‘Kin vs. ‘Hearted
Several years ago, an old friend and I played at being wolves all the time. They were, hands-down, her favorite animal. She drew them every day and owned wolf paraphernalia like bedsheets and clothing, and she told me about how she wished she were a wolf and felt like she should have been one, but she wasn’t, and sometimes that made her horribly sad.
The thing is, she knew what therianthropy was, and she recognized that she was not a wolf therian. She loved wolves and empathized with them, but she knew she was not one, and knew that it was okay to be human. I often see posts on this website talking about things like “i feel so sad that i’m not X animal” or “I really connect to this animal on a deeper level” and it makes me think of my friend. These things don’t make you any less human than anyone else, and I worry that if someone bases their identity off of a connection with something rather than identifying as it, coming to terms with who they really are later down the road will be all the more difficult.
If I were a therian based on criteria for the label otherhearted, I’d definitely be a manta ray therian. I love the ocean and feel at home in the habitats manta rays thrive in. I’ve seen one before in the wild and felt a genuine empathetic connection that left me breathless, and I love them as a species. But I’m not, I’m a hyena, an animal i was completely ambivalent towards before I awakened.
Nowadays, I feel that the correct terminology for what my friend experienced is otherhearted, not otherkin. And that’s a perfectly acceptable identity, too, don’t get me wrong. I just wish there weren’t so many people trying to force themselves into a label they don’t fit into, when there’s a real term for what they’re experiencing.
