selchie

Take My Breath Away

by Jenny Rose | Jul 20, 2024 | A Flourishing Woman, Self-Love

The more battered I feel by the news cycle and the daily externals of my world, the more important it is to spend time in solitude, focusing inward and practicing love and trust with myself.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

(It sounds delightful, doesn’t it? So wise and functionally adult! It doesn’t read like tears; trauma; dumping feelings onto the page; wrestling with fear, despair, perfectionism, heat, humidity, housework, and (most recently) a fiery case of athlete’s foot while the garden turns into a steaming jungle outside my locked and blinded windows and the air conditioner gently roars.)

I recently reread The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. I haven’t read it in a long time, but it was next on the shelf, so I cracked it open. I came across a line I don’t remember and evidently didn’t remark on previously: “…I’d never done anything that took my own breath away …”

The speaker is a middle-aged woman and that line grabbed my attention.

We are consumed by externals. The male gaze. The public eye. What others think of our looks, our words, our actions. Is our virtue signaling adequate and prominent? Are we pleasing the right people? Are we flourishing our flags with sufficient outrage and hostility? Are our masks and identities firmly in place?

The more we focus on externals, the less we pay attention to our relationship with ourselves and the more broken we become.

Why don’t we think about taking our own breath away?

This might not seem important. After all, what’s more exquisite than the feeling of being in love? The sight and smell, sound, taste, and texture of the loved one. Every expression. Every word. Every insignificant detail, past and present, is breathtaking. For a time. How could we ever hope to compete with that feeling, that excitement?

But what happens if we never take our own breath away?

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Some of my favorite stories are oral tales about the selchies; creatures who are men and women on the land and seals in the sea. Most of the time the old stories are about a woman whose sealskin is stolen by a man; she is coerced into staying with him, often raising a family, with the promise he will one day return her skin. Though the captured selchie may love her children and even the man, as time passes she begins to lose her vitality and wither, for she is cut off from the sea, a part of who she is. She must have what she is made of to be whole.

As a young woman, I had no thought in my head beyond finding a husband, someone who wanted me and would love me. I didn’t think about the love I needed to feel for him; I assumed I’d do whatever it took to be a “good wife.”

Two divorces later, much older and wiser, I realize how sad this is. Now I know no child or lover, no matter how wanted or beloved, can ever leave us breathless in the same way we can ourselves. Not only that, when we rest all our being on external love, when the object of our love leaves and the feeling is gone we are left more impoverished than before, more embittered, more lost.

Taking our own breath away gives us something we never lose; amazement for our own courage, or determination, or creativity. We always remember that thing we did, and marvel at ourselves. We develop confidence and trust in ourselves. We know we can struggle through obstacles, defy odds, learn a new skill, finish a big project, or take a leap in the dark. We know we can face our own fears and beliefs, and challenge them.

I believe this is a big part of what a midlife crisis is about. If we don’t push ourselves beyond our comfort level we wake up one day bored and apathetic, and wonder if this is it. Is this all life is, the familiar round of work, home, family, and friends?

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We begin to think and dream about something more, that milestone we never achieved, that place we never visited, the opinion we never expressed, the art we never created, the truth we never dared tell.

We want … something. We need … something. Typically, we spend a lot of money trying to fill our craving, but nothing works for long because we’re looking for some intangible piece of ourselves, something stolen, something lost, something rejected. Perhaps we’re searching for our own permission or courage. Our quest becomes internal rather than external because (to our shame) we have a good life, a good job, a good-enough spouse or lover, a beloved child, yet we are not satisfied.

We want what we are made of.

No one can tell us what that is. No one knows. We have hidden it successfully from ourselves all our lives, after all. If we are lucky, one day we know what to do and have the means to do it. The outcome doesn’t matter. What matters is that we do it, we leap without a net, we create in a frenzy, we open our throats and speak our truth at last.

We take our own breath away.

Moving to Maine from Colorado was like that for me. How did I do it? I have no idea. I do remember my determination, though. I remember saying to myself I was going to do this thing no matter how impossible it was, no matter what others said about it (and me), no matter how many obstacles I encountered (I borrowed money from a friend for the first time in my life), no matter how terrified and anguished I was, I was going to do it. If I had to crawl on my belly all the way, I was going to do it.

And I did (in a U-Haul, not on my belly). And it took my breath away. Still does.

