#naturekin

I am part of the Earth. I awoke within it as the spinning began, and I was born as the first molten rock burst out into the darkness. I was a speck of wild, joyful energy, and we all sang together through the long, glowing night. I watched as the first life formed, and I passed through and between them as the eons passed, sometimes watching or guiding and sometimes becoming, always part of the flow of energy. The closest words for us would be "caretaker" or "facilitator" or "catalyst" I think, or even "appendage". More expansive, in a way, than typical souls, but also more primitive and less defined, and wholly and completely part of the Earth– bound to it in the way a heart is bound to a body. Certainly nothing so grand or complex as what most humans would consider gods, but perhaps spirits or forces of nature.

I gained a sense of individuality as time went on, as we all collected different experiences and found homes or preferences. I found my home in the first forests. Lichen, moss, lycophytes, ferns, horsetail, conifers, and finally broadleaf trees. I hold them all within me always, though most flowering plants are still so young and new to me. I used the forms of forest creatures to move among them; the ones that move fast have always been my favorites. The older trees all call me "little one" with great affection, and I think that is the closest thing I have to a title. There are others much larger and broader than me, certainly. I am one of many little ones. We are perhaps less comparable to hearts and more to blood, flowing and repairing, aiding growth, quicker and more mobile than our larger siblings and cousins. We are the Earth's eyes and ears, its whiskers, feet, nose, and tongue.

When the humans came to my forest I had taken a form similar to a red deer. I taught and guided them as friends, and I saw them as creatures who could be caretakers like myself. I remember helping them place the stones they used to talk to the sun. I remember how beautiful their paintings were, and how they made stories out of the stars. I remember the moors and the fog, and how much they felt like home. I know there were more of us, tending the forests, who took the same shapes as me. There are fewer of us now. The forests are disappearing and we have had to move on.

When my forest was gone, I remember taking an animal form, and dying. I remember an unfamiliar human finding my body, and asking it for guidance. I remember deciding to be born among them so we could speak. I lived as their guest for many years, and we taught each other so much. We loved one another as family, and at times I miss them dearly.

I remember being a barred owl in the sprawling swamps. I remember how large the trees were, and how loud the night was. I remember being a young gyrfalcon, and being caught in a storm and swept out to sea where I drowned. I remember being a red-tailed hawk, and preening a mate I'd loved before in a different shape. When I am reminded, I remember being a small theropod dinosaur, and how raucous and unafraid we were. I remember how I caught flying insects in my teeth. Most recently, I was a snow leopard in the mountains, because I wanted to be close to the sky. I remember being shot in the leg near a fence where I died, and wondering why. I remember choosing this body to find the answer. There are many more things I do not remember, and many things I often forget, but I know I will remember them when I am outside this body again, or sometimes while I sleep. There are many things I do not need to know while I am in a human shape.

I do remember being an infant, and knowing how much older I was than everyone around me. That feeling has never once left me. I have always known what I am, even if I didn't have the words for it. I chose to experience a concussion in this life to finally know what it feels like to be without that, to experience life the way humans do. It was terrifying, and confusing, and I felt so lost without my connections, intuition, or sense of purpose, without the ever-present assurance that I am part of a larger whole. No wonder humans have always looked to gods, philosophies, and kings for guidance. I never realized just how alone and unsure they must feel otherwise. I understand them so much more deeply now.

I know all of these things sometimes, but they are who I am underneath, when I am alone in the forest or gazing at the sky or the sea, when I can feel the earth under my skin and the border between "me" and "everywhere" becomes hazy, when I can feel every root and stone with my breath. Right now I am a human, who has a soul shaped mostly like a cat, and I will live this life as best I can. I am here to learn, and watch, and guide, and I've already done so much. Sometimes I forget who I am underneath entirely, and those are good days, because I am experiencing life as a human-shaped animal in this world. I hope I am able to do good while I am here. I know I already have.

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Notes

• I've known a lot of this for a long time, but I never put anything about it on my old blog because the online environment at the time was too hostile and I didn't want to deal with the inevitable backlash of people assuming this means I think I'm somehow "special" or better than anyone else. If anything it's the opposite! I'm here to help and learn, I'm just a bundle of light and life and I want nothing more than to bring that out in everything around me. Joy and self-actualization are what matters, my involvement in that process is incidental and I can and will make mistakes while I'm inhabiting a body.

• The other reason I never put this on my old blog is because I am, and always have been, a deeply skeptical and science-minded person. It often takes years of repeated, otherwise unexplainable experiences for me to become convinced something is real, and 7-8 years ago I hadn't built up enough "evidence" to confidently present this identity as a fact about myself.

