Call of the selkie - part 1

Called cryptically by my ancestors, I find myself embarking on a pilgrimage through Scotland steeped in the mystical folklore of The Selkie. This is Part 1: Rainbows & Unicorns.

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SPEAKER_00 0:08

This is Divine Interruption. I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin. Hi, thank you for being here. I hope my voice is going to hold up today. It's feeling very raspy and I can hear myself in my head. So I just hope this sounds okay because I really want to move this story through me and out of me. I've been holding back for the past few days and I can feel it. Today I want to talk about ancestors. Now, I heard more and more about quote-unquote ancestors when I entered the spiritual or the healing space. And I'd heard people talk on podcasts about connecting with their ancestors and ancestor stories and ancestor healing. And I got it, but I didn't really get it. I knew of my relatives, I knew my own story kind of. I'd been introduced to my family tree, but I only really knew about the people that came maybe one or two generations behind me. And when people would talk about their ancestors and all this healing and this connection that they would have that was so profound, I just really, I just didn't get it. I was like, yeah, yeah, okay. But then, years later, I got the call. I really did. And that really shifted things for me. I am first-generation Canadian. I have a dual citizenship. My parents were both born in Scotland. And as a child, I'd been back many times. I was very lucky. I don't remember a lot of those visits. But the last time I went back to Scotland, I was 16. And I just always assumed that I'd go back again or that I'd end up there somehow. I had dreams of going to the Glasgow School of Art where my dad went. And I just assumed that was going to be a part of my journey. And my parents had emigrated when they were quite young, you know, to come to Canada. And they didn't know each other, but they had grown up about 40 minutes apart in Scotland. So my dad was from Glasgow, my mom is from Greenock. My dad went on his own when he was 18, and he ended up in Montreal. And my mom moved with her mother when she was 15 and ended up in Vancouver. So on opposite ends of the country. And that was somewhere like in the mid-mid-50s. And somewhere down the line, years later, they both ran into each other in Vancouver. And the rest is history. That's how our family was created. And growing up, I had a really small family and still do, you know, it just keeps getting smaller, honestly. It was just my parents, my brother, and I, and my mom's mom, so my grandma. And everyone else was somewhere else. So in Scotland or England or Ireland, somewhere in the UK, they weren't a part of my daily life. And I hadn't really met a lot of them, to be honest. I went to one of my cousins' weddings, and I was only two years old. So a lot of them were so much older. I never met my grandfathers at all. They died years before. And my other grandmother, she died when I was like 14 years old. I'd only met her once when I was six. So there's a lot of separation there. But I did grow up with a lot of the culture. So we lived in Alberta, you know, in this prairie city in the middle of more prairies and flat land and oil and big trucks and all the things. You know, that's just one part of that province. But it was very different from how my parents grew up and what they knew. But I did grow up with words like ice lollies and bonny lassies and iron brew and jelly babies, like all of these things that my parents had within them and had experienced. They brought those things to us. You know, I had oatmeal for breakfast every day that my dad would make in a special way, and we had wee pies for dinner. We celebrated Robbie Burns Day every January and ate things like Cullen Skink Tart and Rumbledhumps, and there was always um blood pudding in the freezer. And I knew about our clans and our tartans, and I really grew up with a lot of it, but I also felt very removed. And so much of our life in Alberta felt so sterile in comparison to just the Scottish folk stories and the magic that my grandma used to describe when I was growing up. I would spend a lot of time with her, and she would tell me all sorts of stories about fairies and the magic of the earth. And she used to take her hands and my hands and she'd put them together in this special way, and she would like transfer energy to me or take some of my energy. So she, you know, just had this other perspective that I was really drawn to. And she didn't seem, you know, like she was all into magic from the outside, but hanging out with her so much, I was like, oh, there's so much more here. She's like, I've seen fairies, you know, and I truly believed her. And it's just this connection to this, what they call like the fee, you know, this magic and this mysticalness that's connected to the earth and the natural world. And so that was there. There's this connection that we all have to something that's sacred, that's really within you. It's a part of you, even