Petitioning the Selkies – A Proposal

16 years ago this summer, I moved to the far north of Scotland with my tiny daughter and a very pregnant belly. My beloved had found a job working in a rural high school, as we needed to bring in more money to support our growing family. I should add at this point, that I have always been a city girl. I was born in the Scottish central belt, and have lived most of my life in Edinburgh. Now, if you’ve ever been to Edinburgh, you’ll know it’s not exactly a big city. But, a city nonetheless.

Our move up north was like nothing I have ever experienced – before or since.

We lived in a crofter’s cottage that sat on the banks of the Kyle of Durness, and my nearest neighbours were around 6 miles away. 6 miles doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you can’t drive, are heavily pregnant and have to walk everywhere, 6 miles on winding, twisting, single track roads felt like a long way! I had no television signal, no transport, a toddler who was not yet talking, and a new baby on the way.

When I reflect back on it, this was the time of my wild initiation. I have never felt the tangible presence of the elements in quite the way I did while I lived there. I have never felt the bruising rush of life overtake my body as it did when I birthed my boy in my bed. I have never been met by the sheer inhumane strangeness of nature as I was then. I have never seen the stars as clearly as I did then. I have never felt so lonely. I have never been so free.

Yes. This is the site of my wild initiation. I may have travelled up there as a wife and as a mother. But it is on those shores that I became a woman.

This is a place that is so interwoven into my own personal mythology – from the hawthorne tree under which my placenta was buried to the winter powercuts that acquainted me with a quality of darkness I had never experienced before, from the baptism of my boys in the waves of the Atlantic as they met the whitest beaches you ever saw to the sounds of a wildcat outside my window singing its harmony to the storm.

It was years later when I finally read the story Sealskin/Soulskin in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves. But I recognised it. My years in this wild and wonderful landscape had left me intimately aware of my soulskin. It has been a tangible part of me ever since. The selkies don’t feel like like some mythical creature born from story and song. Not to me. To me, they feel real. They feel like me.

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A Proposal – This is now closed

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This Summer Solstice I am revisiting the land of my wild initiation – this place where I discovered my very own soulskin lying so close to my body that I might have otherwise missed it. As the sun tracks its longer than long journey across the skies before eventually finding a home below the horizon – if only briefly – I will be on the white sandy beach, walking the place where the waves surrender themselves to the land, and I will be petitioning the selkies.

I’m going to ask them to help me to mend and tend my soulskin.

I’m going to ask them to weave the salt and sunlight into my soulskin to strengthen and to nourish.

I’m going to ask them to reinforce the places where my soulskin has become threadbare and thin.

I’m going to ask them for guidance on maintaining a strong and healthy soulskin.

I’m going to ask them to help me to remember the presence of my soulskin… so that as the days begin to shorten incrementally from that day until the very depth of winter, my soulskin will be my light in the darkness.

I want to ask all of this for myself. And I want to ask it for you too. If you would like me to.

If you would like me to petition the selkies on your behalf, then simply click on the Buy Now button below. I have made this offer Pay-What-You-Can, as I want this to be available to as many as possible. If the selkies are calling to you, if you are feeling like your soulskin would benefit from some loving attention, if you are feeling called to experience the magic of the far north, then I want you to be in a position where you can.

For everyone who chooses to enter into this experience, I will weave your name into my own personal petition, and I will send you a report of all that occurred. My plan is to share any visions that occur throughout the day of the solstice, any animal medicine that is gifted to us, my reflections on the day and the place, as well as images, video and audio to give you as vivid an experience of this sacred selkie solstice.

The report will be shared exclusively with only those who have chosen to be a part of this experience, and it will be sent to everyone upon my return. So, you can expect an email in the week following the 4th July.

The suggested price is £10, but as I mentioned, this is a Pay-What-You-Can offer, with a £5 minimum payment, and no upper limit. Choose a price that feels resonant to you, that feels delicious, that feels like a true honouring of this offering. Also, if you could write your name in the Notes to Seller in PayPal, so that I can add you to my selkie-sister list, that would be great.

If you have any questions at all, please do just ask. I look forward to connecting to the selkies on your behalf, and I cannot wait to tell you all about it.