When the writer decided to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain, she found it an almost insurmountably difficult journey. But it was a pilgrimage that saved her
It was, under the circumstances, rash, unwise and desperate. To get out of the sump of a severe depression by walking 800km across Spain on the Camino de Santiago during an August heatwave. Not only that: I decided I would do it without friends, because I needed to win back my own strength, not lean on others. I would not take my mobile, and I would do it without tobacco, alcohol and medication.
Predictably, it didn’t work well. I found the journey almost insurmountably difficult. Within three days of starting the Camino, I bought a phone and called a friend who said she would come to meet me at the end. Before long, I was drinking beer, smoking rollies and back on pills. They helped. Strangers showed me deep tenderness. But it was the path itself that was the long-term medicine.
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