if you have never touched those lands, even if your family doesn't look like a quote-unquote typical family. Maybe you were adopted, or maybe you grew up in foster care, maybe you were conceived through a donor that you've never met, or your family's estranged or split. You know, just because our families look different, it doesn't mean that that connection to our family lines aren't there. And the lands that those before us inhabited or grew up with, or the magic that they hold within, doesn't exist, right? It's there, it's inside of us. It doesn't have to be on this physical level of seeing it or knowing it or having lived it. It's just the energy. It is there. So I digress. But this is something that I felt growing up, but it wasn't really obvious. I couldn't really conceptualize it. Because for me, on in one sense, I was at home. I was on the prairies, that's all I'd really known. And yet I I also held this knowing and this yearning for this entirely different life in this entirely different place. And I always felt like I was bridging this gap between the old and the new, or the past and the future. And a part of me did feel connected. But it wasn't until I was, you know, so much older that I really felt like, what is that connection? What is that call? What is that yearning? And it was really just a pull. I started to feel this pull. And I think this happens to so many of us as we get older. You know, there's this interest that comes up. It's like, where are we from? And that starts to feel like it matters more and more. And I believe we get this call for a reason. This isn't just some random interest, like, I want to look up the family tree. I really feel like it is a truly divine call because a lot of us have work to do here, you know, on behalf of our family lines, of our ancestors. And this came up organically in most of the intuitive readings I was doing when I was doing them regularly. There was always a part around healing ancestral lineages. Part of each person's purpose was to break patterns that not just their parents had experienced, but their grandparents and their great-grandparents and going back and back and back. It was like, so many of us have signed up to be here now to actually break. Ugh, sorry, I'm getting freezing cold when I talk about this. I'm covered in chills right now, really. That's a part of our purpose. And I don't know, I can't speak for everyone. I just know that everyone who came to see me, this was always a part. It wasn't always the biggest part of why they were here or what they were doing, but it was a part of it. And that can look like so many different things, right? It could just be something as small as, you know, learning better boundaries, you know, in relationships and saying no when maybe you've always just felt like you had to say yes. And maybe you saw your parents go through that experience growing up. And it turns out that then, you know, your grandparents also had that in their relationship, something around boundaries. Or it could be choosing a career and saying, yes, I'm gonna be an artist, even though I feel like I can't. Or if you're parenting, just making a different choice. And I think we do that naturally. We're inclined to. You don't need to say, I'm healing an ancestor story, right? I think we do this inherently. Oh, I grew up this way. Yeah, I don't want to carry that forward. I don't want to do that again to my kids. I want to break that pattern, right? That is actually so profound, is profound work. So I think the call is very important. And may I say, like when we stop questioning our urges or our interests, if you feel called to look into your ancestral past more or whatever it may be, if you just do it and stop questioning it and be like, oh, that's weird, or this means nothing, like just allowing it, we could be led down just some of the most miraculous paths. So when I felt the call kind of wash over me, it just felt like an interest and an intrigue to just know more about where I came from and to dig deeper in our family tree. Like, how far back does the family tree go that we know of? And my brother had taken a DNA test and I could look at it through his lens, and all of the different people that were online on Ancestry, I could see how far this family tree went back. And I just explored it more. I just loved sitting there and just staring at it. I don't really know what I learned. I just knew that I wanted to look at it and know more. And I created an altar. I put out a candle and like different elements like rocks and feathers or little bowls of water, like all sorts of stuff I just felt called to do. And when I kept doing this and exploring more, I would also feel and see like a color. For them, it was emerald green. And I learned things about our teeth and how our teeth are connected to our ancestral lines and each tooth has a different meaning. And as we get orthodontic work and we align our teeth, how that is actually very healing. Because if there's any sort of misalignment there, that means that there's something to be looked at in certain parts of our lineages. Just fascinating