I'm doing it. I'm posting about my CURLY HAIR JOURNEY.

When I left American for Ireland, I had sort of wavy hair that I wished was either straight or actually curly.

2007

Well, somewhere along the way I had to accept that my hair turned... curly. Like, doesn't want to be anything else, will freak out if you brush it curly. Once I accepted this, I realised I needed to figure out a whole new way of doing my hair. So that's when my research started in earnest. And here's my hair today, after being air dried. See what I mean?

2018

Now that I've done the research, read all the blogs, and watched all the youtube videos, I'm going to pass on what I learned with you.

OK SO! It's very easy to sort of get caught in a black hole of curly youtube videos - there are so many youtubers talking about their methods. LUCKY FOR YOU I have watched a million of them and I can tell you some which I think are helpful.

This lady, Curly Susie, has some good videos for beginners, like this one on how to start using the curly girl method:

EASY/OVERSIMPLIFIED Curly Girl Method for Newbies

Some people think that the Curly Girl method means you don't wash your hair. THAT IS NOT TRUE. I wash my hair! It's really about finding the right products. The first thing is to make sure that your shampoo and conditioner is sulfate and silicone free -- you'd be surprised which ones are/aren't 'curly girl approved' -- for example, most of the LUSH shampoos have a sulfate as the first ingredient! 

You don't have to spend a tonne of money, though you easily can. Here is a list of products that should be easier to find here in Ireland (well, UK, but you know...some of the same shops) It turns out that this gel from boots is curly girl approved and is super cheap at 1.50. I used it for a couple of weeks and I thought it worked great! I did have to use a little bit more than some other thicker gels, but I really liked it and you can't beat the price. (It turned out that I was massively allergic to it, sadly.) I use Giovanni shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioner, and gel.

BEWARE: A brand might have some 'curly girl approved' products, and some NOT approved products, so check ingredients with a website like Curlsbot or IsItCG.

The second thing is to use an old t-shirt or microfiber towel instead of your regular towel. And always plop! Don't twist the hair in a turban. Here's how to do the plop:

Basically the idea behind the curly girl method is to use a gentle shampoo or cleanser ('no poo'), a good moisturising conditioner, and then two products: a leave-in conditioner and then a curly-girl approved gel or mousse. The leave-in conditioner just adds that bit of moisture, and then the gel/mousse locks it in and gives the hair a shine and eliminates frizz. In the old days, you'd have that spaghetti hair gel look, but nowadays gels don't leave that shine.

Now, what I've found is do not be afraid of product. I have really fine hair, and some products weigh my hair down. However, I can use loads of the right products, and in fact going heavier has lead to great results for me. I really like the method used in this video:

The trick is often called 'scrunch the crunch' -- once your hair is dry and your curls are nice and frizz-free, you just scrunch the hair a little and it releases the gel cast on them, so they feel soft again. 

How to create a gel cast:

So I shower, squeeze the excess water out of my hair, put my leave-in conditioner in, then the gel, and then plop my hair. I leave the towel on for about 15 minutes.

Then, I just take the towel off, part my hair where I want it with my fingers, and then go. I try not to touch my hair again until it's basically dry. Then I scrunch the crunch with my head upside down, give it a little shake, and voila!

A lot of people swear by the co-wash method ('washing' with conditioner instead of shampoo) and I think it's great, but even if you go down that route, you should still wash with proper shampoo every couple of weeks. For me, I co-wash every other time that I am wetting my hair in the shower, alternating with a gentle shampoo. So it goes co-wash, skip a day or two, shampoo, skip a day or two, co-wash, and so on. I just find that I enjoy shampooing and my hair gets filmy and weighed down if I don't shampoo once a week or so.

If you live in an area with hard water like I do, there are also clarifying or "chelating" shampoos that get rid of mineral buildup. Here's a blog post from curly cailin about when to use one of those.

Oh also the best thing to avoid frizz is DON'T BRUSH YOUR HAIR. This one was hardest for me, especially because often my hair is only wavy and not curly. I'd think surely I can brush it a wee bit. NO. It gets super frizzy and then I have to wet it down again to get rid of the frizz.

