The Kindred Spirit Mailbox Project is Uniquely Bainbridge!
For infamous “Mailbox Lady”, Denise Stoughton, discovering the Kindred Spirit Mailbox on Bird Island in North Carolina was a magical experience, one she immediately wanted to share with Bainbridge Island.
Denise began her “mailboxing” quest last year after she frequently noticed incredibly creative and often whimsical mailboxes throughout the island. It inspired her to create her popular Facebook Group, Uniquely Bainbridge/Fabulous Mailboxes and Other Interesting Totems, revolving around Bainbridge mailboxes and the people and stories that brought them to life. In addition to her Facebook group, Denise is memorializing the stories in her upcoming book, Meet Me at the Mailbox: The Fabulous Mailboxes of Bainbridge Island.
While working on her book, Denise spent time on the east coast where she learned about another unique mailbox, the Kindred Spirit. After a bit of research, she discovered that the Kindred Spirit Mailbox, located along a 1.5-mile stretch of beach on Bird Island, North Carolina, contains a continuous supply of journals, where people can write down their thoughts, dreams, prayers, heartaches and even confessions. The journals are left in the mailbox and people have been baring their souls in them for decades.
“The idea that an ordinary mailbox could serve as a meaningful – almost sacred place for people to come and share their thoughts and feelings by writing them into communal journals, brought up a lot of emotion. We’re living during a time where politics and the pandemic have caused communities, even families to splinter and break apart. People seem to have forgotten we’re more alike than not but if you read the journal entries, whether joyful, sorrowful, hopeful, regretful, silly, grateful, you recognize parts of yourself reflected in most every sentence,” she told me. “That I could recognize myself through the words of others is a reminder I’m not alone. The weird coincidence was that working on the book has triggered those same feel-good feelings for the same reasons. I’d knock on someone’s door to ask about their fun mailbox and the next thing you know I’m invited in and being entrusted with some amazing stories and began to see a bird’s eye view of our amazing community – how we’re connected, as well as the ways in which everyday people go out of their way to do something interesting to their mailbox as a way to share who they are and possibly make others smile for a moment. People want to share and to be seen”.
Denise felt Bainbridge Island would be the perfect setting for a west coast Kindred Spirit and that “there was a symmetry of having Kindred Spirits on both coasts, each on an island, and that Bird Island and Bainbridge Island are commonly abbreviated as BI.”
She presented her idea to the Bainbridge Island Metro Park and Recreation District and they wholeheartedly agreed. “When Denise first made a presentation about the Kindred Spirit Mailbox to the Parks Board of Commissioners, I could feel her passion and joy around this project,” said Dawn Janow, BIMPRD Commissioner. “As I’ve learned more, it’s a project of love, connection, and the environment. How wonderful it would be to come upon a contemplative place to read others’ stories and share our own hopes, dreams and thoughts. It would be a privilege to provide a home, and mailbox, to such a space within our Park District.”
To read the whole article head over to The Island Wanderer Blog