1. Sealskin
The ache of forgetting the soul-self — the slow return to wildness
There is a woman who lives by the sea.
She is not wild, but she remembers wildness.
In the mornings, she feels it behind her eyes — like salt, like sorrow, like something she cannot name.
She gets the children ready.
She folds the towels.
She makes love in a body that feels vaguely borrowed.
She is kind.
She is tired.
She is mostly fine.
And then — there’s the dream.
Or the song.
Or the poem someone reads aloud, and her throat tightens for no reason she can explain.
She turns away quickly.
But something in her remembers.
Once upon a time, there was a seal woman who shed her skin to dance on land.
A man saw her, stole her skin, and hid it so she could not return to the sea.
So she stayed.
Married him.
Bore children.
Forgot the sea.
This is not a tale of cruelty.
This is a tale of forgetting.
And there is no villain but time.
Every woman I’ve ever sat with has a version of this story.
She speaks of years she doesn’t remember.
Of a relationship that looked perfect from the outside but felt hollow.
Of losing her art, her voice, her spark.
Of being so good, so needed, so reliable…
she forgot how to breathe.
Sealskin is the soul’s second skin.
The wild self.
The mythic membrane that holds the body of longing.
And when it’s lost, the forgetting is slow —
but the ache is constant.
To be skinless is not to be broken.
It is to be exiled from something essential.
And the return?
It begins when you stop pretending the ache is just exhaustion.
When you stop calling your longing "too much.”
When you start listening to the tide in your chest that says: There was something before this.
You don’t need to know where the skin is.
You only need to know it was real.
And it is still yours.
Somewhere, the sealwoman is still dancing.
Somewhere, your soul is still singing.
The story waits.
The skin waits.
And the sea is not angry you forgot.
It just misses you.
If this story reminds you of something you once knew but cannot name, stay close.
There are more tides.
And many ways to find your skin again.