things. And I have had a lot of issues with my teeth, may I say. So it just makes so much sense to me. And sometimes I would just sit, just sit quietly and kind of just be like, hey, hey, family, like, can I can I feel you? And I could see kind of like my dad's family, and I could see my mom's family, and they'd be on different sides, and I could really start to feel into their energy. And they had different colors, and I could see that within those colors, I was like, oh, this one feels very contracted, and this one feels overextended. And I could feel into their different types of pain and like what they were struggling with, which was fascinating because those are the energies that I carry within me. I carry both of those. And it goes so far back and so beyond. And the more I understood about them and maybe what they struggled with, the more I understand myself and what I was dealing with just in my day-to-day life and maybe why I felt the way I did about certain things. You know, I also wanted to take courses. I was like, who offers ancestral healing courses? And I would look up retreats. And at the end of the day, it was all very expensive and it just never worked out for me. And I realized that, like I said, when it's not about the physical, like we don't need to know exactly who these people are necessarily. Also, I don't think you need someone else to be your bridge or your connection. It's so personal. And when I realized I wasn't even working with real people, I'm like, no, I'm just kind of connecting with their energy. And it's very accessible for anyone and everyone. I think it's meant to be like that. If it just means sitting and closing your eyes and being like, okay, what does my family where I came from from my mother's side, even if I've never met my mother, let's say, I don't even know her name, you can still connect with that energy. So I could go on about that forever. But I just started to learn so much more and feel into that. And beyond that, as I was kind of learning and feeling to the energies of my family, there's just something about the land, something about the physical land of where I came from, where my family came from. And I just kept feeling it. And when the land started calling me, it just was like this whisper. I was like, oh, I kind of want to go back to Scotland, you know, I want to go back there. And I used to think it was for all sorts of reasons. But then it just started to be, I would see myself just standing, just standing on the grass, like the earth. It was something about the earth. I'm like, I want to stand on the earth. I want a river to just flow over my feet. I want to experience the rain and the wind. I just want to be in the elements. It was just like the earth was just calling me. So after years of this, at some point I was like, okay, I can't ignore this. This isn't just some fantasy of wanting to go on a vacation or a trip. This just feels important. And so planning the trip was really confusing. I knew I had to go on this trip. And at this point, I hadn't traveled in years, and I'd had kids and had been going through all of this health stuff and had felt like my, you know, my whole life had kind of fallen apart over the years. Yeah, I just had limited capacity. And I've talked about that before. I just wasn't well. And the idea of even traveling was really daunting. I was like, I don't, I don't think I can even do that. And I used to kind of grieve that when I was in my illness, like really deeply, and you know, still am, but at different parts of it, I was like, I'll never be able to do that. I'll never be able to go anywhere because I can't eat the food. I can't be in a different environment. I couldn't handle the sun somewhere or the wind somewhere else, or the rain, or I would be too exhausted, like all of the reasons, or we can't afford it. There's so many reasons that were telling me you'll never be able to do this. So when I actually started being like, no, I think I need to plan a trip, it just felt like a big deal. And then when I talked over my partner, Nick, and he's like, okay, like we're going to make this work. This is really important. When we start to actually do that, I was like, oh my God, like, is this actually going to happen? You know, this is real. Then it became very real. And I was like, okay, I haven't even planned a trip in years. How do I plan this? What type of trip is it gonna be? I felt so overwhelmed with the options. I oscillated between so many different things. Is this something we do as a family? Like, are we taking the kids? They're still young. That sounds really hard, but oh, maybe it's important for us to all go together. Or maybe this is a trip about visiting all of these family members that I haven't seen since I was a teenager. Is it about that? Or we talked about getting married, you know, we're not married. And I always thought, oh, that would be where we would get married. There's something very special about being there. So we talked about that. Are we planning a wedding in Scotland? Is that what this is? So it was this overwhelm of options. And yet when I