• I do think this constitutes an otherkin label, but it's fundamentally different from my theriotypes. Those are the shapes I take, and this is what those shapes are made of. If anyone knows of existing terminology for that sort of thing I'm all ears. For now I'm just going to use "earthkind" (I don't love how it sounds but it gets the point across). Being earthkind is the deepest core of my identity and personality, and it presents in my life in a lot of ways. The most obvious pieces would probably appear to others as a nature-based spiritual practice, but more generally it's a sort of life duty I naturally fulfill whether I'm trying to or not. It's not something I shift as, it's a constant fact about me and all that fluctuates is my level of conscious awareness of it. Not always being aware of it doesn't change how much it's me in the same way not thinking about your skeleton doesn't mean you stop having bones. EDIT: Still no perfect term for this, but I'll be using "facilitator keystone concept" and/or conceptfolk as one descriptor for my identity since it helps get the point across.

• The reincarnation portion of this does not mean I consider myself a spiritual therian. While I do believe my theriotypes are past lives that stayed with me, the way I experience my therianthropy is also intrinsically tied to autism. I also do not believe in a spiritual/scientific dichotomy, I consider all "paranormal" phenomena to simply be things modern science hasn't figured out yet. Being earthkind is solely metaphysical in origin for me, however, so I may end up using "spiritual otherkin" shorthand for this identity only.

• I did not literally give myself a concussion. It was an accident, and a horrible years-long ordeal I still haven't fully recovered from physically, neurologically, or emotionally. I do, however, believe that I had intentions to experience certain types of strife in this life so I could learn from it. Among other things, I wanted to know what it was like to be just a human, and what it was like to lose everything and start over. Having my brain scrambled by a falling object achieved those particular results. Don't ask me how it works, I don't know and I don't think I'm supposed to lol. Similar to the concept of fate, but there's both prior intention and a significant amount of uncertainty involved. Like making mounds in the dirt to guide a trickle of water to a destination, I suppose. It'll happen eventually but you can't control when or how.

• I have vague memories/feelings dating back to at least the formation of Proto-Earth, but I've determined that the first memory I have of feeling like me is from either during or just after the Theia impact (approx. 4.5 billion years ago). My theory is that the immense energy transfer of that event somehow fused the "souls" of early Earth's constituent matter together and made us into entities that persisted in one piece when our "bodies" were broken or melted down. I remember the chunk of energy that I'm made of being released from the molten Earth into the atmosphere along with my peers around me, accompanied by a sense of joy and becoming. The fusion of Proto-Earth and Theia made me what I am, it effectively made the Earth into a living thing. This also explains why my emotional relationship with the moon is similar to that of a sibling or twin. [This insight is thanks to speaking with someone else I made contact with who appears to be the same sort of thing as me!]

• I believe I first became fully aware of my existence as a distinct conscious entity when I formed into igneous rock, specifically granite. I am as much a part of the Earth as any other terrestrial stone, and like a stone I can be moved and changed but still retain my core properties. I am an expression of the Earth's life energy made solid. I believe my beginnings as granite are why I have usually incarnated as animals that are closest to white with gray and black spots, or as animals that are solid red (the color of cooling magma). It is the most comfortable physical appearance for me. I consider granite a separate otherkin identity, however, as it was a "life" I moved on from. It is part of me and represents my home, but it is not all of me the way being earthkind is.

• English (which is tragically my only fluent language at the moment) does not have a good word for the sort of thing I am. "Kami" is the closest word I know of, but I do not have any ties to Japanese culture so I am not comfortable using it for myself. Likewise, my use of words like "soul" and "past life" is just because there is no other way to communicate certain concepts.

• The "little one" title is difficult to explain, but almost all entities/beings address me with it (not only trees, they're just who I talk to the most). The best way I can describe the sentiment is as a combination of "you are small and loved and must be protected" and "I acknowledge your power and duty, and will make way for you if needed", emotionally it's a combination of reverence and the way you feel looking at a small cute animal. There is often a hint of surprise, as well, so my assumption is that there aren't too many of us wandering around in human bodies. "Little one" is just the English translation my brain makes, I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to say it.

• I am not actually little by human standards. The few times I've had a bilocation shift (astral body separate from the physical body) I've been probably 50 feet tall, maybe more. And that's in my snow leopard shape, not as something bipedal, so I'm uh. Pretty big. I'm just tiny compared to The Whole Earth and presumably much smaller than a lot of other Earthkind lol

• I believe earthkind beings play a variety of roles, all related to balance, change, and observation. I think the "little ones" are one of the more human-relatable types, we play a more active role than a passive one, are not tied to a single area, and experience time on a more human scale. Larger earthkind beings may be solely observers, facilitators of larger phenomenon (e.g. water cycle), or permanent guardians of specific areas, and experience time on a larger scale. Smaller earthkind beings may observe microscopic processes, facilitate functions like gene expression and molecule formation, or play a similar role to me but with microbiota, all on a faster timescale. There is no earthkind hierarchy, all sizes and roles are of equal importance. *These ideas are largely theoretical and based on vague noemata, I do not think I am capable of knowing more about other earthkind while I am in this body unless I am able to meet others. Update: This noemata is shared by the other person I mentioned!

