What Locs Mean to Me

Today, I wanted to talk about my loc journey and what it's meant to me so far. Locs have become a bit of a trend over the past couple of years, especially with the pandemic. Despite this, every head of locs is unique and no two are the same. I wanted to weigh in on my experience.

My locs took about a full week to install, due to me working 40 hours a week at the time. I started the process on July 19th, 2021, four days after my 23rd birthday. I finished the installation on July 23rd. The method I chose was two start twists, and I did them myself.

Now, I had wanted locs since I was about 15, but back then my hair was heavily policed. I had limits on what I could do, so I decided to wait until I was either older or was out of my childhood home, whicever came first. I really could've started them in college, but I was already going through a transitioning journey (relaxed to natural) with my hair and didn't want it to be too much. That was 2016 - 2020.

Summer 2021 came along and by this point I decided that I was tired of what felt like constantly doing my hair. Everything couple of weeks I was installing a new style because personally, I don't like to leave protective styles in longer than a month. I was set to start graduate school in the fall, I was moving to NYC to be with my beloved, and I really needed a change. I was already making a huge change to my life, so why not add a "major" hair decision to go with it? (I put major in quotes for a reason, we'll get to this later on.)

So from July 19th onward, this was my daily routine:

Get up in the morning

Go to work

Come home

Eat

Work on my hair until my arms hurt & Go to bed

It's hard to describe how I was feeling when I finished up that final twist. Looking back, I'd say it was a healthy combination of excitement, doubt, happiness, and inspired.

Did you expect me to mention fear?

Oftentimes, I hear folks talking about how scared they are to start their loc journey. While I can understand this on a surface level, I really can't relate to it. Granted, I was never one to be afraid of experimenting with my hair, and that didn't change once I started my locs. I certainly had doubts in my ability to commit to the journey early on, but here I am typing this almost two years into the journey. I think that at least part of what helped me commit is being fully aware and comfortable with what I wanted out of a loc journey.

There are people out there who have locs for purely spiritual reasons, there are some who have locs for purely aesthetic reasons, and there are some people that fall in between. If you're a part of the community, you know that there's a bit of discourse surrounding this. I didn't know where I fell within this spectrum in the very beginning, and that stressed me out - so much so that I considered ending my journey prematurely on more than once occasion. A lot of this stress came from the unncessarily pressure to NEED my locs to have a spriitual connotation that they just didn't have. While I was on a spiritual journey at this point, I was trying to force so much uncessary energy into my hair that at the time, it didn't have the compacity to handle. Mind you, I only fully dove into this around the time I started my locs, and I rushed into a lot of things. My practice is on hiatus for the time being, but I feel that when I do start up again, my hair will be in a better place to accept and receive the energy now that it's mature.

I also had to remind myself of the purely mundane reasons behind my hair choices: easier to manage, budget friendly, and aesthetics. With that said, I feel comfortable saying that I fall somewhere in the middle. My locs have a direct connection to my self esteem, which is what a lot of my practice was focused on, so in that sense they still have a spiritual connection to me. The loc journey is not only physical, it is also emotional, and I've never loved my natural hair more than I do now.

Back to the term "major." I consider myself to have made many "major" hair decisions, to it's hard to just pick one:

I've dyed my hair every color under the sun,

I've probably taken scissors to my hair more often than Edward Scissorhands had clients.

I've had almost every hairstyle that isn't a mohawk. I've literally done it all. The only thing I've never done is shave my head, and I have considered that too.

In part, while my hair has a direct link to my self image, it's also just hair to me. It grows. No style is really ever permanent. If I decide I want to comb out my locs tomorrow and go back to my afro, I can. That's the beauty of Black hair. It's so versatile.

The funny thing is that I feel like I couldn't have said this even a year ago. Locs are really a lifelong lesson. I'm grateful to keep learning. That's what locs mean to me. Black excellence. Black beauty. Self love.

Thanks for reading.

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If you'd like to follow my loc journey, follow my Instagram: @lifeloveand_locs.