Wild at Heart: Building SoulFULL Bonds with the Animals Around Us

Over the past ten years, my journey as The Nature Nurse has centered on nurturing women's connection to the natural world—but it hasn’t stopped there. I’ve also helped cultivate meaningful bonds with animals, each one deepening our appreciation for the wild threads that tie us all together.

​Today, I’m sharing one of my most memorable personal encounters with wildlife—a relationship that touched me profoundly. If you’ve had a special connection of your own, I’d love for you to share it.

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Whoosh! The mermaid in me, free at last!

The terror I felt taking this first solo vacation Left behind on the dock,  
 
The guy I hoped to meet was now swimming circles below my feet. Jojo, a wild dolphin who exhibits the unusual behavior of befriending humans.  I had learned of him from a PBS documentary on dolphins hosted by Robin Williams.
 
You see, my dream career was to be a marine biologist.
 
Instead, I was swayed by my well-meaning family, who were still healing from the impacts of the Great Depression, to pursue a practical career like nursing.  Lacking courage and the financial means to pursue my goal, off to nursing school I went.
 
The sea and its inhabitants, however, continued to swim through my veins.
 
“Have you ever considered volunteering at the Mystic Aquarium?” a nurse colleague asked as we prepared a room for a post-op patient.
 
A spark of joy and possibility ignited in me.
 
I searched the internet and found that the aquarium accepts volunteers to care for the beluga whales and dolphins! Wow!
 
I did more than fill out the application.  I included a two-page heartfelt letter about why I wanted to volunteer there.  
 
Two weeks later, I was kneeling on a stage in front of a beluga whale, scratching her tongue as she held her mouth wide open.  Apparently, they love that sort of thing.  Naku was her name.  Her forehead felt like a hardboiled egg and looked like one, too.  She was the most social of the bunch.  I still have a picture of the two of us in my office.
 
Over the next several months, I got acquainted with the other belugas, and the dolphins would hurl themselves out of the giant pool onto the stage when I arrived, waving their tails at me so that I could massage them.
 
Winston, a male beluga, arrived from an aquarium in Chicago in the hopes he would mate with one of the females.  Alone in the theater, or so I thought, he slowly turned his head as he swam by me, looking me in the eye.  On the second pass, again, he sized me up and then tilted more to the side, then flashed a giant erection my way!  OH MY GOD-look side to side-Did anyone see that?!
 
“Don’t think you're so special,” the Director yelled from across the pool.  “He does that to all the girls!”
 
We played frisbee and other games intended to provide them with “enrichment”.  I was naïve as to how this human-made home deprived them of their natural behaviors and social structures.  This was 1996, years before the documentary Blackfish was released, which turned the tide on how we viewed keeping wildlife captive from entertaining to inhumane.  
 
Little did I know then that the dolphins would invite me to dive deeper. 
 
It’s one thing to interact with a cetacean (the collective term for whales and dolphins) that is captive and forced to perform for food.  Something I now campaign against.  But it’s a whole other encounter to have a wild dolphin, who has the entire ocean to explore, swimming right under your feet. Jojo’s visit lasted a few minutes, but the elation from the experience remained with me the entire day.
 
Back on the beach, a good book kept me company.  The warm sun, swaying palm trees, and reggae music played in the background.  Frequently, I peeked above the pages to see if JoJo had returned.
 
As the beach cleared out and the western sky began to turn sherbert orange and pink, I began to lose hope.  When, all of a sudden, I saw him again.  JoJo was circling the dive boat as the dive master moored it to a buoy several feet from the end of the pier.
 
This time I was ready.  I grabbed my snorkel gear and ran to the water like a child who just woke up to find presents under the Christmas tree.  The water was a little cooler, but I swam out to the end of the pier, hoping JoJo would meet me there.  Instead, he kept circling the dive boat.  “Don’t sharks come out at dusk?” I asked myself.  I bobbed and called out JoJo’s name as my teeth began to chatter.
 
The giant orange ball of fire was now meeting the hilltops.  I battled with myself about whether I should swim out to the boat, but it was far.  Finally, disappointed, I swam back to shore.  And wouldn’t you know it, just as I pulled my last flipper off, who was floating there, right at the edge of the beach, but JoJo!
 
Elated, I threw all my gear back on, and just as I entered the water, he swam away and headed back to the boat!
 
Again, I swam to the end of the dock, but the sunset glow was dimming along with my fearless spirit.
 
Defeated, I swam back to shore. Again, I took off my gear, and there he was, right by the edge of the beach again.
 
The lights along the dock lit the water.  “Sorry, buddy, you had your chance,” I told him.  “I’m not getting back in.”  Off he went back to the depths.
 
Our interspecies relationship grew over the years.  JoJo would meet me at dawn when I returned to visit the island.  The two of us would swim side by side. He would pause and wait when I needed to stop to catch my breath or clear my mask. 
 
Just two sovereign souls enjoying their freedom in their native habitat.
 
During one swim, the distance between me and the ocean floor grew greater, and I reached a point where I noticed I was feeling uneasy.  When I poked my head out of the water, I found JoJo had been escorting me out to sea.  Far away from shore.  
 
“I love you, JoJo, but I am not going any further,” he turned around and escorted me back to shallow waters.
 
On dry land, I met others of my own species who also befriended the salty dog.  We shared stories and laughs.  Like the time a retired woman was lounging in a floating tube, and JoJo crept up to her and swam around her with his dorsal fin sticking out above the water.  She reenacted a scene from Jaws and started screaming, “Shark!”, flailing her arms and legs until she capsized her inner tube and swam to shore, where a crowd of laughing tourists greeted her.
 
Always the trickster, JoJo loved to follow the water skiers, and just as they were up and cruising, Boom, he would poke his nostrum under their skis, sending them catapulting across the waves. 
 
JoJo’s antics nearly landed him in captivity as tourists and boat owners complained to the government leaders that he was causing havoc.  So beloved by his posey on land, however, we gathered our global force and campaigned to end the water ski programs and let JoJo remain free.  The story was even featured on World News Tonight hosted by Peter Jennings.
 
“Okay, okay, we’ll end the water skiing and leave JoJo alone.  Would you stop your campaign, my email box is loaded with emails about that dolphin!  I have a country to run,” the island’s Premier begged the campaign leader.
 
Identifying scars are seared into JoJo’s body as close encounters with boat propellers have left deep cuts.  One wound so deep that money donated by Robin Williams helped treat it.
 
In a full circle moment, many years later, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Williams in person and thank him for his generosity.  I noticed a shift in him, his shoulders hunching in, his head bowing down as I sensed he didn’t know what to do with the praise.  In true form, he stood erect, came alive, and shouted to a young teen we both knew, “He Will!  Have I ever told you about the dolphin in the Caribbean who is like, hey, come with me; let me introduce you to the chicks in the sea!”  Completely impromptu, he carried out a comedic skit we knew and loved him for.
 
When I experienced the one-two punch of losing my mother and brother just two days apart, it was JoJo who tended to the unrelenting pain in my wounded in my heart.  As we swam side-by-side, I felt and heard him scan me with his sonar that dolphins use to detect food.  Seconds later, not only was the grief pain gone, but it was replaced with a feeling of euphoria I have never felt before.
 
Dolphins have long been known to save people.  I began collecting stories of others who also reported healing from dolphins. 
 
A question that lingers in my mind is whether this happens due to their scanning us, visitors to their world, or are they consciously emitting energy intending to heal us?
 
As our culture experiences an epidemic of loneliness, and many suffer from the impacts of trauma and grief, perhaps we would feel better if we expanded our idea of who might be a friend. Maybe we simply need to step outside our door.