would sit alone, not on the computer, not researching anything and looking up options, when I was alone, I was just like, oh, the land, the land, the land. I just need to stand on the land. And it was a really unknown feeling because I couldn't really see much beyond that. I couldn't really picture this trip or really imagine like what it was gonna be like. And it wasn't about planning very much. I was like, no, it's not about really doing anything. It's about getting there. And I'm like, if I can just get myself there. So I came to the realization that it was gonna be me going by myself. That felt really important. I was like, no, I'm I'm not gonna go visit family. I'm not gonna bring my family. We're not gonna have a big event. I just need to get there by myself because something is there for me. And that's the priority. So in the beginning, I actually booked a tour. I found someone and it felt like all magical and mystical. I was like, oh, this person's really into healing and magic, and this is a transformative trip that they're offering, and the itinerary is all planned out. This means everything will be taken care of. I don't have to worry about where I'm gonna be staying or how to plan where I'm gonna go. I'm just gonna do this. I had a moment, there's like a little something there that I wasn't sure about, but I was like, no, this is the best. This is the kind thing to do to myself, so I'm not overwhelmed. So I booked this tour and I was in contact with the person who was offering this trip. And this is a story for another time because it was kind of nuts what happened, but it became very clear within a week to two weeks of booking this that it was like not for me. I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm getting all of the signs. This is crumbling. I cannot go on this trip at all. And I had to cancel it. And within that, I realized this was someone else's vision. This was their trip. This was their energy. And I was meant to do this alone. And it was really important for me to plan it myself. So I canceled that and then started to kind of build it out. I decided to treat it like a pilgrimage. So it wasn't like I was going to this destination and then I was going to do all this stuff. I was like, no, every part of the journey is important. I am going to move myself across the country, and each leg of that journey is going to be moving towards something. So the travel itself would be sacred. The journey would be sacred. And I didn't even really know where to go. I knew the places I'd been before and the places that made sense. But somehow I ended up planning this trip to most of the places I'd never been before and negated like Glasgow and Greenock, where my family was actually from. But I looked back in our history and I kind of plotted out where centuries ago my family was born and these members came from. And it was all up the East Coast. So I decided I was going to take this trip up the East Coast, visiting all these different places, go all through the highlands. There's an entire area that is my family name called Sutherland. There's this whole area that's named that. And there's so much history there. And then I thought, okay, I'm so I'm going up to the northernmost tip of this country. And then Nick was like, why don't you go to the Orkney Islands? You know, it's he's like, that sounds really cool. And I was like, I've never heard of that before. Like, I don't know what these islands are. I don't know what they would mean to me. And then I kind of looked into it. And when I looked it up, I'm not kidding you, I just turned ice cold. My whole body went cold. And I was like, ugh, like I'm covered in goos pumps. There's something as I'm talking about, it's happening again. There's something about that space. And it has these like Neolithic sites. They are so old. It was like the first people to ever be on that land. They created these homes and there's actual physical representation of that there, the original sacred sites that date back before the pyramid. So the energy there is ancient. So when I kind of looked that up, I was like, oh, that's really cool. And I'm feeling it in my body. Like, okay, I'll end up there. And then I'll make my way back down. And, you know, there was a lot of unknowns, obviously. There was a lot of fears. I was just really nervous in general about surviving. That may seem crazy, but again, because of the state that I was in, you know, and coming out of, I was like, uh, how am I going to eat? Uh, how am I going to interact with people? Like, I've been so isolated, I've been so unwell, I feel like I can't even talk to people. I'm so anxious, you know, I won't be able to find anything to eat. I'm going to have to bring all my own food. What if the places that I stay at? Like, what if they have air fresheners or they use conventional laundry detergent? And what if I get sick or I have a breakout or a reaction or it was just everything was building up and I was just nervous about all of it. But honestly, the moment that I entered the airport, I just felt like I entered another universe. And as I was at the