In general I’m a cautious, even conservative person. (In spite of my friend who affectionately calls me a dirty hippy!) I think things through carefully. I research all the options. I consider consequences. But sometimes this longing to find and express what we are made of is so strong we can’t think about it calmly and rationally. We are compelled beyond all that, pulled helplessly by the strength of our need to reclaim and express some lost part of ourselves. We don’t care about consequences. They are less important than finding ourselves.

I wonder if it’s a human need to experience this riptide at least once, to operate only on instinct, intuition, passion, and raw determination. Maybe it’s at least as important to follow our creativity and curiosity as it is to set concrete goals and make plans. Maybe the ability to be impulsive and unreliable is as important as dependability and careful planning.

In taking my own breath away, I’ve lived with a bad boy/man, had an unplanned pregnancy, and caught an STD. I’ve learned to dance. I’ve created visual art. I’ve written 2 books and started a third. I’ve become an oral storyteller. I’ve started and later redesigned my blog and published my fiction serially on Substack. I’ve moved to Maine. I regret none of these, no matter the consequences, which in some cases were painful.

What will I do next? I don’t know. But I’m not afraid to take my own breath away.

Questions:

What’s the most breathtaking experience of your life?
What part of what you’re made of are you longing for?
How have you taken your own breath away?
Who or what are you waiting for to take your breath away?

by Jenny Rose | Mar 8, 2018 | Choice, Power

Selchie: A mystical creature who takes the form of a seal in the sea and a human on land.

I have a picture book from my childhood called Greyling, by Jane Yolen. It’s one of my favorite stories, by one of my favorite authors, and I’ve told it as an oral storyteller for many years. When I began doing storytelling, I sought out all the selchie stories I could find and incorporated them into my programs.

I rarely tell a selchie story without fighting back tears.

I’ve lately revisited this wonderful material for the second book in my Webbd Wheel series, and it occurred to me to explore why these stories touch me so painfully and deeply.

Selchie stories appear in the Hebrides, Iceland, Orkney, Scotland, Ireland and the Faroe and Shetland Islands. Like all lasting oral traditions, they contain blueprints for navigating loneliness, exile, love, loss, competition, compassion, trust and power. A good story has many facets.

A common thread in selchie stories is that a seal comes to land, takes off its skin, and becomes human, usually a beautiful young woman. Subsequently, the skin is stolen by a man and the woman entrapped. In many of the tales, she marries the man who has her skin (always a fisherman) and bears his children. Sometimes her husband promises after a certain number of years he’ll allow her access to her skin again, but he doesn’t follow through for fear of losing her. Inevitably, the skin is found, often by a child, and returned to the selchie, who must then face a choice between her life with her family and her life in the sea.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

It is this choice that makes me weep. I know the agonized longing for what we are made of but can’t ever quite find.

As I observe the world and people around me, I think many of us feel in some way exiled from who we were born to be, from a place, from a tribal connection, from some integral expression of self. I believe this exile creates such an unbearable hunger we grasp at anything within our reach in order to appease it, becoming addicts, developing eating disorders and body dysmorphism, and struggling with anxiety and depression. We live in a culture of distraction and entertainment. We’re busy, noisy, exhausted, and inundated with information, stimulation, propaganda, manipulation and demands.

Photo by Anna Dziubinska on Unsplash

We want what we are made of, but how do we find what that is? Why is it taken away or withheld from us? Why are we so often forced to choose between one thing we’re made of and another? This all lies at the heart of selchie stories, for the selchie is a creature torn between two worlds and two tribes, and we instinctively recognize this conflict.

Choice is so often grief. If a selchie re-dons her skin and goes back to the sea, she cannot return, for she already knows the terrible cost of losing her skin, and though she may love her children and even have grown to love the fisherman she’s with, she cannot trust him. In returning to the sea, she is joyous, but now the grief of leaving her children and the life she made on the land replaces her longing for the sea.

I was with a man who avoided choice. He said he didn’t like to choose one thing in case something better came along. My experience of this was that he didn’t want to commit. It meant we couldn’t plan a date, a weekly ritual or even a walk. If we did, he frequently cancelled at the last minute. It was painful for me, and it frayed our connection considerably as I vacillated between hurt and anger. Eventually, I gave up and made my own plans. I told him that his maybe-I-will and maybe-I-won’t approach didn’t avoid a choice but was a choice. He refused to take responsibility for that, and he was bitter about the choices I made subsequent to his.

