What Called Me Toward 500 Miles of Questions
Revisiting what I wrote the day I left for my grief pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and why I'm returning to it now. Plus: 40 days of my pilgrim photo journal starts tomorrow.
Some housekeeping before I begin: A course I created called The Inner Pilgrimage, is now open for registration. I’m really excited to share that the companion text is The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad. All other updates are at the end of this post.
In 2023, I walked 500 miles alone on the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage across Spain. The post below was originally shared on my blog, and I’ve decided to repost it here (lightly edited) now that I’ve moved to Substack.
I’m also resharing it to provide some context for a new series that I’m starting tomorrow: a Camino photo journal with field notes and stories from my pilgrimage every day for the next 40 days.
It feels good to revisit these memories as I near the departure date of my next journey coming up in June: a self-created 100 day writing pilgrimage where I’ll load up my car with a cozy mattress, too many books, and enough coffee to make the giant circle around the US that I’ve planned. More to come!
I wrote what follows just hours before I left for the airport to fly to Spain, where I wouldn’t sleep for 5 weeks but somehow didn’t even murder anyone and even learned how to be less at war with myself and my grief.
Without further ado, let’s travel back to June 2023.
June 13, 2023
In six hours, I board a flight for Paris, bound for the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage of 500 miles across northern Spain.
In many ways, this journey began long before I bought the plane ticket.
I remember the first time I saw a pilgrim. It was 2011, and a friend and I were visiting Santiago, the official end point of the Camino. I’d never heard of the pilgrimage before, but I quickly learned about it as a steady stream of pilgrims with large backpacks and walking sticks made their way to the center of the square at the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.
I was so moved by the profound joy I saw on their faces. Their smiles were visible from the other side of the huge square and some even fell to their knees once they reached the end, faces in hands as they wept.
Mostly, I remember the way I felt a clutch in my chest at the sight of it all, at the thought of their long journey there. I learned how most of these pilgrims had been walking for weeks or months. Some did it for religious reasons, others spiritual, and others as an adventure, a unique way to get to know a place intimately.
I heard many were seeking answers or healing or trying to reconnect with themselves. Some were searching for purpose or peace, a break from their lives.
I remember thinking: I’m absolutely going to walk this one day. What an adventure it’d be.
Ten years passed. I thought of the Camino here and there but never got close to seriously going. How could I? With the endless demands from work and life and student debt, I couldn’t just leave for a month or more, and neither could my partner.
But in 2021, my Pipi died, my beloved grandfather. We didn’t know he was sick for very long before he was suddenly in hospice, and then he was gone. I barely had time to fly from California to Michigan so I could say goodbye, to see him one last time.
One of the last things he said to me was about the memoir I’d published just several months before. On his birthday, actually. A happy accident. He was only half with it given the amount of morphine in his system, his light blue eyes coming in and out of focus.
In a brief moment of lucidity, I asked him what he thought of my book, though he’d already told me how much he’d enjoyed it several months before, back before any of us knew about the cancer. But I didn’t know what else to talk about at that moment.
Couldn’t put it down, he’d said weakly, and then he was gone again, staring off into nothing. I held his hand, his skin paper thin now with a map of veins showing through, while kneeling next to the hospital bed set up in his living room. It was the last time I saw him alive.
I love you so much, I told him. The buzz of the TV in the background nearly drowned out his whispered reply: I love you too, dear.
For over 20 years, my Pipi had walked four miles a day, five days a week, ever since his wife, my Mimi, had died too early in her 60s. It wouldn’t be until I was in my late 20s when I finally asked Pipi more about why he walked laps around his neighborhood or the mall so much.
We don’t really talk about hard things in my family, but one day, I found myself asking him why he started doing those walks, though I had an inkling.
Well, when Mimi died, he told me, I just… I thought I’d go crazy. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started walking, and it kept me from going crazy.
And that was that. I was surprised he revealed that much.
When he died, and when our family continued to not really talk about hard things, like death and grieving, I found myself keeping so much on my insides that I thought I’d go crazy. I had a partner with whom I could share my grief and pain, but I felt unable to express myself around my own family during the week I was in Michigan when we all were saying our goodbyes to Pipi and then preparing for the funeral and then attending it and then going through his things.
We remained mostly tight-lipped, thinking strength meant keeping our pain to ourselves so as not to burden or worry others, just like my Pipi believed. But I’d spent several years at that point doing and believing the opposite—I believed that by allowing my insides out, by being vulnerable and honest, by telling the truth, that was strength.
But when we find ourselves back home and around those we grew up with, we tend to revert back to old ways. That’s exactly what I did, bottling everything up while downing other kinds of bottles, at least until my husband and I drove back to his parents house after the funeral. When we pulled into the driveway, I cried so hard and for so long that my eyes were nearly swollen shut by the end.
I returned to California like a wrung sponge, empty. Having not processed enough or in a healthy way, I found myself walking a local trail every morning for several weeks, doing four miles, just like Pipi did. I felt his presence so strongly that I’d often cry as I walked, sometimes sobbing for miles and watering the thirsty desert ground below me with my tears.
