Walking myself home on the Camino de Santiago: Part 1 of 6

In walking 300 km from Portugal to Spain, I came home to myself after massive life changes. In this series, I explore that pilgrimage, including an invitation for your own Camino. Let's begin!

Hello friends!

After 300 kilometers (186 miles) of walking for two weeks across Portugal and Spain, I return to this space I love so much. For me, Living in 3D has become a heart space that connects so many of us on this shared journey of life. I hope you feel that, too. I have exciting plans for how this newsletter will evolve as it nears its one-year anniversary October 3; more on that soon. In the meantime, thank you, as always, for welcoming this newsletter into your busy lives. I am honored and humbled.

There is so much to say about walking the Camino de Santigo. That’s why I am offering a six-part series co-authored with my daughter

Marielle Velander

who walked every step with me: a mother-daughter bonding experience I’ll always cherish.

The Camino de Santiago is the ancient pilgrimage route to the magnificent cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Spain where the body of the apostle Saint James is buried. Approximately 400,000 people from all over the world do the El Camino each year. Marielle and I chose the shorter Portugese Camino, about 240 kms (the French way is some 800 kms); we added the Spiritual Variant which made our walk longer.

I explained my motivation for the Camino in this post a few weeks ago and the challenge offered in this David Whyte poem, “For The Road To Santiago,” to which my response was: How do I know if what I have is enough?

For the road to Santiago,
don’t make new declarations 
about what to bring
and what to leave behind.
Bring what you have.
You were always going
that way anyway,
you were always
going there all along.

A pilgrim's progress

Introducing a six-part series

The theme running through this series is like the rivers and the ocean we walked alongside and the hillsides we climbed. The way forward is always a bit of the path we just left and the one we’re traveling right now. On the Camino, the crashing ocean waves, the rushing river, pebbled road and shaded forest paths all point in the same direction, with the bright yellow arrow of The Way that we would come to see even in our sleep.

Over the next several weeks, we offer an exploration and interrogation of a journey that is both physical and spiritual. The Camino is a metaphor for life. We make this passage alone and as part of the great current of humanity walking the same path.

This, I find, is our saving grace.

In Part 1 today, Looking Back, my view in the first days of the journey is a backwards glance. I am still caught in that rear-view mirror of the divorce I initiated after 33 years of marriage, quickly followed by the full-time care of my mother with dementia and her passing in April.

I begin to grapple with my burning question for the Camino: How can I live in grateful acceptance of my one precious life with all its beauty and struggle? Over many miles, the question invites me to look in equal thirds at past, present and future. I ask myself:

Can I be at peace with the past, live with a full heart and ready spirit in the present, and be patient with the future as it unfolds?

In Part 2, Looking Within, which publishes October 1, my focus turns inward to the journey of heart and soul that I’ve been on since early 2022, and the lessons it continues to bring me. Shining this light on my heart, its hurts and desires, allowed me to keep walking, even when I was so very weary and each step was a weight I did not think I could bear. I searched for hidden reserves of strength and I found them.

In Part 3, Looking Ahead, publishing October 8, my heart and my eyes are on the road ahead as it reveals new vistas at every turn on the path. I realize that my destiny is not something to be managed but a gentle unfolding that invites the grateful acceptance of my whole self that I seek. The deep, full, healing breath in each step is the only answer I need.

In Part 4, Living with Ease, publishing Oct 15 and 17 in two parts, Marielle explores her burning question for the Camino: How can I live with more ease?

In Part 5, We Are All Rivers, publishing Oct 22, we co-author the story of our Camino project. We asked people we met along The Way, both pilgrims and others, “What song keeps you going when life gets hard?” Over two weeks, we collected 39 songs from people representing over 20 nationalities. Behind every song there is a story—and we’ll share the full Spotify playlist, too.

In Part 6, Planning Your Camino, publishing Oct 29, we co-author all the practical tips and resources we used in planning this journey and lessons along the way. This will be a cross-post with Marielle’s soon-to-launched Substack

The Adventure Agenda

so keep an eye out for that. Marielle, who lives in Barcelona, is a certified travel advisor as well as intrepid traveler. As a culturally curious, low-budget traveler with 60 countries under her belt, there is no better itinerary-mapper than my eldest daughter (lucky me).

As a bonus for paid subscribers, we’ll offer an hour-long live Zoom call Saturday November 2 at 8am PST/11am EST/5pm CET to answer all your questions about walking the Camino.

And now, here is Part 1: Looking Back

“Walker, there is no path, you make the path as you walk.”

