, spiritually and many other ways. I have "changed religions" so to speak... tons of things. I was allowed to come back to BC to finally get my degree and this is my final semester. Senior year.... FINALLY! I am an entrepreneur at Omo Oshun Ewa and community organizer among other things. Also, my personal relationship with my biological parents - whereas other folks probably would have given them their ass to kiss after all that - has become much more healthy. That was more-so for myself than for either of them. It will always be a work in progress.



So... down to the "how"... Because after all, you clicked this to learn about HAIR. Not my damn life story LOL! But I didn't want to cut my hair... it had become "my Samson" as I called it. I wanted to experience my hair!!!! My entire life I was a victim of that self-hate that we've been taught as African people, descendants of slaves and all of that, about our own self image. Black women like me my entire life told me about how horrible my hair is. I remember my Nana combing, detangling and pressing it when I was little. She insisted it stay natural. My mother took it upon herself to perm it anyway and the rest is history. So most of my life, my hair's been permed, braided, cut or loc'd. I have never truly known my hair.

I had known since high school that it could be done, just not how practically. A younger teacher in my high school - who never taught my grade - had locs once, while teaching there. I wanted them too at that time but my family being how they are and my grandmother being how she is, that was NOT an option. But I saw Ms. Stoudemire comb her locs out one by one over the course of however many days. So remembering that, and researching the process on youtube and google for weeks and weeks, I decided to finally do it. And I would do it over Xmas break. But I started it actually sometime shortly after New Years because I was tied up doing other things.... and now, a little over a month later my hair is finally free!

Friday, February 17, 2012

What's in that Big Mac???

Every once in a while, I post about the awesome stuff that our government thinks is okay for us to consume OR things that are actually awesome to consume. Today the former.


Would you like to know about the human hair, duck feathers and wood pulp in your average fast food? Welp, here you go:


http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/8-creepy-mystery-ingredients-in-fast-food


This includes nice little excerpts like the following:




2. Sand (silicon dioxide)
Avoiding sand in your sandwich at the beach is obvious, avoiding sand in your restaurant-purchased meal may not be so apparent.
Silicon dioxide, also known as silica (also known as sand!), is used to make glass, optical fibers, ceramics, and cement. Oh, and chili. Used as an anti-caking agent, it is often added to processed beef and chicken to prevent clumping, and is listed in the ingredient panels for chili from both Wendy’s and Taco Bell. Most experts suggest that it isn’t harmful for consumption, but just know that the ingredient keeping that chili meat nice and non-caking is the also the primary component of diatomaceous earth, commonly used as a pesticide.

just saying... You are what you eat....

Friday, December 30, 2011

Vintage Poetry: Doom of the Kind Heart

It gives gives gives,
'till it bleeds bleeds bleeds
but never for itself
the life it pumps is
sucked out by all passersby
and breathed into "love" and
relationships later to be deemed,
unhealthy, destructive, useless, condemned

It gets battered, beaten
and a dozen times broken
by those promising to hold & cherish it
as if it only knew truer lies spoken
if it'd just keep its eyes open
instead of lying in wait, wishing, hoping

But it cannot see,
it cannot leave,
it cannot run,
it cannot breathe,
but simply want want want
and need need need
and care care care
and bleed bleed bleed

reaching for arms with a familiar warmth
feeling the sting of the familiar wrath
leaving it sullen, shaken,
cold, hard, blackened in aftermath
only to be warmed back up
full of doomed life
despite its penetrable fortifications
and its false strength

such domestic violence
goes unchecked
or unseen at all
for who truly knows its pain
as the casualty of a war
that caught it in passionate crossfire
yet it embraces its death
with wreckless naivete
with each new invader
as its selflessness pours constantly
without stopping to ask,
"why must you kill the kind heart?"

full of scrapes, sores, holes,
infested with disease,
refurbished with each new tenant
only to be raped and vandalized,
hasn't it suffered enough?

Rightly so, kill the kind heart
with its insufferable silent suffering,
its meticulous melancholy,
its festering friendships,
its loathed love,
for with its death the body may live,
breathe
see

without the kind heart,
the mind & body are free

So here it lies
from its timely demise
no longer open to be victimized
no more tears to cry
with its nonexistent gauged eyes
yet still it bleeds

bleeds for all those nights of passion
bleeds for ever trusting
bleeds for blissful ignorance
bleeds for neglected and abandoned omnipotence
and with its last drop of blood
prays for compassion and forgiveness




see the original post here: http://www.drytear.net/index.php?showtopic=20285&hl=

Vintage Poetry: Blaze Up

I see you like... the ultimate spliff. I get such a euphoria from everything that i s you. i love nothin gmore than to be me and you, forgetting the rest of the world. i just wanna lie back, and drift away, enveloped in you like i inhaled the biggest breath. just like that breath, every moment and conversation and sensation and touch from you is precious. i hold it as long as i can, allowing it to soak deeper into my very veins. selfishly i want it all, only for me. knowing that i have 2 let go, i exhale, letting out not only the negative waste but the good with the bad because it takes all of it 2gether to make you, as wonderful as you are; thus, that exhale is a reluctant one. after having taken in as much as i can for that brief moment, i have 2 reluctantly pass it on 2 the next; your life is your own and i must realize that even your greatness is too much to be contained by me alone. pains me that i must share. but all of it to myself may be too much. but even when out of my grasp the feeling not only lingers but intensifies as time passes. my head swims in bliss and inebriation, sweeter than can be explained. i am beyond satisfied, but still hunger for more. my mind, body and senses expand like never before. and everytime it comes back to me i savor the brief moments again, only to compound my high. time passes and so does the L. but i am now are with the very thing that intoxicates me. i surpass whatever intent i even thought i'd had; i lose myself in you. i don't know anything else. and when i finally come down from my trip, i still have the greatest memories and sensations. the inevitable hunger and fatigue left in your wake ca only be quenched, though, by even more of you. and i am so thankful for such a thing of beauty, so natural. it must be divinely blessed.


see the original post here: http://www.drytear.net/index.php?showtopic=20291&hl=

Vintage Poetry: Can You Handle It?

Can you stop the pain
That’d been set in stone
From so many nights & days
When I lie, alone
Praying love, to never again
Come calling my heart home

Can you stand by my side
Against insurmountable odds
With poised clenched fists
To, together, battle the storms
But still hold me in safe bliss
As my Black Adonis

Can I be sure
Like the peace passing all understanding
That you are my peace on earth
Reassuring me
Of my precious worth
So I’m sure that
I won’t be hurt

Can you be my contempt’s cure
Giving me strength to endure
The tests I was promised by the forevermore

Can you nurture all of me
Mind soul and body
Putting my thoughts at ease
Making all doubts cease
That my body is yours to please
And tease
In tender touches of ecstacy

Can you handle
The task before you
To be like no other
Willing to do
What no other could
And put yourself through
A gauntlet of passion
Knowing my love is steadfast
Holding me as I would you

Can you ever see
And even comprehend
You & me as “we”
And that my love has no end
When your heart lies with me
Giving myself completely
To make you feel finally free
Strong, tall, grounded, dominant, sexy
As the man you were born to be

see the original post here: http://www.drytear.net/index.php?showtopic=20376&hl=