airport, my brother sent a screenshot of our ancestry account, and there was an update, and it had this little map, and it was showing an updated point that had circled the Orkney Islands, and it was saying, like, this has shown up as like a very important origin point. And I was like, this is bananas. Okay, so Orkney is important. It is connected. I'd never heard of it, but there's a reason why I'm going there. And the trip just kind of moved in that direction. Everyone I talked to on the plane and at the airport, and when I arrived, there was just some connection to something in my life, or they provided some important piece of information. It was just this state of flow and synchronicity. Like it felt so magic. It was like the trip was guiding me. I wasn't having to do anything, which is why I hadn't planned anything for a reason. Obviously, like everything was just happening for me. In one of the first cities that I stayed in, once I reached Scotland, because I started out in London and visited a friend and then took the train up, I was in this old bookshop, and I remember walking by and a book just fell out straight out of the shelf onto my feet. And so I had to pick it up as I pick it up. You can't even make this up. It had like our family name. It was like Sutherlands. And it was all this information about the Sutherland clan. And it had just fallen physically off the shelf onto my feet. And I pick it up. I was like, okay, like you're here. You've driven me here. This is bananas. And, you know, I'd walk past a cemetery and then I would see gravestones with family names and diff different names from the family that I knew. I had a point where I was on the train and my phone stopped, like my playlist stopped, but I was listening to, and just other music came on from nowhere. It wasn't anything that was in my library. And just playing these songs, I was like, ah, this is all connected. There's messages everywhere. Just when you think about synchronicity, every moment was like that. It was so fun and so unexpected. And yeah, it just became clear I was along for the ride. I had been guided to plan this outline, but the rest was just being filled in as I went. So in one of the first legs of my journey, I was staying in the city of Inverness and I was leaving the next day to travel up the East Coast through the highlands and all the way up to go to the Orkney Islands. And I was so exhausted, right? Like I was kind of like high on life and everything that was happening. But I was really tired and I knew I had to wake up really early the next day. But then I was called to book a trip. I was like, you know what? I'm so close. I want to go to the Isle of Sky. It just sounds magnificent. It seems magical. And I just pushed myself. I was like, you know what? You're here. You're going to do this. So I booked this like day trip. And it was the best thing I did. It was, again, so synchronistic. It was just this journey. I think it was at least 10 to 12 hours, like a really long day. I got on a bus with a bunch of other strangers from all different places on the world. And we just traveled for the whole day all the way to the Isle of Sky and saw things like Loch Ness and different castles. And we went to these magnificent fairy ponds. And it was just beyond because everything that my grandmother had told me about and had described in these folk stories and just in her, I don't know, talking to me about things, I saw those things. I saw those things. I kid you not, and it really blew my mind, we're on this bus and the lands, I'll post pictures, but the lands were just epic and green and these beautiful hills and this mist. And I saw giants, like in my mind's eye. I saw giants, and they were just huge. They would sit up from the earth. And then I saw these huge mermaid-like creatures coming out of the water. And I was just blown away. I was like, I am seeing the magic that is inside of me that I was told about that I didn't really know existed, but I also knew existed. It was so real for me. And I met amazing other strangers. I realized the back of the bus was filled with Canadians that if I hadn't, you know, opened my eyes or been open to having a conversation, I would never have known that. And I got to experience those moments with them. And on that bus ride, our bus driver was telling us all of these folk stories about Scotland and the beings that were there. And everything is steeped in meaning and metaphor and magic, the whole thing. So all of it was just this kismet experience. And from there, I journeyed up the East Coast the next day and I went through all these regions that I'd seen on our ancestry map. And these were not places I ever visited as a kid. Even my parents hadn't been to all of these places. It was much more remote, a lot of nature, very small towns. When I reached the tip of Scotland, I took a ferry over to get to the Orkney Islands. And on the ferry, there was a woman and her son. He was maybe five or six. And they were sitting next to me, and I felt so compelled to talk to him. He was playing with Lego, and I just wanted to be like, oh, how's the