Hi Friend
Eight years ago today, I finished 800 kilometres across Spain on the Camino de Santiago.
Until three days ago, I thought I had lost all the pictures from that trip. I had kept the diary of the walk on a Facebook group called Karen's Camino, and when my account got hacked, I thought everything went with it. The photos. The daily entries. The whole thing.
And then this week, while I was clearing out my Google Drive, I found the presentation I gave to a group of about 50 people when I got back. And in that same Drive, there they were. All of the pictures.
I don't have the diary. But I have my memories. And I have the roll of pictures. I've put them together into a little video for you below.
When I left for the Camino eight years ago this April, I wasn't sure if my 225-pound body carrying a 25-pound pack was going to make it more than a day. I hadn't trained by walking. I trained by teaching Nia dance classes three times a week.
I will say, to this day, it was the most difficult thing I have ever done. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. It pushed me to places I didn't know I could even go.
I got lost almost every day. I slept in rooms that were like hostels, sometimes a shared room, sometimes twenty people in one room. My feet hurt every single day, but I was conscious of what I needed to do to care for them. I watched people much fitter than me go home after ten days because their blisters and their feet were killing them.
I screamed out everything in my heart on the Meseta, and I cried as I climbed most mountains. Music got me through some of the hardest stretches. On one of the highest peaks I had Fantasy by Earth, Wind and Fire on repeat just to get me up the hill. And one day, when I was particularly defeated, I crested a hill and saw the most spectacular winery in front of me, and at that exact moment a song my dear friend Bari had suggested for my playlist, I Believe by Amanda Marshall, came on through my headphones. I will never forget it. My longest day was 40 kilometres. My shortest was 10.
I often wonder what it was all for. What it taught me.
And my biggest lesson was trust. Something that has always been hard for me.
Trust that I would find a bed.
Trust that some good Samaritan would turn me around when I was going the wrong way.
And trust that whatever path I am on is exactly the path I am meant to be on.
I often ask you to examine your life and what your heart truly wants. And as much as I believe that, I also believe our journeys are here to take us to the next right action for our heart and our life.
One of my favourite quotes from Peter Crone is this. What happened, happened, and it couldn't have happened any other way, because it didn't.
So trust what is in front of you. The right book will appear. The right newsletter. The right reel on Instagram. The right person at the grocery store. There is always a hand guiding the way on the path.
The hard part is the allowing.
In love, light and laughter,
Karen