My first love
When I am not studying or reading about Human Development, my mind wanders to the days I was living out of a 50L backpack, trying to walk a 1000 kilometre pilgrimage in beautiful, sunny Spain. Before becoming a CMHAW student, I was in a serious relationship with travelling. One of my most treasured travel adventures was walking “El Camino de Santiago”. Which translates to “The Way of Saint James”. I didn’t know then that walking this pilgrimage would significantly contribute to my motivation as a Community Mental Health and Addictions Worker.
Where to start?
I wish I could tell you that I planned this trip with care and that I got into hiking well before I committed to the journey. This wasn’t my case. In fact, I was inebriated when I booked my ticket to Europe. You see, before I became a student at Stenberg, I was dealing with my own addiction – I struggled with alcoholism.
It wasn’t until I started waking up to text messages such as, “What happened to you last night?”, “This has to stop!”, “You can’t keep doing this!”, “The police are looking for you…”, and “I don’t know how to help you”, that I realized I had to take action. I didn’t know where to begin because my problems were more in-depth than just overdrinking.
I would love to say that after receiving these kinds of messages from loved ones I changed my acts immediately, but I lived like this for years. Fast forward to 2015: I staggered into a travel centre with a wine-filled Starbucks cup and a purchase of a $950 non-refundable plane ticket. I had no idea what I was in for.
I remember waking up, head pounding, thinking it was all a dream. Did I really just purchase a ticket to Spain? According to my online bank statement, the answer was a gut-wrenching “yes”. I was to leave in three months. My family and friends thought it was a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea. But if I didn’t go, I would literally be throwing away $1000. So, I went. And thank God I did.
In search of something
What I wanted to get out of this trip was sobriety and I got that but also learned a ton of life lessons. In a way, this walk became some sort of rehab for me. It made me dig deep into my mind, into the roots of my personal issues that made me believe alcohol was a viable solution. There were days I was frustrated with my own thoughts and other days I would feel completely alone. Looking back now, I believe those were the moments I had the most profound revelations. And those were just mental battles.
I faced physical challenges where I had to walk 45 kilometres with infected blisters covering the soles of my feet, where the heat was so strong you could cook an egg on a rock, and I was the cooking egg on vast open land that had no intention to provide any form of shade.
I learned a lot from these different forms of pain as they taught me to be resilient and to persevere through what sometimes felt like the impossible. When faced with new challenges or when I thought I experienced it all, I would think to myself, “it could be worse”, and kept walking. I walked while thinking of quotes from some of my favourite authors. This is one I meditated on when my mind threw hurtful memories at me:
“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
–Cheryl Strayed
The bridge that was built by my desire to heal
When I got home after finishing this walk, I began seeing through a new lens. My morals had been reassessed. I could now magnify my strengths and truly own them without having to prove anything to anyone except myself. As long as we keep on walking with a smile on our faces and in our hearts, we don’t have to obsess about the “what ifs” of life, but instead embrace those moments where we tell ourselves with pride, “I did that!’’ I believe that to be sufficient.