I hope that's helpful to you on your hair journey! 

You Won’t Meet a Girl in the Homestead, a short story by Angela Coraccio

   B looked in the mirror to check the equilibrium of his tie knot. Removing a comb from his right pocket, he ploughed its teeth through his auburn hair, thick and shiny with brylcreem. The strands of orange hair yielded narrow rows. “Come on, Johnny. Let’s go,” he hollered at the ceiling. Johnny, a boy of ten or eleven with a halo of blonde curls, bounded down the stairs. “There you are, now,” B said, satisfied. “Didja go before ya go?” Johnny nodded. “Ok, then.” B opened the door and the two spilled onto the footpath. Johnny ran ahead, skipping toward the gate. B walked past him to let them both through.

   They headed down toward Cabra Road. “Where we going?” Johnny asked as he took two steps for every one of B's. “For a walk,” B said. They swung right at Anamoe. Johnny strained to see whether a boy in his class was home as they went by, but the house showed no signs of life. He ran to catch up. B nodded to the neighbour, Mrs. Brady, who swayed toward them from side to side. “Lovely day, what, Mrs. Brady?” She looked at the sky. “Rain tomorrow, though,” she said without breaking the beat of her pace. “Her ankles are thicker than her feet!” Johnny whisper-yelled when they’d only barely passed her by. “Did you see that?” he asked.

“Quiet yourself,” B said. He walked on. He could feel tiny beads of sweat starting to crawl out of his pores, so he slowed his pace slightly. By the time they reached Grangegorman, Johnny was officially bored. “What do the crazy people do all day, anyways? Do they get their own rooms? Do they tie the people up? Have you ever been in there? Podger’s granda was in there but he never said antin about it to Podger.” He picked up rocks along the way and tried to throw them at birds. “Do you think he was shell shocked?”

   B cleared his throat. It made a hut huh sound. “It was just a nervy kind of thing,” he said. “He wasn’t himself.” Johnny wondered what that meant: he wasn’t himself. “If he wasn’t himself, who was he?”

   “You know what I mean,” B said as he exhaled the air from his lungs. They turned onto North King Street and walked the length of it to Church Street, where B stood on the corner and looked around while trying not to look like he was looking around. When it appeared no one took notice, he turned around and headed the way they’d just come along North King Street. Johnny followed.

   Their mother’s words echoed in B's head: “You won’t meet a girl in the Homestead!” His eyes roamed the footpaths, front gardens, and windows for P L. P L. She had Greta Garbo looks and a way of laughing with her right hand outstretched that could make you weep with desire. A few weeks before, he was in town, having cycled in after a particularly pointless wander around the Botanic Gardens. He looked up from his feet to see her smiling at him, as if she’d noticed him for a good long while and was amused at his distractedness and attention to the ground. She told him she’d just gotten off work. She looked at him conspiratorially from underneath her tilted hat. “Where are you headed?”

   “Oh, just...home.” B was headed nowhere whatsoever, but he didn’t want to highlight his unemployment, his aimlessness.

   “Let’s stop off for a drink. Come on!” But he knew he had to say no. “I’m sorry P -- my pockets are empty.” He put his hands in his pockets and felt around, as though a coin might magically appear. He hadn’t got a pound to his name. “Nonsense, B!” P grabbed his arm. “I got paid today. What’s mine is yours!” And with that, she stuffed a note into his pocket. He thought he might die from shame, but he wanted to be with her more than he wanted his pride. She slid next to him in a booth at Edwards’ Café. They drank two cokes each. He walked her home as slowly as possible. Her voice bounced against the buildings of Bolton Street like bells at Christmas mass. But then, they lost touch. That was nearly six weeks ago. Six long weeks.

   When B and Johnny reached the opposite end of the street at Blackhall Place, they stood on the corner once again. “I’m hungry,” Johnny said. 

   “We’ll go down the street again and I’ll buy you a sweet at Prendervilles, ok?” Johnny ran ahead in reply, jumping and skipping down the crumbling footpath. B wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. He never saw P L again.

