Presence & Pilgrimage #1: Pausing at the Threshold

Before setting out on a 500-mile pilgrimage, I learned the power of a pause.

Mar 10, 2025

Welcome to the first issue of Presence & Pilgrimage!

This seasonal newsletter is where I’ll share stories from my 500-mile walk across Spain along with mindfulness musings, writing prompts, book recommendations, and other resources to support your own journey.

Whether you’re walking the Camino or navigating the pilgrimage of everyday life, you’ll find reflections, practices, and prompts to help you stay present along the way.

Before I dive in, a couple of updates for those interested:

🧘 My weekly meditation group (Sangha) is back! Join me Tuesdays from 8:30-9 am PST for a freely-offered guided meditation (register here).

💬 The Inner Pilgrimage course begins this September! Stay tuned for details.

Each issue of Presence & Pilgrimage will offer a blend of storytelling, mindfulness, and reflection, inviting you to slow down and tune into your own journey.

Here’s what you can expect:

Tales from the Camino – real stories from my 500-mile pilgrimage across Spain.
Mindfulness Musings – insights on how mindfulness can help us stay present, even in difficult moments.
Pilgrimage Books I Love – recommendations to prepare for or deepen your journey.
Pilgrim Wisdom – blessings, poetry, and teachings from past pilgrims to guide you.
Invitations to Practice – writing prompts and meditation resources.

I chose the words Presence & Pilgrimage with great intention—because when we’re not present or paying attention to what’s happening right in front of is, it’s easy to miss the gifts and teachings that the Camino, and our lives, have to offer.

For so many of us, somewhere along the way, we lose touch with ourselves and our innate wisdom. We find that our ability to be in the moment shrinks more and more as time goes by.

But paying attention and being present and without judgment—they are skills we can reclaim. And we must!

Also, I hear you. Yes—it is hard to do (especially if you’re an ADHDer like myself or have a particularly loud inner critic who doesn’t seem to have an “off” switch).

Even when we do find ourselves in the moment, we’ll still inevitably get pulled out of it, one way or another. And if we deem it a “negative” moment or feeling, we check out even faster. Maybe we get distracted or stressed, or maybe we feel like it’s all just “too much.”

So, we pour another drink, binge another show, scroll for another “few” minutes, or stay busy as a way to avoid whatever it is we think we can’t face or shouldn’t be facing.

And of course we would, right? I mean, look at the world. Look at history. Look what’s been passed on to us. We’re in so much pain. We’re overwhelmed and confused and exhausted, so of course we’re doing things that make us feel better as soon as possible. Our bodies and minds are trying to communicate something important to us—help—and we are just doing what we can.

But over time, at some point, a bill will be presented for leaning too much and for too long on only these kind of avoidance or coping strategies (my favorite, by the way, is cookie dough ice cream, which resurfaced as a regular habit of mine the day of the election results with no sign of leaving my life quite yet).

Speaking for myself, I didn’t like the price I had to pay once life presented the bill of my (well-intended but not skillful in the long-term) coping strategies. But more on that another time.

That price looked like a rock bottom moment in life, and the way I ultimately found out of it was through finally waking up.

This is where mindfulness practices come in: there are so many ways to train our minds, strengthen our attention and awareness, and grow our self-compassion so that we have more trust and equanimity in facing whatever is happening in our lives without needing to rely on often-harmful substances or habits.

For me, I found that once I answered the call to walk my Camino and chose a departure date, everything snapped into focus. I had the opportunity of a lifetime to face all the un-faced things, to release so much that I was grasping onto, and to walk into a freer, more peaceful way of being.

I didn’t want to waste this chance.

The stakes felt high to me—the chance to transform, to change, to heal. I wanted to be ready, and not just by getting in shape or finding the perfect shoes and backpack (things that are important, yes, but not really the point).

I wanted to be ready for whatever would arise within me, too, while I walked over a million steps to Santiago, my hopes orienting me towards a version of myself I longed so badly to be, to return to—someone who knew herself, someone who could face whatever life would bring, and someone who trusted her insides once again.

