I had a realization today. Just a few minutes ago actually. I back combed 3 dreads myself a few weeks before letting the rest go naturally. Since then I have done no backcombing at all (besidesa little tightening of already existing knots at the roots of 2 spots in my hair I wanted to wrap). Today a friend and I did a few more wrappings in our hair. I realized (after noticing how much faster hers was dreading than mine) that my hair, for whatever reasons, may take longer to officially dread than I initially expected. Today a friend of mine also re-iterated his opinion that since my hair is the hair that it is, i really should give my dreads a head start by back combing or twist/ripping or whatever- that by itself my hair will not dread easily or quickly. So, after a day of dread-frustration, I unwrapped one of the barely dreaded segments of hair I wrapped earlier, and backcombed it into a dread and wrapped it back up. But, while semi-furiously (I'm also a little angry right now for other reasons) ripping a fine toothed comb in an unnatural direction through my beautiful hair andbeing able to literally hear my hair suffering- I realized something I thought I already knew. Dreading your hair is not about having dreads. It's not about the result, its the process. The experience. The journey. Any method other than 100% natural dreading doesn't justtake away a few miles ofyour path- it completley eliminates it. Sometimes I'm proud of the dreads that I have from previously backcombing...but now I've realized- I would be completley happy never having visible dreads, if that's all my hair is capable of.I know it's not, as many of the baby dreads I wrapped and put pics up of a few days ago were completley natural, but if it were- i would be ok with that. I am not doing this to have dreaded hair (irrelevent of my initial intentions), I am doing this to let my hairdecide what it wants to do, i am doing this to let my hair teach me things that my mind cannot, I am doing this to set myself free. And myjourney will give this to me, not my dreads.