   As so many did in those days, P made her way to Wales. There, she would meet a man from Malta, marry him, move to Valletta, and have two children. “You know, she probably thought Johnny was your son,” Dolores, the neighbour, would say. He pictured little Johnny, sprinting up the road ahead of him. Perhaps it was true. It didn’t stop Johnny dying of pancreatic cancer before either of them got to old age. B continued to  walk the same streets of Dublin. The faces of the shop fronts declined, closed, got renovated, re-opened, changed names, or became another sort of building altogether. B's hair turned blonde, then white. And one day, on his way to mass, he would find himself in front of Mrs. Lennon, P’ mother. She would steady herself, her arms shaking from the weight of her messages. “B P! B P, why didn’t you marry my lovely daughter, P?” Dark lines would punctuate her pursed mouth and wet eyes. “Awful, awful people they were. Jim had to borrow money from the credit union to go over and see what the story was. A fight, someone said, but we’ll never know how she fell down the stairs.” Mrs. Lennon closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked right through him. “They didn’t even have the decency to tell us she was dead until she was three weeks in the grave. Oh, B P. Why didn’t you marry my lovely daughter, P? If you’d married P, she would still be alive today!”

Angela Coraccio

Dublin, you're my home.

The title of this blog is a play on that song's famous lyrics, "Boston, you're my home," because for many years, Boston was my home and even when it wasn't, I was never far away.

Nine and a half years ago, I moved to Dublin at the age of 35. I had no job and practically no savings. I didn't know a single person in Dublin my age other than my husband. For the first few months, I wandered around town trying to familiarise myself with Dublin streets. I spent a lot of time online waiting for my friends and family in America to wake up and get online so I'd have someone to talk to.

A couple of months in, I started going to this 'autonomous social centre' that was being set up called Seomra Spraoi. I had been in some anarchist spaces in the Boston area -- not many -- but I knew that if I wanted to find out about the interesting stuff happening, I'd need to find the punks, even though I myself had never identified as such. I helped a little with the construction of the space and helped cook for the vegan café nights that happened once or twice a week. I started to meet people here and there, but I felt like I had OUTSIDER tattooed on my forehead. Still, I kept going back.

Mark brought home a magazine called 'The Rag' by an anarcha-feminist group called Revolutionary Anarcha-feminist Group (aka RAG). I learned that the magazine wasn't just something you could submit work to -- you had to be part of the collective, which met monthly and worked collaboratively on the annual magazine. So I joined. And that's where my journey home began.

In that group, I found the most wonderful and inspiring women. I was able to use my writing and editing skills and learn new skills like layout in InDesign. But I mostly learned how to listen. I learned how to think about the connection of oppressions and powers. I learned to be honest with myself and others about my privilege. I learned how to question the judgements and criticisms I had made throughout my very middle class, white-dominated life. I learned how to work in a collective. I learned how to organise and how to support other people in the collective.

When RAG decided to have an open meeting back in July 2012 to talk to pro-choice people about how we could start a campaign to legalise abortion, I had no idea what was ahead of me, but I hopped on the rollercoaster with great enthusiasm because I'd had a taste of what it was like to be part of a collective working towards a goal, and I wanted more of that feeling. At that meeting, we found a huge appetite not just for change, but for action. We formed a network of pro-choice groups. We had our first March for Choice. Then we turned the network into a campaign: The Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC).

I was the first Secretary of ARC, but I'll be honest and say that I had to give it up before my term ended to focus on my fashion business, which I was then just starting. But I tried to keep active, never being able to stay away for long and threw myself into various projects whenever I could manage them. ARC was where the action was. Some exciting development was always happening, and we made small wins over the next five or so years as our marches got bigger and bigger. By then I was on the Board of Directors, though I admit that I tended to shy away from leadership positions because I was afraid of having to quit partway through again.

