I made the mistake of typing this phrase into a Google search last week: ‘How to find my kin.’
To say the least, I thought Google had spoofed me!
After thirty-plus years of researching my family’s historical roots, my family tree is bursting with kinfolk. I have even dispelled a few family myths and quietly tucked one family skeleton in the closet. I was not prepared to be introduced to any new “kin.”
Subculture Savvy – Finding My Kin
If you are savvy on the subculture scene or fantasy fiction, you have probably already guessed what I found. I just received an education on how to self-identify my “Otherkin” in all its various (but to me improbable) expressions. I have never desired to identify my kin as a wolf, elf, a trans-species, or any other non-human or mythical creature so I will not be posting on Tmblr or joining any Therian online groups. There are sufficient challenges to face in this universe so these concepts will not find a space in my domain: shapeshift, parallel universes, and Multiverse Theory. Nor will I ever say that “Shame is Good Here.” [Kin links kindly not provided.]
My newly informed self is a bit concerned. So, to what degree has our culture has been influenced by these kin beliefs? Which generational group noticed it in the past or accepts neo-pagan philosophy as truth today? While its adherents testify about finding their true kin self as non-human, the nay-sayers label it as just role-playing gone wild.
My work experience as a mental health counselor with the SC Department of Mental Health throws up a red flag here. Identifying delusional thinking was included in our assessment process. Delusions = fixed false beliefs. In my current work as a Conflict Coach and Christian Counselor, one of my goals is to help people move through shame to wholeness and to replace mythical thinking with realistic perspectives on relationships.
My hope is always to help families function as Kindly Kin – to help people who are alone or lonely find a place to belong.
Re-Identifying Home and Kin
At one difficult point in my adult life, I was the one who needed a new place to belong. After an unwanted and unexpected divorce, I had to identify where I would restart life as a working single parent of four daughters (6 to 18 years old). I chose Seneca, South Carolina. My only working knowledge of the South was that my parents had retired there two years earlier.
I had loved living overseas in Greece and Germany and across the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii. We had been the minority culture in those places but lived inside a U.S. military sub-culture. None of those places felt as foreign as my new surroundings in Southeastern American culture – even though I was now among the majority culture. My new status as divorced cast a dark shadow over my soul.
A kind co-worker comforted me with her Southern mama’s wisdom (slow Southern drawl required): “It’s a long road, Honey, but it’ll take a turn.”
I wish that Mama could see where the long road has taken me over the past two decades.
For you to understand the full contrast, I need to introduce you to the most unexpected person in the Southern portion of my story.
Meet Barry
My husband, a Mechanical Engineer and Project Manager, proudly proclaims himself as a bonified, certified Southern Appalachian American. And, he is not just self-identifying, he has a Graham County, North Carolina birth certificate, the dialect, and musical skill to prove it.
Kinship is tightly held in those parts.
Family matters to them. People know who belongs to what family and the family from whom those families came. Many people there know, not only who his parents were, but if asked, would quickly add that Hazel had been their third-grade teacher, and Floyd had been their high school biology teacher. Black Knight (high school team name) Fever is a real thing, and the town turns out for the game.
Decoration Day is a long-held tradition when families gather to place fresh bouquets on hillside graveyards where parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and assorted kin were laid to rest. Cemeteries had set Visitation times. It was a Sunday best dress-up day, and singing and preaching could be heard. Family time and food followed along with plenty of stories to pass around. Sadly, as older generations have passed on, each year there are fewer who honor the event.
Because kinship matters, a person can move there, live there for 40 years, and still not be considered “local.” I recall one such obituary in the hometown newspaper describing the subject, an elderly woman who had lived there for decades, as being from Florida versus Graham County. All the forces of self-identity could not sway their conclusion.
Discovering a Kinship of Kindness
On the other hand, however, there is a beautiful secondary kinship (not based on being “blood kin”) that indwells that small, rural, mountain town.
I call it being kindly kin to our fellow humankind. It does not take “blood” to preserve the spirit and kindness of kinship.
When sickness or death comes to the community, the community rallies in support. The kitchen door becomes a revolving door as casseroles, dessert, tray after tray of food arrive, accompanied with kind concern and usually prayers. Broken things get fixed. Financial needs receive contributions. People know and care whether you are dead or alive.
You don’t have to be “from there” for people to care about you – you don’t have to be “blood kin” – but you can’t be snooty about their mountain ways either!
On not being from ’round here –
My background is drastically different from my husband’s. There is no covering up that I am not “from ’round here.” Fortunately, my married name buys me a minimal amount of local passport. After 25 years, I still do not have the intonation and dialect quite “right.” People continue to wonder and ask versions of, “Where are you really from?”
For a long time, I wondered the same thing. I had places where I had lived for different parts of my childhood and early adult life. But I did not have a town that was “my” hometown. Unlike Barry, I have no contact with anyone who I grew up with or went to school with – not in Arizona, Chicago, or Denver – never ever.
In the years I spent living overseas, the fluid military community had substituted for our local community. Visiting foreign cities was our adventure. Friends were made, but families constantly rotated in and rotated out. It was our duty to watch out and care for each other. Friends served as our temporary kin. Social functions were mandatory. Seeing our parents, siblings, and extended family was a rare option.
Eclectic and vagabond became my self-chosen background descriptors.
But that was before I adopted hometown for myself. Then, I found Graham County and couldn’t resist! There is quite a bit of back story behind that choice. But you will find some of that story inside a previous story on this blog, My Crooked Tree.
Today my background descriptor reads: “A late-blooming Southern transplant.”
My Self-Identified Hometown
Robbinsville, North Carolina – my self-identified hometown – you make my heart smile!
Words that I never knew existed, I now understand. I cherish the Graham County ridgelines and the harmony and rhythm of the music that flows through those mountains and its people, my kindly kin.
Sitting in our little poplar cove with Barry, having a long chat over hot coffee, feels more like home than any other place known to me.
The world feels different – more alive – from the old homeplace on our piece of Graham County hillside.
Everything really is better in the mountains!