Lego? Like I just, I was like, I feel like I'm going to explode if I don't ask him about his Lego. And his mom was like trying to read a book, and you know, she didn't seem open to talking or anything, but I just started talking to him. I was like, oh, Lego, blah, blah, blah. And then that just launched into a connection with her. And turns out she was a history teacher. And she'd grown up in Orkney. And she told me just the entire history of the island and the people. And she's like, here are the magical spots. This is where you need to go. And she's like, when you reach the beach, you need to stand there and imagine yourself as if you're one of the first people who ever stood on that beach. And she's like, you will feel like you are a part of history. She's like, it will be so magical to you. Like as they were leaving, she's like, say bye, Sky. And I was like, oh, his name is Sky. I went to the island Sky yesterday. And when I stayed there on the island, I was at a bed and breakfast. And it was the this lovely owner. He brought me out the breakfast the first day as it was like this oatmeal prepared in a certain way. And it was the cut-up fruit that my dad used to do for me. And his name was Eric, which was my dad's name. And he was serving me this breakfast. And I was having this moment as if I was a child back home having breakfast. And I went to this jewelry store and I was looking. I love to find like, for me, it's like rings. I'm like, I want a ring that encapsulates the energy of the place and the meaning it has. And I want to wear that with me. And I was looking for this ring and I was just trying too hard. And then eventually I walked a different way, found this shop, go in, and I was like, oh, I think it's here. And the woman who was serving me, she couldn't help me really find what I was looking for. And then all of a sudden she had a coughing attack. And she's like, Oh, I'm sorry, like I have to leave. So she goes and she's like, Vicki, Vicki, take over. So this other woman comes out, and Vicki is my mom's name. And she comes over and right away she finds me the ring. And I was like, that's my ring. I need that ring. And when I was on that island, this is when I visited the Neolithic sites. And there's multiple sets of standing stones, right? So when you think of Stonehenge, think of this as another version of that. But they're much less, it's much less touristy. You can actually go up and you can stand with the stones. You can touch the stones. And I got to do all of that. And I wasn't really sure how if I was going to feel anything or if it would mean anything to me. I was just like, oh, this is really old and ancient. And you know, you've really come into your full weirdness when you're like praying for a private moment so that you can like talk to a rock. That's like where I was at. I was like, okay, everyone just leave, leave so I can sit here and like touch the rock and talk to the rocks. And I did. And again, just all these moments, I don't think I can convey how they felt. And maybe you've had experiences like this where you're just like, whoa, you were feeling and seeing all of it in your own special way. And it means so much to you, right? And that's where I was at. I didn't expect to necessarily. And there were things that I would see. They'd be like, hey, here's an old house. And the houses would be made out of stones and they'd be in the ground, just like remains of these old living spaces that had been created that many years ago, right? And people would just be walking around them and looking around, taking pictures. And there are moments where I would be going to walk through the doorway of what this house would be. And I just like, I would ask, I'd be like, is it okay if I come in here? And sometimes I heard gno. It was this energy, it's like, nope, like it's too sacred, or like you're not meant to enter this energy. And I would respect that. And other times it would be like, yes, come in, walk around. Because I don't know, there's a lot there. And I don't think we're necessarily meant to touch all of those places, or some of it felt too sacred for me where I'm like, I think I'm intruding. That's what it felt like. But other places felt very open and welcoming. So I just kind of listened to that voice. And when I was with one of the sets of sacred stones, like in this circle, I walked around and I walked through each stone. And as I did, it was like I got a message from each one. And as I did that, there was this fly, and it just followed me around. And it would fly from each spot to each spot. And then it was more. It was like three flies, and they would follow me. And I was like, okay, like these are my ancestors. My ancestors are literally these flies. And take that for, you know, what it's worth. That's just for me. And they literally followed me around all the way to the point where I left the entire site and walked all the way back to this bus. And I get on the bus. I'm like, oh, okay. And then the three flies land on the outside of the window. And then there was just one. There's this one fly that hung on. And as the bus is