Ciruena! A short day to Santo Domingo tomorrow.

The days are all blending together. I remember specific walks, but not how long ago they happened. After my time of recuperation last week, and the resulting restlessness, all the towns and cities feel too close behind me. The only moments when I realize how far I’ve come is when I see my healing feet and remember how torn and swollen they used to look.

I’ve come to realize that I’m quite afraid of physical pain. Looking back on my wounds, there is an extra satisfaction in knowing that I am still here, that my spirit is somehow insistent that I carry prayers and an instrument across Spain. Every morning there is a period of time where I nearly come to tears in response to my physical pain, which realistically is just as bearable as anyone else’s who is passing me. However, it seems that each morning I am detoxing mentally, because for one reason or another my physical pain allows for a release of stored emotional toxicity. Although this process reinstills my faith in healing magic and movement as medicine, I am ready to not go through this every day, to wake up refreshed as so many people I’ve met seem to do.

My Camino has repeatedly tested my self-assurance and confidence in this way; the road always seems to deliver situations that trigger habitually harsh judgements of myself, and it asks me to change my ways in the face of these circumstances outside of my daily life. This road is something like a sacred training ground for emotional health in a secular world that is commonly overwhelming.

I am ready to give up resistance to these lessons, and to allow the road to shape me into a navigator, something nomadic yet full of grace.