Feeling Lost? What Hawksbill Sea Turtles Taught Me About Finding Your Way Home
Have you ever had the feeling that you've drifted, not dramatically, not all at once. But slowly, quietly, like the tide going out?
You're still doing all the things. Still showing up. Still functioning. But there's a distance between who you are in the world and who you feel like on the inside.
A vague sense that somewhere between everything you've been holding and everyone you've been showing up for, you lost the thread back to yourself.
You can't always name it. You just know something feels off. And no matter what you try, you can't quite find your way back.
I have felt this too. And recently I found myself pulled back into a memory that I think holds something important for both of us.
The Internship
I had just graduated from the University of Hawaii at Hilo and I was looking for work in my field, Marine Science.
I felt so connected to ocean animals that I decided to join an internship monitoring hawksbill sea turtles at remote beach locations in Volcano National Park. It was unpaid, just $10 a day for food. At the time I didn't care. I felt a yearning within me to do it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I remember hiking for miles with a heavy backpack over rugged lava terrain. We had to carry all our food for the three to four days we would be out there. These were remote, beautiful, almost otherworldly locations. Places where you could go an entire day without encountering another person.
One location stays with me vividly. There was a shed for camping supplies and on the beach someone had made an outline of a sea turtle in white rock. I remember being mesmerized.
Another location had a small natural pool carved into the lava rocks where we would sit during the day, feeling the sun and the stillness. And one beach, one I have never forgotten, was completely covered in puka shells. Puka meaning hole. Tiny shells, each one with a small opening through its center.
Even the shells on that beach knew how to let go of what passes through them.
The Work
During the day we rested, looked for signs of nesting activity on nearby beaches and waited.
Because the real work happened at night.
That is when the hawksbill mama sea turtles would return, to the exact beaches where they themselves were born, to lay their eggs. We pulled our cots out under the night sky and read the stars. Each hour after nightfall we would put on our headlamps and walk to the beach to look for turtles.
Most of the time we found nothing.
Just the dark. The sound of the ocean. The stars above us. And the quiet act of showing up anyway, hour after hour, trusting that the work mattered even when there was nothing to show for it.
When She Arrived
But a few times, I got to see her.
A mama hawksbill sea turtle making her way onto the beach.
I was taken back by how enormous she was. Ancient and unhurried, carrying an energy that made the air around her feel different. Hawksbill sea turtles are known for their hawk-like beak, their jagged shell edge near the tail, their overlapping shell plates. Up close she was extraordinary.
When she found a place she liked, she began to dig and she went into a trance-like state. This is when we would work quietly around her — measuring her carapace, reading her tags, adding new ones if she didn't have them. Then the eggs would drop.
She was completely present. Completely purposeful. Not thinking about what came before or what would come after. Just doing the ancient thing she was born to do, in the place she was born to do it.
A mama hawksbill lays up to 100 to 200 eggs — and she returns to do this three to five times in a season. Each time navigating back to the same stretch of beach using the earth's magnetic field as her compass. She carries the coordinates of home inside her body.
She has never needed a map. She has never lost the way.
When she was done, she turned and went back into the water. As naturally as breathing.
The Hatchlings
And then there were the babies.
I was there when one nest hatched. And nothing I can write will fully capture what it felt like to watch them emerge.
Baby hawksbill sea turtles fit in the palm of your hand. Compared to their mama they are impossibly small and yet fully formed. Fully functioning. Moving with a certainty and a direction that took my breath away.
They had never seen the ocean before.
They had never been told which way to go.
And yet they knew. Every single one of them. Moving toward the water with complete conviction, as if something ancient inside them had simply switched on the moment they broke through the sand.
We were there to help them. To make sure they reached the water safely, away from birds and other predators. To witness this first and most important journey of their lives.
I held one in my palm. This tiny creature, brand new to the world, already knowing her way home.
I have never forgotten that feeling.
What She Taught Me
The sea turtle doesn't find her way home by forcing it.
She doesn't think her way there or plan her way there or try harder when she feels lost. She follows something ancient that lives inside her. A knowing so precise it can guide her across thousands of miles of open ocean back to a single stretch of beach.
And those babies, born into complete darkness, never having seen the ocean, they knew exactly which direction to move the moment they emerged.
They were born knowing.
And so were you.
That yearning you feel. The one you can't quite name, the one that makes you wonder what you're doing here and where you lost the thread. That is not a sign that something is wrong with you.
That is your internal compass trying to speak.
You haven't lost your way. You've just been living so far above yourself. In your head, in the noise, in everyone else's world. That you can't feel the signal anymore.
The sea turtle doesn't navigate from her mind. She navigates from her body. From something deeper than thought, deeper than logic, deeper than any map anyone else could give her.
Coming home to yourself begins the same way.
Not by thinking harder. By dropping down. Into your body. Into the present moment. Into the quiet place beneath all the noise where your own knowing has been waiting patiently. Like a signal that was always transmitting, even when you couldn't receive it.
A Practice — Finding Your Way Back
The next time you feel lost or disconnected from yourself, try this.
Find a quiet place to sit. Feel the weight of your body: your feet on the floor, your back against the chair, the simple fact of being here in this physical form.
Place both hands on your thighs, palms facing down. Press them gently into your legs and feel the contact, skin, warmth, density.
Take three slow breaths. Not into your chest but all the way down into your belly. Let each exhale be longer than the inhale.
Then ask your body, not your mind, where is home right now?
Don't look for a big answer. Just notice what your body does. A softening somewhere. A breath that goes a little deeper. A subtle settling, like something that has been bracing finally remembers it doesn't have to.
That is your compass speaking.
Come back to it whenever you feel lost. It has never stopped transmitting.
The Sea Turtle Journey is a guided audio experience that brings you to the ocean's edge — where your sea turtle guide is waiting to help you find your way back to yourself. If something in this post resonated, she has more to show you.
And if you're new here, the Shoreline Release is free. A few minutes at the water's edge to set down what you've been carrying and remember where home is.
Stacy Stehle | Ocean Energy Guide & Founder of Ocean Energy Wellness
Stacy helps women release what they've been carrying and find their way back to themselves — guided by the wisdom of the ocean.
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