I almost didn't go. The travel agency had mixed up the dates, the cottage over the ocean was gone, and what was left was a jungle cabin that turned out to be rat-infested. The week I got back, they let me go from my job. I wasn't even happy there. Looking back, it was the last thing standing between me and actually doing this.

I expected the hips to be the problem. Every conversation I had before starting Selkie pointed there. It took fifty women and several weeks of cross-checking to find out I was wrong — it was the shoulders and the knees that were breaking everything.

You probably assumed it was you, most of us do. The pulling shoulders, the chest panel that gapes or compresses depending on the day, the zip you cannot do up alone. It was never you. It was the pattern.