ramblings ahead… kinsidering. hrnk. learning things about myself is so hard
this is sort of for my own archival practices, and also i guess for whoever takes interest in them lol
so, i think it was around june i awakened as a coastal wolf therian, and before that for a few months i was just toying with the idea of nonhumanity, was sort of a dogboy, didnt have anything concrete though
my connection to canines i believe is mostly psychological, and arises from being (most likely) autistic and interacting with the world differently from the “typical” humans. i don’t belong here, with them, so im a dog instead
then after immersing myself more in the community, learned some terms and experiences, i could better label myself as a canine ambitherian, since i had a general connection to all canines, and saw myself in them all to some extent, and just felt stronger connections to coastal wolves
i then realized i was a west highland terrier as well, and there was a big debate (internally) for some time if i was a westie or scottie… literally the biggest thing confusing me was that i wanted to be called scottie as a name (and also consider scotland a hearthome). but im not actually that breed lol
throughout all of this i also was exploring deer things and stuffs, i had used the term deerhearted in june up through september as well, and felt like there was some connection, sort of prey animal, their demeanor and looks, etc, but something was off; it didn’t feel right to identify as one, just with one.
then in september i realized i could in fact be a faunkin, and no one was stopping me. for years before i awakened i called myself a satyr but half deer instead of goat, everyone around me did too, and i realized the reason i felt disconnected from deer was bc i wasn’t one, i was a faun.
at the same time, i discovered a specific peryton statue in scotland, and felt such a strong sense of “that’s me” that i began literally just identifying as that one statue at this castle lmao. so yeah, also not a deer bc i’m a statue of one, separated by a few degrees of stone and moss yk
and now, i’m questioning being a lion? but more specifically having an echo of one (echoform). like the post describes, i don’t feel as though i am one, and i don’t think i believe in reincarnation and specific past lives, but the idea of energies has always been one i treat as fact. when i was a child, i pretended to be a lion almost all the time, dressed like a large cat whenever i could, and now, the one mask i have is a lion’s. sure, kids play pretend all the time, but with the concept of energies, don’t you think, as children, they’re just feeling that echo and responding to it? and once they grow older, they lose that connection? i just feel as though i’ve retained it. my connection to lions is deeply entwined in femininity, whenever i feel more like a lion, it’s always a lioness, and always like my childhood, when i was a girl. this all leads me to believe the energy of a lioness has made its way into me somehow, and to some extent all the other animals i call myself, those just hold a different part, which changes how exactly i identify with/as them.
because this is still a very niche label, i’m not sure exactly how to identify myself within it, since the person who coined it stated that if you identify as nonhuman you can’t use the term echoform, but acknowledged you can still feel echoes and want to define them. lion echothere? echoic lionhearted? idk idk!