—Antonio Machado

Tears stain my face as I follow Marielle across Praia da Memória (Beach of Memory) on the rough Atlantic Coast of northern Portugal. In my hand, I clutch a small vial of my mother’s ashes, preparing myself to say another painful goodbye, yet one I know will free not only her spirit to join my late father’s but also release some of my own weight of sorrow.

That morning, on our second day of walking the Camino, I am feeling intensely the grief of losing my fiercely independent, intelligent mother to the disease she most dreaded. The sorrow is loosened by a song a fellow pilgrim has gifted us, “Forget Me Not” by Marianas Trench. The singer’s beautiful voice nearly brings me to my knees as he sings: “If memories are shadows/We'd best not waste the light/I will watch you sleeping/And make sure you're alright/And you will forget me not.”

Moments before, I had said aloud, “Give me a sign, Mom” of where she wanted those ashes spread. And then we came to a plaque describing the butterflies of that area. The sign was numbered 11, the angel number. It is believed the repeated appearance of 11 indicates that an energetic portal is opening in your life, paving the way for new possibilities and exciting venture. It signifies confidence within yourself. That was all the invitation I needed. That sounded like my mother, sending me on my way.

At the water’s edge, we take turns letting ash mix with the ocean current. We step back and Marielle sings “Corner of the Earth,” a song we’ve both come to love. Its joyous spirit brings us back to the sunny day and the healing waves, back to ourselves and the promise of a journey unfolding.

I knew that the Camino, with its physical demands of 10 to 15 miles a day of walking, would ask a lot of me. I am a physically fit person but no athlete and I didn’t train for the walk (although I did break in my hiking shoes). What I know about myself is that I am a woman who gets things done. Once I set my mind to a goal, I usually achieve it.

What surprised me, however, was the way this journey had indeed become the pilgrimage I hoped it would be. With every passing mile those first few days, I thought about how far I’d come, the courage I’d summoned to initiate the end of my marriage and, despite the pain, fear and anger in that upheaval, to reach an amicable end to our 33 years together. I remembered how I’d been afraid in those early months as we negotiated the divorce to allow myself to feel any regret or to experience grief for what had been lost, since I was the one ending things. I think of a favorite poem by David Whyte, “Camino,” which begins,

The way forward, the way between things,
the way already walked before you,
the path disappearing and re-appearing even
as the ground gave way beneath you,
the grief apparent only in the moment
of forgetting, then the river, the mountain,
the lifting song of the Sky Lark inviting
you over the rain filled pass when your legs
had given up, and after,
it would be dusk and the half-lit villages
in evening light; other people's homes
glimpsed through lighted windows
and inside, other people's lives; your own home
you had left crowding your memory….

Now, through many months of support from wise teachers and guides and my own strengthened resilience, I can look back and see how the pain, grief and regret of the past is steadily being replaced by the excitement and anticipation of what is to come.

The Camino in those first five days offered so many ways to express joy even as our feet were weary. On our first day, a male nurse from Toronto, M., who introduced us to the song “Forget Me Not” walked with us for most of the day as we fell into deep conversation. Over a lunch where he and Marielle feasted on fresh octopus, I asked him about his tattoo. He said it read: “In the end, it doesn’t matter what you have faith in, as long as you have faith in something.” I asked, “What is your something?” He responded: “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. But I think it’s faith in the goodness of people.”

Later that afternoon, Marielle and I noticed a turquoise blue swimming pool cut into the rocks alongside the ocean in the town of Matosinhos. We couldn’t resist, and for five euros, entered and swam in the chilly pool water, a balm for our tired and sweaty bodies. Then we lay in the sun before clambering into our hiking gear once again.

That first day, we initiated a ritual we practiced every day of the walk: first, to each write a short description of the day in my grandmother’s travel diary, which recorded her first trip abroad with my grandfather in 1969, my first trip to Europe in 1981, and now the story of her great-grandaughter’s walk with me in 2024; second, to read that day’s entry in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening and third, to make our way through poet David Whyte’s volume of poems, Pilgrim by each reading aloud a couple of poems. As we made our way to our guesthouse accommodation with its ocean view, I thought of Mark Nepo’s words:

“Somehow we are meant to wrestle the earth into forms…seize the air into signs; meant to hold other breathing questions like ourselves and shudder as we part…it makes me ask with joy, What shall we fall in love with tonight? To what color shall we devote our being? What instrument shall we be next?”