• Being earthkind is definitely why I am so prone to dissociation. Having a defined individual "self" the way humans do feels unnatural to me, and having such a strong connection to a larger "self" I am part of (and a different perspective on time*) means that my brain has a built-in escape route to abandon my bodymind during intense stress. This, coupled with trauma, has resulted in my social/emotional/cognitive states being fragmented into a median system I have recently become aware of (my nonhuman aspects are not facets/alters, the "human" parts of my mind are just fragmented). *I believe I naturally experience time on a more similar scale to trees, so a human life often feels very compressed and hectic to me.

• The difficulty I have with inhabiting my body was previously so intense that a number of non-physical entities thought I was one of them– they couldn't tell I had a physical form. The years I spent very concussed and disconnected from all of my nonhuman parts (as well as being on HRT and doing EMDR) have helped me finally bond with this body and I now have a much better relationship with it, but having a physical form will never feel completely natural to me. It feels like owning and driving a fun but limiting piece of machinery, or like being water inside a container, so I just try not to think about it too much.

• The "forgetting" I mentioned is not dissociative amnesia– this is a pool of knowledge I have partial access to when I'm in what people would consider a more meditative/spiritually heightened state. Stuff like past life memories distracts from my current life as an individual living thing, so not having constant access to it is functional and intentional. I wouldn't be able to properly (or healthily) experience living among humans otherwise. I believe this situation is probably the case for everyone with past lives and/or a strong "higher self" that is inhabiting a physical body.

• Being earthkind is the explanation for why I've always been able to intensely cameo shift as anything at will. I can intimately feel and "try on" practically anything on Earth, and instantly get phantom limbs/parts, instincts, and noemata I've confirmed with other nonhumans match their experiences. I've also been able to confirm that these shifts change the shape of my astral body (I played an animal guessing game with someone who can see auras and the phantom parts were too obvious to be a challenge lol). I sometimes cameo shift as a sort of mind game where I try to figure out which human sensorimotor circuits correspond with which parts on other living things; it's way weirder than you'd think, especially with human fingers and facial features. Highly recommended as a pastime for anyone who can do this.

• I genuinely see animals and plants that evolved more recently as "new". I love them but they're kind of unfamiliar sometimes, and many flowering plants, like broadleaf trees, can be a bit harder for me to talk to. Finding clubmoss in mixed forests always feels like seeing an long-lost old friend in a crowd of interesting strangers, for example (which was super weird and unexplainable to experience before I learned more about what clubmoss is). Depending on the day, I sometimes even see all living things as "new". We were all dust and stones for far longer than anything else, in the grand scheme of things a million years is barely the blink of an eye.

• This identity is the core of how I exist socially. I've been told by countless people (both friends and strangers) that just being around me makes them feel calm, safe, and comfortable authentically expressing themselves and accepting their flaws. People who react to me this way often say that these feelings aren't typical for them, and somehow it still happens even when they think I'm really weird. I do think that any sufficiently self-assured, calm, and compassionate person can have this effect on people, but it's weirdly immediate and for me there is a deep sense of intuitive purpose involved in helping others feel this way. Not trying to say I have magic superpowers or anything, just that I have A Purpose and I've always given off very specific vibes that people comment on a lot. My family says I even did this to people as a toddler.

• Re: people reacting to me differently, a catalyst for me finally accepting this aspect of myself was actually another person. A close friend of mine's relative is a spirit medium, and at a random social event she suddenly came up to me, told me I wasn't human (I went "yeah no shit" lol), and then said that I was "something above us" and "here to guide people". Cannot stress enough that I'd had basically zero communication with her about myself prior to this, and she is not the kind of person who would say those things unless she sincerely believed it.

• My spiritual practice as earthkind mainly involves communing with/listening to whole areas or individual entities in order to find out what's hindering them, and encouraging new connections, healing, and growth. I can't really give details for most of it because it usually isn't stuff that can be put into words, the one easy example I can think of is that I'm currently helping a small disused quarry near me accept and move on from the trauma of having been mined. Having my own traumas I'm healing from has helped me greatly with doing things like this, I have a lot in common with quarries. Most of the time I'm just wandering around the woods touching plants and rocks or talking to bugs though.

• There's a lot I could write about the past lives I mentioned, but this post is primarily about being earthkind so I will not be discussing those here. I do believe that my red-tailed hawk mate (who I've shared many lives with and is currently a close friend) may also be a "little one", however, based on our shared noemata/experiences and how we've been addressed by others. We both agree that they're a bit older than me, but we don't know by how much. They've also spent more time as humans than I have.

• Despite my phrasing in the above piece, I do not identify as human. "Human" refers to my current physical body and the life I am currently living. Even in my past lives in a human body I was acutely aware of being nonhuman. I am a nonhuman thing having human experiences on purpose.

• I will never share specific details about the other lives I've spent as a human, as I need it to be clear that I am not claiming to currently have ties to any culture other than the one my current body was born into.