Looking back, I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
At forty-one, I had spent more than two decades doing what life required of me.
I became a mother at nineteen and had my son two years later. I married young, divorced by twenty-seven, and my focus became simple: work, raise my children, pay the bills, and keep the lights on.
I didn’t go to college. I simply kept moving forward because that was what life required.
Like many people, I could tell you about the hardships I experienced, but that isn’t the point of this story.
The Camino de Santiago found me through a book.
I don’t even remember the title anymore. It was the story of a woman who walked the Camino after her divorce, and her journey spoke to me. I began reading everything I could find about the Camino. Then I discovered the movie The Way. Before long, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Unbeknownst to me, my Camino had already begun.
After months of changing my mind, I finally booked a plane ticket. My boss gave me a month off, and suddenly the idea became real.
In 2016, I found myself standing in France with everything I needed on my back, about to begin walking across northern Spain.
There was something incredibly liberating about carrying everything I needed in a backpack.
As someone who had been shy most of my life, I was about to spend more than a month surrounded by people from places I had never been, speaking languages I didn’t understand.
For the first time in years, I had chosen something simply because I wanted to. I was open to a new experience, the physical challenge, and meeting people from all over the world. Perhaps most importantly, I was open to reconnecting with the young woman who had grown up so quickly that she never really had the chance to simply be young.
The walk itself was everything people say it is.
Yes, I got blisters. There were long days, aching feet, and moments when I questioned why I had signed up for any of it. But it was also incredibly beautiful.
I wandered through eucalyptus forests, fields of wildflowers, and quiet villages. I inhaled the scent of fresh earth after the rain and listened to birdsong in the early mornings. Afternoons often ended in a sunny courtyard, sharing tapas and a cold cerveza with other pilgrims, our boots kicked off beneath the table as we talked about the day’s adventures.
On especially warm days, we’d stop beside a stream, slip off our shoes, and soak our tired feet before continuing on, the cold water numbing them for a little while. Some evenings I washed my clothes by hand, and one afternoon I rinsed them in a stone wash basin fed by a natural spring before hanging them on a clothesline strung between towering trees.
Life became wonderfully simple. Wake up. Walk. Eat. Wash your clothes. Find your bed. Repeat.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed that.
Somewhere along the way, I began to believe that if I could walk across an entire country, perhaps the things waiting for me at home would somehow sort themselves out. It sounds a little naïve now, but I carried that hope with me every step of the way.
After thirty-three days, arriving in Santiago felt euphoric.
I had done it.
Then I came home.
I wasn’t prepared for coming home.
Before I ever boarded the plane to Spain, I already knew one thing with certainty: I wasn’t returning to the job I had held for almost two decades. I had no idea what my next step would be. I simply knew that chapter of my life was ending, even if I couldn’t yet see what the next one would be.
For thirty-three days, I had been immersed in the simplicity of the Camino. Every morning I knew exactly what my job was. Wake up, shoulder my backpack, and walk.
The complicated relationships I had left behind hadn’t softened with time and distance. If anything, they had become even more tangled, drawing in other people and leaving me feeling as though I had stepped back into the middle of a beehive.
At the same time, I was standing at the beginning of an entirely unknown chapter of my own life.
I knew something needed to change.
I just didn’t know what.
I didn’t walk off the Camino with all the answers. It would take years to understand what those thirty-three days had really given me.
People sometimes ask whether the Camino changed my life.
It did, but not in the way most people imagine.
It didn’t magically solve my problems or hand me a new career. Instead, it gave me something much more valuable: the confidence to trust that I could find my way, even when I couldn’t yet see the path ahead.
Looking back now, I can see that first Camino became the beginning of everything that followed.
I remembered that I was adventurous. I remembered how much I loved being outdoors.
For most of my life, I had pushed myself because I had to. I worked, provided, and simply kept going. On the Camino, I pushed myself because I wanted to. I wanted to discover what I was capable of, experience something new, and feel free.
I rediscovered my love of learning, exploring, and connecting with people whose lives looked nothing like my own.
Those weren’t new parts of me.
They had simply been waiting patiently for me to remember them.
The Camino won’t be the same journey for everyone. Some people find answers. Others return home with more questions than they left with.
For me, it was never about becoming someone new.
It was about remembering who I had been all along.
