The Call Home to Ourselves - Selkies & Motherhood
Along the coastlines of North Atlantic islands, the Selkie, Maighdean Mara, or ‘seal folk’ are embedded in the folklore of the communities who live there. The Selkie myth tells of mythical (often) women who can shapeshift between seal and woman - coming to shore they take off their seal skins to take human form. Beautiful, enigmatic, otherwordly, these women captured the imaginations of the coastal communities who tell of their stories.
In one such story, a lonely fisherman is coming home when he sees a group of Selkies come ashore, remove their skins and dance and sing together by moonlight. So captivated is he by one that he steals her skin. As the dawn breaks and the group collect their skins to return to the ocean, he emerges to reveal to the lone Selkie left, distressed on the shore, that he has taken her sealskin. Captive on land, the Selkie goes with him and in time learns to love him. They have two children together (a discussion for another time but I do note the deeply entrenched and unsettling storylines much folklore seems to include around women, but stay with me here), and the Selkie continues to search for her sealskin all the while. Her yearning to return to the sea never leaves, while the longer she stays trapped in human form the worse her health declines.
Years go by and depending on the version you hear - she finds her sealskin, or her children do and return it to her. Torn between her children and her need to return to the sea to survive, she puts on her sealskin and leaves. Various stories say that a seal could be returning regularly to the area after she leaves, while others say her children, being part Selkie, could hear her song and would go down to the ocean to swim with her.
Having grown up on a different western shore (Australia) to the one of my grandmother, father and extended family (Galway), I still grew up with the stories of Selkies, Banshees, faerie people, and all the wonderful mythology Ireland has to offer. It captured my imagination as a child and now as a mother of two boys equally enraptured by what I share with them, I find myself returning in my thirties to rediscover the power and lessons they have always held. Sharing these stories with my sons (albeit different versions for their ages), I see as a lasting gift to give them something to connect them to our family, homeplace and our people. If you haven’t watched Song of the Sea, it is a beautifully animated, family-friendly version of the Irish Selkie story I highly recommend (Apple TV).
A few weeks ago I got my hands on Rebecca Campbell’s Health Waters Oracle. Having spent the last 12 years in the water sector and having always been drawn to the water, this one jumped out. I sat down to use them for my journalling practice and for inspiration for this blog and what should I draw but the Selkie. As I sat there with the card, I began to reflect on the Selkie folklore in a different light. I realised it was the perfect metaphor for Matrescence and that deep feeling or pull so many of us seem to be experiencing (at least amongst those in my circles) reaching our thirties and, for many of us, having children.
When we look at the Selkie we see a powerful, magical being able to live in two worlds - that of the mystical, otherworld, and that of the human world. Drawn to the human world the Selkie becomes trapped (firstly by deception) by duty, responsibilities and quite literally the fisherman (who we could represent here as our wider patriarchal society). Her health slowly declines the longer she is unable to respond to the call of the sea and return to her true form.
If we see ourselves, mothers and women, as the Selkies - women with so much power, magic and creativity, and look at how from a young age we are taught to follow societal expectations and lead lives in fulfilment of the roles we represent to others - daughter, sister, partner, mother; we can use the taking of the sealskin as a metaphor for the years we spend moving away from our ‘true selves’, our essence or our core.
We can see the decline of the Selkie’s health in the story as a reflection of the burnout, inner disquiet, feelings of something being ‘off kilter’ that many of us may experience. We can empathise with the Selkie in her feeling torn between her responsibilities - her children and her need to return to herself to live.
It feels to me as though a growing number of women are hearing the call, feeling the disquiet and are now grappling with how they shift into a life and a presence that honours this call, while meeting our responsibilities. I know for myself I have felt this disquiet long before having children - that what I had been told of how the world worked and what I ‘should’ be doing, felt amiss and increasingly separate from our nature and what we need as human beings. Our society is sick and only getting sicker, and I feel deeply puzzled with how rapidly we seem to be running down the wrong path.
Equally, I see more and more women turning away and back towards the ‘call of the sea’, back towards our innate knowing and wisdom that we have all but lost. Sitting in the discomfort of the competing demands on our lives and that niggle that something is missing, and asking the question - is there another way? Is there more than this?
Making choices between responsibilities - selfhood, family, love, personal freedom, economic and physical needs (food, shelter, water, safety, etc.), and everything else that commands our energy, is not straight-forward. There are trade-offs, time and space is needed for self-revelation and new ways of being, and this requires certain access to resources. The realities of surviving in this super capitalist and increasingly complex and costly world.
But there are choices that need to be made. And I sit here, very much within the space of making them. This year I committed to living differently, to going back to myself and stripping away the layers I’ve been suffocated under. Without knowing it, I committed to hearing the call of the sea, finding my sealskin and returning to the ocean.
I don’t have the answers to how we balance everything. To what it will look like to live a life in my true form, while meeting all the other responsibilities I hold. I do know that I have to try though. Because ignoring the call of the sea, being on land, in the world we’ve created, is slowly sapping me of my spark, my life force too. I need to find my sealskin and return.
Do you hear the call too?
I’ll leave you with some journal prompts that I myself am working through at the moment:
Do you resonate with the story of the Selkie and feel the innate call to return to the sea? To return to who you truly are and swim freely once more?
Are there people, places or contexts in which you feel you aren’t showing up as yourself?
Are there areas in your life that call to you that you currently feel disconnected from?
Are there areas in your life that you feel trapped or stuck within and long for freedom in some form or capacity?
What do you need to do to feel free? (this one is a question from the Healing Waters Oracle Deck, Selkie card)
More to come as we navigate the return to sea :)
S x
