Forever a pilgrim

Forever a Pilgrim…

As you all know I’ve walked the ancient path 800km/500mile Camino de Santiago pilgrims’ path across Spain and it was easily one of the most profound, amazing, hard, stunning, intense, beautiful, lifechanging and awe-inspiring things I have ever done.

The first time I embarked on this pilgrim it quite literally broke me open.  My heart was so heavy as only a few days before my husband at the time told me he wanted us to go our separate ways.  He also wanted me to continue to leave to do the Camino, so with my heart was broken my body followed suit!  I worked through so much grief, often crying from mental and physical pain.  However, this allowed me to let go if so much and to turn rejection into redirection.  I laughed harder than I had in many years  with complete strangers, tried to outrun the rain, ate more chocolate and ice-creams than I had my whole life, and lost and found myself many, many times in those days, but eventually an injury sent me home before reaching what I ‘thought’ was my goal of the journey.

When my heart and body had healed, I embarked on this pilgrimage again, this time feeling stronger, lighter and more determined than I ever had before.  As a wander the ancient pathways to Santiago I marvelled at the magic of just putting one foot in front of the other and carrying everything I needed for those weeks on my back.  I sucked up the simplicity of the life, of the pilgrimage, of how life should/could be until 24 days later I entered Santiago feeling blessed, broken, brimming, conquering, empty and yet completely full.

I know both times changed me at such a deep level, it was hard to describe it then and also now.  It’s such a deep inner knowing of many things left behind and many things opened up.

The camino calls to its pilgrims, it’s calls to the world to let go of the things we think are important and just walk, just follow the path of the pilgrim devoted to nothing else but each step, each breath and rising each morning to repeat the day before.  In this simplicity we not only travel far physically but we travel even further into the deepest depths of our being.

One of the definitions of a pilgrim is: one who travels far in strange lands to visit holy places.

It’s been 9 years since my last Camino de Santiago pilgrimage and since then I’ve come to realise we are forever pilgrims, always on a journey to strange or holy lands.  These strange and holy lands are not external though, but the whispers of a deeper knowing inside.  A returning to the things we once knew, felt, sensed, and honoured about ourselves and our existence here on this enchanted planet.

This journey we are all on, this path of human existence whispers simplicity, connection, slowness, seasonal, natural, nourishing sweetness to us all the time but we often to busy to listen, so then it shouts and we wonder what that was about and what we did wrong.  We did nothing wrong apart from missing the point of the beautiful gift of life, thinking with our human minds that there should be something more!

Life is a pilgrimage; we are always the pilgrims!