Finally, in November of 2016, I had a steady job and was in a new home and I had no excuse not to run for Co-convener. At the last second we convinced media and design powerhouse Caoimhe Doyle to run with me. When we were voted in, I made two promises to myself: 1) I would not quit and 2) I would do the absolute best job that I could. I wanted to look back and feel proud of myself and to feel like I really gave it my all. And you know what? As I sit here, I can say that I really kept those promises. Was I the best Co-convener that ever was? Heck, no! But was I the best Co-convener that I could be? Yes. During that year, my father-in-law was very, very ill. It was hard to be working full time, going to as many ARC meetings as I could humanly go to, and supporting my husband in caring for my father-in-law and himself.

But it was full of so many amazing moments, I couldn't possibly summarise. But I think the highlight was being onstage with so many other dedicated pro-choice activists, standing in front of a crowd of 40,000 people, and finding the courage to speak passionately about legalising abortion in Ireland. My American friends and family will probably never know how important that day was in Irish history: it was the biggest pro-choice march the country had ever seen, and I got to be part of making that happen! This middle-aged lady from New Hampshire! Sharing a stage with absolute legends!

During that year, I was probably a better Co-convener than I was wife and daughter-in-law. I made that choice, and I am at peace with it. My father-in-law died just before the clock struck midnight on the day that the new Co-conveners would be elected. My year was up and I thought I was ready for a break.

But I should have known better. I didn't really want to take a break with so much still going on. We got our referendum! We needed to make sure that ARC got a place at the table in whatever referendum campaign came together. I wasn't able to take as much time off to work on Together for Yes as I wanted to, but I took a week off to work in HQ and I took every Wednesday off to work on the campaign for six weeks, trying to do bits and pieces whenever I could. I couldn't believe how many hundreds -- thousands -- of people were giving it their ALL. So many dedicated people giving up their time, putting blood, sweat, and tears into the campaign. And not just people who were already active. People I never even knew were pro-choice were canvassing every night!

And that was the amazing thing. I used to refer to the Abortion Rights Campaign as 'red-headed step-children' (pardon the American phrase) of the pro-choice movement. We weren't an NGO. We had new people in leadership positions all the time. We had non-hierarchical, anarchist-leaning ways of organising. We had the word Abortion in our name. We often felt like we had to fight tooth and nail for respect and recognition. But here we were, in the middle of this campaign that SO MANY people came out of the woodwork to support. We learned that we had been supported all along, since the beginning, even if the supporters didn't always make themselves known. Our work had paid off. The Together for Yes campaign used most of the ARC infrastructure built over the past five+ years and it just exploded in a burst of enthusiasm and energy.

But still, we weren't sure of winning. Right to the end, we weren't sure. Which is why, on Friday the 25th of May when the exit poll results were announced and we learned that we would win by a landslide, there were thousands of sobbing activists around Ireland and indeed the world.

I never worked for something so long and so hard in my entire life. And I have never felt part of something so big and so important. I know that anyone who played any part in the Yes campaign probably feels the same. Because we all did it, as the name says, together.

But when it came down to the end of the timeline leading up to referendum day, I decided that I'd do the fun stuff and I planned a party for the night of the results. I reserved a huge bar in city centre. I had no idea if anyone would come, but I made it open to everyone who had worked on any group in the campaign. And I was so happy because people came! And there was a great buzz about the place, though everyone was absolutely exhausted. It was a funny energy -- a mixture of happiness, relief, fatigue, surreal disbelief that it was over and we'd been victorious.

Then something magical happened. Dr. Groove fired up his laptop, we turned the volume up, and he started to play his DJ set. The next thing I knew, this room full of people who had, moments before, looked limp and fading, got up onto the dance floor and started dancing like nobody's business.

And that's when I started to cry. I realised that these were my people. I'll always love my friends and family back in America, but the people I've come to know here in Dublin are my found family. They accept me, they lift me up, they laugh at my terrible jokes, and they let me be part of this amazing movement. As I watched everyone dance I thought, "I can never leave here. This is where I am happy. This is my home."

After my father passed away, I felt like I would never feel real joy again. Grief is like that. But grief, I've realised, is what has motivated me to live a life that means something to me, that gives back to my community, that will serve the greater good, that brings me more joy than I thought possible and that I can look back on when it's my time to leave and say, I did some very cool things with some very nice people who loved me as much as I loved them.