I’ve also been with partners who believe we can have it all. One man walked away from any situation in which he couldn’t have his cake and eat it too. It was a point of pride with him. He didn’t see why he shouldn’t have it all, and, as far as he was concerned, the world (and I) owed him that. Looking back, I see this as just another evasion of the heartbreak and consequences of having to make choices.

I think very few of us have the luxury of having it all. We come together and move apart, searching, fleeing and climbing ladders we hope end in success. Many of us feel rootless in terms of place and tribe. We don’t really feel we belong anywhere on a map, and we have no rightful place in a human circle. We do the best we can, a choice at a time, and over the years those choices and their consequences teach us who we are and turn us into adults.

What we’re made of is not necessarily what we’re born into. What we’re made of is not necessarily the place we live in, the people surrounding us, the job we have, the clothes we wear, the car we drive or the color we dye our hair. What we’re made of is not always who we want to be, who we insist we are or who we’re expected to be. Discovering what we’re made of is an excavation of our dreams, our souls and our joyous bodies. Many of us spend our whole lives finding one piece of ourselves at a time, stumbling, groping, picking up and discarding, searching blindly in the dark with nothing but our feelings to guide us.

On one particular day of no special consequence, my small toddling self, clothed in a yellow bathing suit with white trim, was lifted into a pool of water as big as the sea. From that day to this I’ve loved the water, and during occasional long, dry spells without access to swimming I dream of water and wake myself weeping with the anguish of my longing.

I’m a creature of water. It’s part of what I’m made of.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

For some years I lived in a city and laid awake at night watching headlights move across the ceiling and walls, straining to hear a precious moment of silence in between the sound of cars and sirens and too many restless people moving through the pale night. I dreamed of high, snow-covered mountains under starry skies and the peace of trees in unbroken darkness. Every day I died a little more, but I knew in my heart one day, one day I would leave the city and live in the shadow of the mountains I dreamed of. A thousand nights later I freed myself from the tentacles of that city, but I also left behind my marriage and the father of my children, my belief in happy-ever-after, the most lucrative job I ever had and the good wife and mother I wanted so much and tried so hard to be.

Photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash

At last, I slept in the shadow of snow-covered peaks in a small mountain town without pavement and street lamps and sirens. When I awoke at night, I heard the cry of the vixen, the rushing wind, the owls calling to one another, the sound of the bear eating apples from the tree outside my window, or the raccoons cavorting in the tops of the pear trees like furry pirates.

I did not have it all. I had another piece of what I’m made of. I chose it, and I paid for it. I’m still paying for it, twenty years and thousands of miles later, and whatever the cost, it’s worth it. I cannot live in the city.

By the time my life is over, will I know everything I’m made of? Will I have lived with enough courage to choose what I’m made of, come what may? Will living true to what I’m made of sustain me? Will I ever find my own sealskin wedged between rocks, or locked away in a chest, or hidden in the thatch?

Reclaiming what I’m made of, one choice at a time. My daily crime.

The selchie lives in a small cottage on the shingle beside the sea. She lives with a fisherman whose face is carved with a lifetime of loneliness that she has relieved. She and her children gather seaweed and driftwood, mend nets and dry fish and watch for the fisherman’s return, lighting a lamp and setting it in the window to welcome him home in the evenings. She lies with her man at night and listens to him sleep, and the waves come in, and the wind sighs through the beach grass, and she thinks of her sea kin and wonders how it is with them and if she’ll ever see them again.

Photo by Kace Rodriguez on Unsplash

The selchie takes the folded sealskin from her child and holds it to her breast, weeping, smelling its fading perfume of fish and sea, rubbing its softness against her cheek. She tells her children she loves them, but she must leave, and they clutch at her hands and her skirts, crying, not understanding what is happening. She tells them they will see her again, but in a different form. She cannot stop to explain, lest the fisherman return and her chance for freedom is lost. She stumbles out of the house, casting aside her clothing as she goes, until she stands naked in the surf and steps into the skin. The children follow, stricken and wailing, pleading with her not to leave, but her need for what she is made of is even greater than her love for them, and the surf takes her gladly in its embrace and carries her out. She looks back one more time, her great, dark eyes full of tears, before she dives into the arms of what she is made of and disappears.