Each day seemed to gift Marielle and I with the right amount of walking and talking. And we had so much to talk about! Even after 31 years of being her mother and a very close relationship, there are discoveries to be made, new understandings to be reached, questions we have not asked each other. She is on the brink of the middle third of her life and I am embarking on the last third. We both have wisdom and perspectives to share. And when we need space from each other for a few miles, when I need to go at my slower pace, we put in our earbuds and listen to music or simply get lost in our own thoughts.

And always, there are pilgrims to walk alongside, to engage in conversation. Over the next few days, we would meet fellow pilgrims from Australia and New Zealand (three women around my age, also caregivers of elderly parents, one of whom is divorced), the Czech Republic and Germany (a 19-year-old girl and her newly retired grandmother), the United States (a 62-year-old woman from Colorado hiking solo, also newly retired and finally able to have the time to do the Camino).

In the many miles I am alone with my thoughts, trailing behind Marielle, I begin to make peace with the knowledge that my life has played out exactly as it was meant to.

I think of Mark Nepo’s reflection for that day:

“I tried so hard to please that I never realized no one is watching…now the audience of watchers is gone and I can feel life happen in its quiet, vibrant way without interfering…In this undistorted silence, the presence of God is a kiss. It is here in this unwatched space that peace begins.”

Nepo invites us to “inhale from the unwatched space and feel the attention of life connect you to everything.” And I am paying attention. For miles, we walk along that beautiful Portugese coast and drink in the gift of being outdoors every day, all day, moving our bodies. We walk past salt pans and beds of tangy seaweed lining the beaches, eucalyptyus forests and cobble-stone village streets trailing roses over stone walls. In one cafe, the elderly owner is so devoted to Che Guevara that the walls are plastered with posters and photos of the Cuban revolutionary. The owner, pouring us glasses of port on the house, says he’s not Cuban. He just loves Che.

It is now the fourth day of our walk and I feel the past receding like the waves. Mark Nepo that morning quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

We have adventures. Crossing a river on a stone bridge, my sunglasses take a dive into a few feet of water. Marielle pulls on her swimsuit to rescue them, to the applause of the admiring pilgrims who watch. We feel we have earned ourselves a massage and so find a nearby spa to ease our sore muscles. A huge bowl of mushroom risotto has never tasted this good. As a friend tells me, there’s no need to count the calories when you’re walking so many miles.

In one of the final Nepo reflections for that first week, he reflects on the theme of “The Ground We Walk,” asking: “For aren’t we forever taking first steps, again and again? Don’t we uncover a mystery of strength by looking out before us and bringing into focus a deeper sense of truth?”

Caught in a sudden downpour drinking coffee at a beachside cafe, the Portugese owner waves us inside to wait out the worst of it. We have our raincoats and ponchos and a rain protector for the backpack (Marielle carries the bulk of our belongings) but we take our time, browsing the shop. I find a postcard illustration of a woman with flowers in her hair and it reads: “Your heart knows the way. Bon camino!” I smile, thinking of a song that I played repeatedly in the weeks I was moving toward ending my marriage, Joy Oladokun’s “Look Up.”

Look up
Do you see the sunlight
Look up
There's flowers in your hair
Hold on
'Cause somebody loves you
You know trouble's always gonna be there
Don't let it bring you to your knees
Look up

Another sign. I listen to that song now and it touches me but doesn’t break me. I recognize that the pain of the past is still within me but it no longer hurts. I have come to accept that the life I have been living all along is exactly the life I should have had. It is a life that has lacked for nothing essential—because it has not lacked for love. And how lucky and blessed is that?

When the rain abates, we stop to leave a small pile of stones on a large boulder facing the beach. Many pilgrims have been here before us, leaving small towers of stones to mark a memorial for a loved one, or a celebration of love, or simply to mark that they have been here, in this spot, on the same path that so many have walked before.

From David Whyte’s volume Pilgrim, there is a section called Looking Back. In the poem “Second Sight,” he writes in the first stanzas:

Sometimes, you need the ocean light, and colours you’ve never seen before
painted through an evening sky.

Sometimes you need your God to be a simple invitation,
not a telling word of wisdom.

Sometimes you need only the first shyness that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,

so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.

Five months ago, I wrote about the last day of my mother’s life, the most wrenching day of my life. I wrote that I believed her wish was to be “like a bird in the sky,” that she was finally free to join my father, no longer in pain and in possession of all the memories that dementia stole from her.

'I wish I could be like a bird in the sky'

That belief still gives me comfort. I may dwell in the past, with its sweet memories amid the sad, but I no longer live there. There is too much life ahead and I’ve got to keep going.

LET’S CHAT! In the comments, let me know if you’ve ever walked the Camino or are inspired to do so and why. And stay tuned for part 2 coming October 1!