In other words, someone who felt at home in her heart.

In the end, my mindfulness practices are what helped me best prepare for the journey. From writing to meditation, they were like companions on my walk, helping me stay open to all that arose along the way (including resistance to being open). And they were there to hold me once it was all over, when I learned the truth in the saying, “Your pilgrimage really begins once you return home.”

So with that, I’d love to invite you into this first issue and first Tales from the Camino below where I write about what it meant to see my practice unfold in real time as I arrived to the starting point on my pilgrimage in the summer of 2023.

May you find presence and grace on your own journeys.

Ultreia,

Katie

Pilgrim Tales: Pausing at the Threshold

If not bones, then what brought me here? Why was I doing this?

I stared up at the stone archway that marked the beginning of a 500-mile walk from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France to the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago, Spain.

I was still jet-lagged and just beginning my long grief pilgrimage on the Camino Frances—the French Way—which is the oldest route among the many options a pilgrim can walk.

As the legend goes, that cathedral is where the bones of Saint James arrived by way of a stone boat in the ninth century. And those bones are the reason why millions of pilgrims have deepened the grooves in the earth between here and there for over a thousand years.

But it wasn’t my reason.

I paused at the arch, at that threshold, to remember why I was there. To take it in.

The summer sun baked my light skin, which I knew would sunburn later. My backpack dug into my shoulders, and I imagined I smelled like 24 hours of travel.

Standing there off to the side, I noticed other pilgrims and a handful of tourists rush past me and through the arch, their first experience of the village viewed through their phones.

As I watched more file through in a similar fashion, I felt sad that they were missing out. I caught myself judging—how could they be on their phones right now? But then I realized: my own judgment was pulling me away from the present moment now, too.

I took a deep breath and returned my gaze to the arch.

This long pause at this threshold of old red bricks meant something to me; it was a chance to honor the transition from my “normal” life to my pilgrimage starting.

I’d learned this from one of my meditation teachers, Wendy Johnson, who taught me to pause at thresholds during a week-long writing retreat: the door to the meditation hall, the rug outside the dining area, even the piece of fabric that was my tent door.

“Mind the transitions,” she said once, after a meditation. “It will help strengthen your ability to be present during these moments of transition, not only from one room to the next, but also in the other moments of change in your lives that we so often miss, rushing from one thing to the next.”

I probably only stood there for a minute, pondering the threshold I was about to cross. I thought of my grandfather, my hopes and fears of all that was to come, and the pilgrims who came before me whose imprints I would soon walk in.

In that one minute, that pause allowed me to settle into the moment and fully feel just how far I’d come. And not just the distance I’d traveled on planes, trains, buses, and taxis, but from the depths of despair and disconnection from the past few years, too.

In that pause, I felt the weight of the call that had brought me here—the deep desire and hope of finding healing, peace, and maybe even some answers somewhere along these 500 miles.

I took a long, deep breath and followed the exhale all the way to its end before looking down at my feet, and walked beneath the arch. I put my right foot first, just as Wendy taught me.

That moment was forever cemented into my bones.

Later, a new friend would share this photo she took of me in that pause—the first of many kind gifts from fellow pilgrims.

It’s not easy to slow down in a world that demands speed. But we owe it to ourselves to practice pausing, especially at these major life thresholds, these moments that pulse with a kind of electric possibility.

Because by pausing—by slowing down enough to see and savor what’s happening right now—we’re not only honoring the important transitions of our lives, but gifting ourselves the chance to really be in them.

And who knows? Perhaps the practice of pausing here, at the start, is what will allow us to truly absorb what waits on the other side.

Pilgrimage Books I Love

The first pilgrimage-related book I’d love to share with you is actually the guide book I ultimately chose to take with me after looking at a ton of options (on top of the many apps and digital guides out there).

It’s A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago by John Brierley (who sadly passed away while I was on the Camino, which I believe means there isn’t a more recent version than this 2019 one).

