Book Clubs, Writing Groups, & Kindred Spirits

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As a young girl, I always hoped I'd find friends who knew how powerful words on a page can be, how they invite us into other worlds and allow us to live many lifetimes in one, and how they can make you feel understood about things you've never been able to explain to others.

And though it took a while, I was fortunate enough to eventually find these people in my adult life.

During COVID, I formed a group of friends - of readers, writers, and artists - who started out as collaborators on a short-lived magazine project but quickly became my kindred spirits.

While three of them live in the United States and two are in Canada, we have only continued to grow closer over the past four years.

We still find time to have regular FaceTime calls where we work on our novels and artistic pursuits, continuing our roots as literary and visual collaborators while also being each other's support and shoulders to cry on.

While we can't get together in person as often as we would like, we know we can count on each other, not just as a group of artists, but as true, dear friends.

However, I've only recently discovered my fellow Edmonton readers. When I moved to this city, I worried I wouldn't find friends to connect with over books, period dramas, art, and other finer things in life. I feared that all my kindred spirits were on the other side of the continent.

But over the past year, I was taken by surprise. I've met a few women that I've gushed with over Gilbert Blythe and accompanied while book shopping, but even more unexpected, I also joined a book club - something that I've always wanted to do.

While the first book we selected wasn't a rousing success (we all rated it below two stars), we still love the kinship that's begun to form from reading and annotating the same novel.

In the process, we've learned more about each other's literary interests, and getting together with wine and charcuterie to laugh over that badly written book has been one of the highlights of my year.

It can be hard to find even one friend you genuinely connect with on a deeper level. But the more you seek people out and get to know them, the more you realize your shared interests that simply didn't surface upon your first meeting.

To quote my favourite red-headed heroine, "kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think," and I'm grateful to have so many of them in my life.