Living Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: What It Really Means to Be Southern Today
- Natalie Frank
- Aug 3
- 1 min read
Exploring the pride, paradox, and evolving identity of Southern life in a rapidly changing world
Natalie C. Frank, Ph.D August 3, 2025
No matter where a Southerner lives, in the North or another country completely, we never truly leave home. It doesn’t matter if we move thousands of miles away from the South, trade our boat shoes for heavy duty snow boots, our light jackets for parkas, our porch swings for high-rise glass balconies with a view. If you come from the South, it’s simply a part of who we are. It’s in our voice, our manners, the way we cook, how we greet everyone even strangers as we know them, stay at the filling station longer than necessary chatting with just about anyone who happens by. That “Southernness” never washes off and it goes with you wherever you travel or reside.
I’ve learned that being Southern today means standing at the crossroads of history and progress. It’s living in the tension between love for where you’re from and what has become a need to question what that means. It’s cooking cornbread while at the same time, having hard conversations about what parts of our heritage shouldn’t be passed down while living a slow life in a world that’s changing faster ever before.