Why I Chose it Over the Others

It not only includes thorough and easy-to-ingest information, logistics, and visuals of the suggested stages, but it also has a spiritual/mystical section for each day that includes beautiful invitations for reflection that I found deepened my experience. His words felt like companions on the walk, and I didn’t see other guidebooks that offered such mindful invitations.

However, it’s worth noting that it will not be as up-to-date as other guides now due to his passing, and I don’t know if there are plans for someone else to take it on. (If you know more about this, please share in the comments!)

Why I Carried a Physical Copy

Because I didn’t want one more reason to pull out my phone to distract me by having an app or e-book (though I did download an app or two based on some recs for back-up but didn’t really use them).

Plus, I loved being able to easily flip through it. Since books are a bit heavy though, I did perform the dramatic act of throwing away the pages for each stage after completing them each day.

Invitations to Practice

Write

Besides reading quite a few Camino memoirs, guidebooks, and other pilgrim texts, I also wrote a lot before I left to try and untangle years and years of thoughts, feelings, and questions. I wrote to discover what patterns emerged over time, rereading my filled notebooks to see what came up.

I wrote about my hopes and fears for my walk and my “why,” which I noticed grew and shifted as I got closer to leaving.

I found that all of this, along with meditation, helped prepare me for my pilgrimage by both strengthening my awareness practices as well as opening my heart and mind.

With that said, I’d love to invite you to write on your own writing journey, especially in a way that doesn’t worry about the writing being good or bad—just keep the hand moving, no editing or stopping. It might be hard if you’re new to that kind of writing practice, but trust me, it’ll feel liberating at some point if you stick with it.

Set a timer for 10 minutes, and try a prompt below, modifying them however you need. Then, try another.

Keep the hand moving.

What is the threshold you currently find yourself at? (Or what is the next transition ahead you’re going to face?) How did you get here?
What would it mean to pause before taking the first step across it?
What is here, right now, that needs to be said? That wants to be heard?
What are you waiting for?
Tell us what you dream of on the other side.

By the way, if you’d like to learn more about this kind of free-writing, I can’t recommend the following book enough (it changed my life): Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.

Seriously. Get it. Read it. Do it :)

Meditate

Like writing, meditation helped me know my own mind instead of attaching to every thought I had, instead of identifying with the endless stories and ever-changing emotions flowing through me. Over time and with a lot of practice, meditating taught me the skills I needed to know I’m safe on my own insides, no matter what else is going on in the world or with other people.

I’ve been struggling with what to put here because I have so much I want to say on this. So for this first post, I think I’ll simply share with you that I believe there are many ways to raise our skills of awareness—to intentionally practice paying attention and in a non-judgmental way—and that they all will likely be of great benefit in helping prepare you for your journey.

If you’d ever like to try out the kind I practice (Mindfulness Meditation, which goes by other names, too, like Insight or Vipassana), then please join my freely-offered weekly meditation group on Tuesdays at 8:30 am PST if you’d like. And if you’d like to learn more or have personalized guidance, I’m working with up to 2 more beta clients for my 1:1 sessions this month (you can grab a call here to learn more).

Finally, I’ll leave you with my favorite, free meditation resource: Mindfulness Daily, a 40 day online training by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach (the founding teachers of the two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program I completed this year).

The 10-15 minute recordings include brief talks on the foundational concepts followed by guided meditations so students can experience what they’re talking about.

It’s really, really good.

Pilgrim Blessing

Whether you plan to do the Camino or are on your pilgrimage through life, may you always have the companions of loving awareness, compassion, and care by your side.

I leave you now with these words from the poet John O’Donohue:

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Thank you so much for reading the first issue of Presence & Pilgrimage!

What resonated with you? What would you love to see more of? Are you left with any questions?

Drop a comment—I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Buen Camino,

Katie

Note: This first issue of Presence & Pilgrimage is free for all, but in order to continue them on a regular basis, the remainder will be behind a paywall (though folks are welcome to reach out to request a scholarship any time if needed and put on a waiting list if one isn’t currently available).

Presence & Pilgrimage by Katie Allen

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