The Ones I Didn’t See: Orcas, the Haida, and Learning to Trust What Moves Beneath the Surface

Last summer, I went to Shetland with one quiet hope stitched deep into my chest: to see orcas.

We watched and waited. Sat on clifftops. Checked the sea with binoculars and scanned local sightings pages. Listened to whispers on the wind. But they didn’t come—not to us, not that day, not that trip.

And still, the experience changed me.

The not-seeing softened something. A part of me that had been gripping around certainty, around timing, around wanting signs from the outside to match the longing within. Because healing, like wild animals, doesn’t always appear on cue. It moves in its own time. Deep, deliberate, unseen.

This week, the 27s pod—an active group of orca known to frequent Shetland—have been swimming close to shore, making their presence known on social media feeds and Shetland coasts. And though I missed them, I don’t feel left out. I feel held by something older.

I wear a Haida bracelet. It’s etched with the form of an orca—a crest animal of power, family, and depth. For the Haida people of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, the orca isn’t just a creature of the sea. It’s a guardian of stories, a keeper of kinship. They believe orca travel not only through water, but between worlds. Between the seen and the unseen. Between ancestors and descendants.

It means something to me—this symbolism, this connection.

Because the Haida people have known loss. They’ve endured cultural suppression, land theft, and the grief of their traditions being stolen or silenced. And still, they’ve found ways to hold on, to carve, sing, and honour what was nearly erased.

There’s a lesson in that. About staying with what matters, even when the world doesn’t mirror it back. About how deep identity and healing often begin in the unseen places.

As a therapist, I sit with people in the not-knowing all the time. The longing. The fragments. The quiet ache for something that hasn't yet surfaced. And I hold faith that something is moving—even if we can’t yet name it.

Sometimes, the moment of transformation isn’t when the orca appears, but when we learn to be still in its absence. To trust that the sea still holds them. That our longing has value. That what moves beneath the surface matters just as much as what breaks through it.

The 27s are swimming through Shetland now. I didn’t see them but I didn’t need to.

Because sometimes the most powerful encounters are the ones that live inside you long after the trip is over.

Keep listening to the wild within,

Sarah