Meeting Ireland

She met me at the wateras if she knew I’d be coming.She did know.

I had just told the sea I wouldn’t be afraid of the creatures of the depths —the ones who can hold it all and swim to the darkness.

The seal was here to test me.

Come in, she beckoned,let me get a good look at you.

She saw me in a way I didn’t know I yearned to be seen. Not in a human quirks kind of way, but in an animal way. She saw me as animal. She wanted to know how my feet flexed, how my hair became suspended and filtered sunlight, how bubbles trailed from my lips as I sunk down.

The seal breathed out through the caverns below her black eyes.

Come in.

I dunked under the silver surface where Celtic Sea meets River Ilen in southwest Ireland.

As I breast-stroked against the incoming tide, I told the seal who my people are and how I’m falling in love with this land and her butter.

How I’ve never yearned like this to sleep on the ground. To rest at the foot of a 300-year-old beech tree, curl up in her throne of roots and press collarbone into moss, weave hair into climbing ivy.

How I’ve squatted in piles of washed up seaweed, gathered bladderwrack to burst and rub the insides all over my skin and eat what’s left. How I know from the base of my throat that my grandmothers’ bodies have cried out for this sustenance since we became woman.

How scary it is to feel this this soon; like, I don’t even know her yet.

And I sob as I write this because I do, I so do. Though all those who sobbed or watched solemnly as they passed Carraig Aonair, the last Irish stone they’d see for the rest of their lives, and their children’s children’s children’s lives.

How it hurts to unearth love this deep because the grief is buried with it.

Grief of our ways taken from us; of leaving the blood and bones and feathers of our ancestors; of what happened to us and what we did to them because we learned to numb to survive.

Grief too vast to move through one body in one lifetime.

The seal surfaced again, beside me now, watching.What about you? I asked.

She dove back down and I put my head under to listen.At first I didn’t hear anything. I’m still learning to listen as creature.Then it came, short and simple: I like to play.

The crown of my head met the morning light again and I smiled.

I spread my arms wide above the water and brought them down in a splash just for fun. I swam in circles around myself. I made my legs a tail and became an underwater undulation.

Me too, I told the seal.

I wondered if she could see me… and then I knew it didn’t matter. She could feel me. This pleasure moves in currents through the water and beyond.

The seal reminded me that I must pause and experience the overwhelming joy of reuniting with these lands and bodies of water. For all of us.

As I walked up the boat launch I heard a big splash. I turned in time to catch the wave made by her joyous leaping body.

I have just returned from Ireland; my first trip to reconnect with the land, waters & ways that many of my ancestors come from.

This journey marked a major step in facing my resistance towards the cultures of my own people. Resistance that has tried to protect me from generations of unexpressed grief and shame born of the wound of separation from ourselves, the land, each other.

Separation caused by colonization and capitalism.Colonization and capitalism strengthened by further separation.Religious doctrines underlying, justifying, multiplying.The intertwined wounds of those who caused harm and those who endured it keeping us in the cycle…

I didn’t think I’d be ready to make the trip this soon. But as I started to learn what had happened to my people — what enabled them to steal the homes and lives of native peoples and to treat humans as property to be exploited when they came to Turtle Island — I sensed that only in looking more deeply at the truth could I be a catalyst for collective healing.

That in understanding my complex histories and connecting with those who came before me, I open myself to greater love and support to move through the healing called for in my family lines.

Which is not in any way straightforward; like most of you, my people come from many places. I’m a mix of Irish, Scottish, French, Finnish, English, German and more, with most of my ancestors having lived in different places on Turtle Island for 4-8 generations. There’s so much to learn, it can be hard to decide where to start.

But I know that this is a long journey made of many small steps that began before me, and I’ll be guided as I trust the stirrings in my heart.

Not long after I recognized this, I decided to apply to the Writing the Next World workshop with two of my favorite brilliant teachers, adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown, in Ireland. I had no expectation of acceptance — I just opened the google form because adrienne said (on the podcast) the application was super easy.

But as I wrote a response to, ‘tell us how attendance … would enhance your creative practice,’ this deep yearning awoke in my body. For the first time, I felt an intense longing to be in Ireland. I let myself feel it, channel it, and become a spell…

I feel my edges yielding, my surrender to amorphous terrain. I feel fear and trust. I feel my channel opening, calling me to write from the depths in and beyond me. I feel a shifting in beliefs about my voice and how my writing can serve.

I feel more a part of this island each day, nourished by what grows here. I feel the hills, the stones, the ocean holding me for the first time. I hear the old ones speaking to me.

I feel the new world we built together revealing what present me can’t yet imagine. I feel the brilliant lights in the hearts of the creatives and teachers beaming, brightening the light in my own.

It was at this writing workshop in West Cork that I met the seal.

Squeezing the brackish water from my hair after my first swim in the estuary, I saw what I thought was a coconut floating past (forgetting for a moment I was not at home in Puerto Rico). But when it suddenly slipped underwater, I realized it was the head of a creature.

She came back up and looked at me, here ancient eyes shining. I felt a sense of awe and also fear, relieved I was out of the water.

As the sun rose the next morning, I stood at the shore. If I meet a creature, I told the sea, I’ll be brave this time. I offered flower petals, brushed and braided my hair.

And then up she came.

Of course I don’t know if it was the same one (or if this seal is a she), but I’m trusting what I felt. That she had come back to meet me. I sensed I had been waited for, expected. That I was being welcomed.

And as I continue to relive our swim together, the seal is still teaching me.

Yes, swim to the depths my love. Make your legs a tail and enjoy the trip down. Splash when you come back to the surface. Don’t be afraid of the dark because joy is always right here. And the joy feeds our spirits — it heals just as much as the tears.

Read more of Katherine’s work on her Substack, Healing Aloud.