Seeking Shama: Me, My Dog, and the Road to Inner Peace

As a wife and mother, I found Kee Kee Buckley’s Seeking Shama to be a refreshing, heartfelt, and surprisingly relatable memoir. On the surface, it’s a road-trip narrative: just a woman, her beloved dog Yoda, and a Prius named Princess Leia driving across the country. But at its core, it’s a story about unraveling, rebuilding, and learning how to redefine success and self-worth when the carefully built structure of life collapses.

Buckley begins with an unflinching look at her Los Angeles life before it all fell apart: the glamorous yet hollow world of Hollywood, where she tied her identity to her career and social status. Her candor is striking: “What I Do became Who I Am,” she admits, capturing the way ambition can morph into a brittle identity. When the Great Recession stripped her of her job, financial security, and the illusion of stability, she chose a different path. She packed her car, grabbed her loyal dog, and set off in search of shama: peace, tranquility, and quietude of mind.

The memoir’s narrative is grounded in place as much as in emotion. Each chapter is tied to a stop along her route: Big Sur, Portland, Boise, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Austin. Every location becomes a mirror for the inner journey she is on. Buckley has a gift for weaving landscape and symbolism into her storytelling. The monarch butterflies of Pismo Beach remind her that transformation is slow but inevitable; the elephant seals in Big Sur echo her struggle between past loves and future possibilities.

As a mother, I couldn’t help but notice the way she writes about her bond with Yoda. Their relationship isn’t just about companionship; it’s a lifeline. She admits, “The soul of the Universe can be seen in the eyes of a dog,” and I couldn’t agree more. Yoda’s steadfast presence reminded me of how family, in all its forms, anchors us when we’re lost.

What struck me most was Buckley’s honesty about fear and vulnerability. She doesn’t romanticize her journey; she talks about rain-soaked camping nights, financial strain, and the haunting “what ifs” of past relationships. Yet, her writing brims with resilience and humor. I found myself nodding at her realizations about how friends accept us as we are, without the trappings of career success, and how real freedom often comes when we step outside the script we thought we had to follow.

The themes in this book, which include loss, transformation, the search for belonging, and the courage to start over, are universal. Readers who have faced midlife reinvention, career upheaval, or the ache of unfulfilled dreams will see themselves in these pages. At the same time, the book will appeal to anyone who enjoys travel memoirs infused with spiritual searching, from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. By the time I turned the last page, I felt as if I had taken the trip alongside her. Seeking Shama isn’t just a memoir; it’s an invitation to pause, to breathe, and to consider what it might mean to welcome change in our own lives.