I want to express this to illustrate just how mystical and intertwined everything is - and how you can find clues to who you are through the names, hobbies, careers, and circumstances of your family lineage. 

My mum's last name is Ronan, it's of Irish origin. It translates to “little seal” (the animal, not like a Tupperware lid). Mum took to the water in her youth; a spearfishing champion. When I was growing up my parents owned and operated a “Dive Shop" together (as we called it). They facilitated scuba & snorkeling for the public by providing the equipment, training, and chartering trips on their boat out to do cave diving and other underwater adventures, sometimes around the globe. It's as though the ocean is in my blood.

A significant amount of my childhood was spent by the sea. We lived in a suburb called Williamstown which is surrounded by water on three sides. The trips to the beach were frequent if not constant. For me this all bloomed into an unconscious relationship with the ocean; if I was tumultuous within I'd walk down the breakwater and sit brooding at the end, my clothes and hair slowly dampening with the mist from each crashing wave. She calmed and cleansed me enough to help me see my next move even before I understood there was a depth to reality beyond the skin of the physical.

Fearlessly exploring the darkened crevices of the ocean was my parents' jam. Dad told me stories of shipwrecks he nearly drowned in because of directional disorientation and the hazards of kicking up silt. One of his personal philosophies is in essence: “if you don't brave the fear of the risk then there can be no reward" - which came in useful extending his hand into dark crevices; hunting for lobsters by feel alone. This sense of external exploration is not really for me though. I'm happy to swim around at the beach, hike, and connect with nature, but my sense of adventure and taking that risk is all directed inwards.

I discovered this personal aspect of interconnectedness when the Selkie archetype was calling to me. If you don't know what a Selkie is, it's *kind of* like half werewolf, half seal based mermaid - also known as Seal-Folk in Celtic folklore. (I recommend a deep dive if it calls to you.)

I hardly remember what sparked the exploration but I absorbed movies, books, and other written ancient lore about them. I surrounded myself with trinkets metaphysically relating to the Selkie & the ocean (even literally with some ceramic seals I'd come across at the local op shop). I debated purchasing a seal fur from the traditional Inuit hunters of North America. The energies I'd already absorbed of the Siren & the Shapeshifter were thoroughly integrated with each other within the Selkie, with my family heritage, and I could see my personal history within the stories too. Feeling somewhat captured (even by will) and having the wild & deep freedom of the sea calling me home to my authentic self.

The ocean is intrinsically interrelated with the emotional body; the subconscious. When we talk of the element of water we speak of healing, of cleansing, of destroying and creating ourselves anew with the alchemical & transmutational power of emotional release. (The ocean specifically doubles down on this aspect with the addition of salt, another energetically cleansing substance.) It also speaks of lineage and history - the water of the womb,  and the ever present nature of water cycled and recycled through the clouds, land, the plants and critters upon her, then back to the ocean just as we as souls are cycled and recycled through lineage. While my parents explored the physical ocean, I explore the metaphysical one.

Being amphibious in this way; first acknowledging, and then exploring the darkness of the emotional aspects of ourselves when it arises, is the key to self expansion and progress. I'm made for it, so I can aid others in self exploration too. Just this one aspect of my lineage is a small indicator of what my soul is aligned with on this physical plane. There's more, but the purpose of this example is to show you that there's a depth to your soul in your blood, in the traditions of ancestors, of names, of personal & cultural mythologies, to the physical world around you that extends into the non-physical, and the linearity of time both forward and back. 

You don't have to be a genealogist or a mystic to start exploring who you came here to be. You can just start googling your familial names and begin to understand the correlations. Start looking at your past as your own personal lore & mythology. Take the symbolic meanings of the circumstances and themes of your childhood as the seeds of who you are destined to become. Everything is connected.