Within a few months, I felt a kind of clutch in my chest, and it didn’t take long to understand what it was. The Camino was calling. I felt it like a pull, a tug. I didn’t have many words for it at the time, but I soon knew I wanted to walk the Camino with and for my Pipi. Needed to.
By the next summer, I’d made plans, bought some things, read the guidebooks. With a month left before I was supposed to go, I got COVID, and it was awful. It took weeks before I could peel myself off the couch, and then I still felt incredibly weak. I canceled my Camino as I doubted I could walk a few miles without passing out, let alone 15 daily for five weeks while carrying a large backpack.
A year has since passed, and I’m at the edge of my second attempt. I leave in just hours, and I’ll spend around 40 days on this journey of… of what, exactly?
See, that’s the thing. I don’t have a nice and tidy way to sum it up. While it still feels like it’s for and with my Pipi, it has also grown to encompass so much more. My Pipi was Catholic, and that’s how I was raised, and the Camino is rooted in Catholicism (though open to anyone who wishes to walk it for any reason).
I’ve noticed over the past year that my mind and heart keep turning to faith and ritual and their roles (or lack thereof) in my life. Unlike my grandfather and the rest of my family, I didn’t stay Catholic or even Christian. As a teenager, I demanded to stop attending mass because it didn’t make sense to me. So I moved on to different churches like Goldilocks, trying to find one that was just right.
During those years, I was told that my incessant questioning was a lack of faith. And when I finally found the courage to ask for help with the depression I began experiencing, a 20-something youth pastor in jeans put his hand on my shoulder and told me it was the devil, that the way I prayed wasn’t right or enough, that maybe I should stop bringing my gay friend to youth group unless he “got right with god.”
It would take years to realize that I just didn’t believe in god at all, at least not in the way I grew up learning about it. So I started the long and painful journey of coming to peace with that, of processing the huge loss that follows leaving a faith community.
Sometimes, this process looked healthy, like therapy and all the journaling and finding a like-minded community. And other times, it looked less healthy, like shoving things away into an invisible storage container when I couldn’t find an answer or a way to accept or let go of something.
Years passed, and I thought I’d had a pretty good handle on it. I thought I was basically fine with things as they were.
But Pipi dying tore the lid off all of that.
When I made the commitment to this Camino, it turned out to be a commitment to sorting through the contents within that damn storage container. They say your pilgrimage starts as soon as you decide to do it, not when you take your first step, and I’ve been living the truth of that these past months as questions continue to surface, things I thought I’d left in the past like:
What does it even mean to be Catholic (but also like, not?)
What do our roots mean after we leave the church but still want and need community and connection, but not at the cost of blind faith and adherence to a system that makes you compromise yourself and values and shames you when you don’t?
What does it mean that I want to participate in rituals like lighting candles for my loved ones and sitting in wooden pews while meditating but “am not in good standing with the church?” Do I get to? Am I allowed? Will someone see me with my rosary that I haven’t used in 20 years and know that I’m meditating instead of praying?
Why do I feel so drawn to the place (the system?) that ultimately rejected me when I questioned it too much?
Will any of this help me feel closer to my Pipi and family and ancestors? Myself?
What am I really looking for in all of this?
Soon, I’ll be boarding that plane to Paris and buckling in. After a tangle of train rides and taxis, I’ll then strap on my hiking shoes in the foothills of St. Jean Pied-de-Port, the starting point of The French Way.
And then I’ll hope (will I pray?) that in 500 miles, I’ll find some answers. But I suspect more questions than answers will emerge.
Perhaps it’s more about finding a sense of peace when it comes to the things we can’t get answers to… or maybe that is the answer?
We might not ever know some things, which I find very annoying, but it’s also very human.
Time to go.
Love,
Katie
June 13, 2023
In a way, I think we’re all carrying questions like these.
And while I don’t have the answers, I’ve found that presence, writing, and a kind community help me live better with the mystery.
Upcoming & Ongoing
📸 A 40-Day Pilgrim Photo Journal Begins Tomorrow
Starting tomorrow, I’ll be sharing a daily photo journal from my 500-mile pilgrimage. Think of it as postcards from the trail—some joyful, some gritty, all true.
🪷 The Inner Pilgrimage: A 100-Day Journey
If you’ve been feeling the pull inward, my fall course is now open for registration. Together, we’ll meditate, write, and read for 100 days of gentle transformation.
✏️ This June: A 100-Day Writing Pilgrimage
Soon, I’m heading out on a self-created writing pilgrimage around the U.S.—sleeping in my car, visiting writing community friends and literary landmarks, and “walking” with some new questions and curiosities. More on that soon!
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🧘 Tuesday Meditation Group Updates
My free Tuesday morning sangha will pause or be sporadic while I’m traveling. You can still join us for the final May sessions—check the link if you’d like to come sit.
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