Seals

The spotting of a seal from shore can turn my day right side up. Their shiny heads bobbing in the water give me such joy for life that I now pause and spend a moment every time I’m by the inlet to try and see if there’s one floating along. I’ve started to take their sightings as a sign – to pause, breathe, admire, connect.

I always feel a bit lame talking like this, a little airy fairy, but then I think - doesn’t everyone have something like this? Something they choose to believe is kind of magical? Mystical? Something that helps them navigate the harder days, the disconnection, the questions? 

Seals are mine. They have a duality and flexibility – water and land dwelling, cute but feisty, soft yet resilient – that I feel in my soul on a woo-woo level. In Celtic mythology, there were ‘selkies’ – notoriously kind, shapeshifting seals that could shed their skin and assume human form on land. In order to return back home to the sea, they needed to find their skin and reconnect with their innate self.

As someone who has a habit of seeking sentimentality in every aspect of life, I feel emotions stir up when I see a seal and think about this legend of transformation that they represent. Returning to sea becomes a homecoming back to themselves, requiring a rediscovery or search for their skin, their identity.

I struggle so much with the concept of authenticity, forever longing for this homecoming back to a self that I know exists, just not knowing how to find it or how to embrace it. The last year or so has been a journey of transformation, not yet over, but one where I see glimmers of a self that I recognize, that I’ve lost. But like a flicker of light in my peripheral, I can lose it when I get overwhelmed with insecurity and comparison. It slips away.

On days where I need to reground, I walk to the water and almost always (actually, though!) catch a glimpse of a seal (a sign!), glimmering in the harbour. It reminds me to pause, breathe, and allow the inner waters to settle, to allow that self I thought I lost to emerge again. Always there, often hidden, welcoming me home.