Community of Kindred Spirits

Robin Hasslen is a wife, mother and grandmother. She has spent her 76 years parenting (her own and numerous foster children), teaching, farming, biking, reading, and volunteering. She grew up in South Carolina and Vermont, studied in Pennsylvania, built a one room abode in a Kentucky holler, farmed for 50 years in Minnesota and now lives in North Carolina. And she has been grateful for every place she has lived, every day she has been given, and every person who has impacted her life.

Robin (my first guest writer) writes…

I have never met Kristin in person. I wouldn’t know her if we passed on the street. But I KNOW her…..as a parent, a woman of compassion and tenderness, grace and guts, honesty and humility. (I do, however, know her mother and so I easily recognize the genes/the seeds of that compassion and grace).

I say this because I imagine some people may sadly journey through life without those kindred spirits who, whether next door or across the country; whether age peers or generational opposites; are bound by threads of like-mindedness that defy description.  I count Kristin among my kindred spirits.

Perhaps when Lynn (Kristin’s mother) began sharing her heartaches and concerns about her granddaughter, I responded initially with some sense of pity for this young family (recalling my own days as a young mother with a mostly institutionalized son). I tried to understand the psychological/physical/emotional aspects of panic attacks (after all, I DID spend years teaching child development at universities). There must be some easy-to-identify reason beneath all of this.

And then I began reading Kristin’s weekly blogs…and my pity turned to admiration; my intellect opened up to new information…and I met an amazing mother….and father and daughters and son. 

But Kristin wouldn’t want this blog to be about her. I KNOW this. Nor about me. (I really know this). It is about our being in this world for each other. This is not an easy undertaking during our pandemic segregations, and yet this is when we need each other the most. I respond to Kristin’s blog each week and she says she appreciates my support. BUT what she doesn’t understand is how much she does for ME as I read about her strength and patience and compassion….all revealed in such raw honesty and deep humility. (We aging ones are supposed to provide wisdom to the young…not the other way around).

The Rehkamps recognize and appreciate the community of kindred spirits surrounding them.  Being part of that community means we also benefit as we observe and learn and become more compassionate, less judgmental, more merciful.

It seems fitting for our “community of kindred spirits” to quote some powerful words from Steve Koski who was describing the world’s current crises and urging us all to get about that "hard, holy and healing work of love that is ours to do and it is urgent."

 Robin Hasslen