I'll never forget when a local storyteller, a friend, told me the story of the selkies. I'd been talking to him about the dissolution of my marriage, and he asked if I'd ever heard it. I hadn't. He told two versions. In one, the man found a sealskin and later that night responded to a knock on his door, where a lost and shivering woman sought help. He welcomed her, cared for her, they fell in love, married, had children--and years later, while cleaning, she found the sealskin. Without another word, she took it and left and never returned. In the other, he knew what he was doing, and her departure was in response to his cruel entrapment.

I was haunted by both, especially the first, because in both, the man never knew the woman's truest self. That truth, applied to me, felt gutting in the moment. I'd like to think it's not inevitable, that a man can love a woman without stripping her of her truest skin or her deepest self, but honestly I don't think I've known a relationship, or known one well, in which that dynamic was not in effect.

I hadn't thought about this story in many years, but Yael, your piece brought it all rushing back. Powerful.