driving away, it stuck to the outside of the bus, like right by my face. I'm like, oh, you're acknowledging that I'm here. I'm here and you're here and you're witnessing whatever's happening here. The energies of the earth and the plants and the animals there, it all meant something. And I went to that beach that this woman on the ferry had told me about. And I found myself just doing things. You know, when you find yourself doing something and you don't know why, you know what to do. It's almost like you're not in a trance, but you're just guided and you're doing something. I was doing some sort of ceremony on the beach and I was burying something, and then I went down to the water and I was washing something, and then I was placing rocks in a certain formation. And I was just like, this is okay. We're doing this, and I'm meant to be here, and this is all very sacred. And I imagined myself as if I was one of the original people who found this space. And I just like I felt it. I was like, this is really epic. And all those who came before me, like, I am a part of this, and they are a part of me, and this land is a part of me. At one point, I even like had to pee really bad, and I ran off up this field, and I was like, no one's here, no one can see me, like there's nothing here. And I like peed in this field, and it sounds bananas, but I was like, yes, I am with the land. I am like truly of the land as I'm like squatting and peeing into this grass. It just felt really special. It felt sacred. So I just felt at home. There was like a coming home. And there was also this realization that the landscape, like where I was, it actually, when I even look back on pictures, I'm like, huh, it actually looks like where I grew up. Like there were these prairies, these long expanses of like this yellow grass and like fields and these big skies with these epic clouds, just like in Alberta, like what I love, like I get called to that. But then also, it felt very much like Vancouver Island, where I find myself now. And there's these like craggy rocks and this moss and the ocean. And I was like, whoa, I'm like bridging these two worlds to this dichotomy of this old and this new and this past and this present or the future, like everything just felt like morphing these two things together, holding two things at once. And when I mentioned I had all of these fears going in, right? I had fears around food and eating and getting around and being able to ask for help or talking to strangers. It's funny, a lot of that just abated. It just went away because as I moved through it, I realized it wasn't really that scary. And when you need to ask for something, you just ask. I felt more confident. I felt more open, and things felt quite easeful. I wasn't afraid of the things that I was at home or that I thought were gonna really hold me back. And food wasn't even really a thing. And that was my biggest stress and has been for years is how am I gonna feed myself and find the things that I need? And there's a lot of survival around that, of not being prepared and in finding yourself in a situation where, uh-oh, like there's nothing here that I can eat, right? I was really concerned about that. But I didn't really even need to eat that much, which kind of blew me away. I felt full and I felt satiated in this interesting way because it was almost like I was so stimulated and felt so alive, and I was digesting so much life and so much experience that I really didn't need to eat very much. It was as if like my spirit and my soul were like keeping me afloat. I was digesting so much of life that I didn't really need to digest that much food, which was fascinating. So that was the pinnacle of the trip, like taking the ferry over to the Orkney Islands and seeing the Neolithic sites and the energy had really built from as soon as I landed, um, and then took different trains and vehicles up all the way to the top of the island. The more northern I got, it felt like this pilgrimage, like I was going somewhere, I was releasing something or I was opening up something. It felt like the energy had been building. And it was, yeah, connecting me to this deep, like old magic, everything I felt within my bones. And it was helping me acknowledge and feel like this is where I come from. This is what's inside of me, this is what I've always known, but haven't fully been able to tap into. And up until that point, everything had felt so guided and so magical and so synchronistic. I was just in this flow state. I was like, yes, I'm healing my lineages by being here. I've been called here to access the magic and all of the things. And then as I descended, so the the rest of the trip, I was going to then make my way back down and end up in Edinburgh, and I was going to fly back home from there, spend some time there. And hadn't really planned what that would be. And that is the next leg of the journey. So maybe we stop here. We cut this in two because I could talk forever, and it's almost like there's a part one to this and a part two because then the energy shifts. So thank you for listening and tune in to part two.