Meeting My Penpal/Cousin

I signed up to be apart of this bomb ass community called the Black Letter Writing Society. As the name suggests, it’s for Black folks only. Once you sign up, they’ll send you 5-8 penpals whose bios are similar to yours. My penpal/cousin wasn’t on my list, but I was on hers. That’s how we met.

Before finding out we were cousins, we’d exchanged about 3-4 letters. I knew that she was from Kentucky because of her address. I told her I had family in Elizabethtown. All she said in response to that was that it’s a small world. A couple letters later, she said she was going to a funeral in E-Town (what locals call Elizabethtown) for a cousin name Sherry. Well, I also had a cousin name Sherry whose funeral was that Saturday in E-Town. Not coincidence. So we knew we were related but didn’t know how…yet.

Although we ain’t know exactly how, we still started calling each other “cousin.” In an April letter, she included a flyer for an event she was having. The flyer included a date for April, May, and June. Two days before the June event, I decided to just go. She didn’t even know I was coming. I pulled up to the park, spotted who I guessed was her group, and walked over.

Her: Welcome, what’s your name?
Me: Trelani.
Her: Trelani? It’s nice to meet you. How’d you hear about this event?
Me: My penpal.
Her: Your penpal? Are you…? OMG!

For context, I’ve loved the practice of penpalling since I was a kid. I moved around a good bit, and spent time in a youth detention center. Whenever I’d leave a place, I’d exchange addresses with my friends and actually write them. A few wrote back, but none stuck with it long-term. So when I heard about the Black Letter Writing Society, I was all over it. A community like that naturally attracts a certain personality and the bio-matching adds another layer, but the similarities between my penpal/cousin and I are WILD!

We’re both archivists, historians, avid readers of Black books, and philosophers, so our letters are amazing, but our in-person conversation was next level. We also figured out exactly how we’re related once we linked in person too, because her parents were there!

The purpose of this blog post was to share the magic of letter writing. Emails, texts, and phone calls are all great. But writing a letter makes you approach it differently. You don’t really rush through that, nor do you share every little thing. You take your time and you share things that are really impacting you. And you’re getting to know someone, so you’re asking and being asked all kindsa insightful questions.

Penpalling is healing in a way that I really can’t even articulate. I know my inner little girl is excited because she finally has penpals who are equally committed to the practice. But it extends further. Feels like all the ancestral women in my DNA are enjoying it too. And it also feels like I’m leaving dope ass breadcrumbs for my spiritual and biological descendants to find and follow.

But I also wanted to share a few wow moments that happened at her event:

I guess the moral of the story is that if you wanna bring people together, just do it. You never know what might become of it. From the Black Letter Writing Society to my penpal/cousin’s People’s Porch event, I’m convinced: keep it simple, make it accessible, and watch the game change.