Tag Archives: Gift

Camino de Santiago Frances

The Path I’ve Walked

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Original drawing – VAY Designs

I had a lot of built up anxiety prior to getting on the plane Wednesday morning. This trip was 6 months coming and then it appeared all too quickly. It’s interesting to reflect on the path I’ve walked which led to me walking a literal path in Spain. The mindset I was in when I bought the tickets and how my world changed since, well, it feels like two different worlds.

February 13, 2019 0500 CST

I bought the tickets in a haze of sleeplessness. I was unsettled. The nightmares were creeping in on my periphery. They were alive in my mind without me even closing my eyes. I couldn’t, no wouldn’t, allow myself to sleep. The fear if entering my never ending nightmares spurred me on to practice one tool after another, but nothing calmed them, or me.

Trail on the Camino de Santiago Frances

I, finally, took my mind back to the Camino de Santiago I did in October 2018. I recalled the smell of the eucalyptus trees, still wet with dew. The quiet of the rail, the only sound was the crunchy of my shoes on the path. Singing in the rain, getting caught, and being asked to keep singing. The sense of freedom and no restrictions. The lack of my story holding me back. This was what I most wanted as I looked at ticket prices.
I hoped to find those same senses by returning to the trail. Last year I used the trail to hold onto through the struggles. On this particular February morning I once again needed something to hold onto, to keep living. I wanted to escape my pain, back to the last place that I felt peace.

After February 13th

It’s not that I don’t have peace in my daily life. I’m just constantly looking for the next danger, the next repeat of my trauma. I’m always on alert. I wish I could better embrace the peace and joy that occurs in my daily life. I also have this wanderlust inside me, and perhaps that makes me restless. I’m great in a crisis or a high adrenaline event, it’s the normal where I begin to fall and fail.
So what changed, what happened since that rough February night, which made it so difficult to actually come on this trip? Just buying the tickets I had felt i found my escape, something to look forward to, hold on to. It wasn’t a foolish choice, it was quite informed of me. I lined my date’s up with when my lease ended. I found a balance in my desire to escape and my life responsibilities. Giving myself this time was important. It offered me the space to process, connect better with others, and make a healthy departure.

I took a turn off the Camino to find this gem of nature.

For almost as long as I can remember, I have had this unhealthy desire to just up and disappear, to run away from everyone. It often has strong emotional ties to shame, guilt, pain, and other dark emotions. As an adult, I began struggling with thoughts of suicide. Suicide: the ultimate disappearing act. When I think about my struggles it is hardly ever a reflection of others. It is a reflection of how I can’t stand myself, occasionally informed by the opinions of others. The thing is I can’t escape myself anymore than you can escape yourself. So my urge to disappear doesn’t work, I can’t run from myself. That was where the permanence of suicide began to feel attractive.
Luckily, for me, I was born with this little flame in my soul, called HOPE. Sometimes, I am in awe of how strong it is. It keeps me going in the darkest of times. It is what gets me to buy plane tickets so I can walk across Spain. Once the tickets were bought, life started to get a little easier. I had an egress plan. Rule #1 of combat, know your egress points. Okay, maybe not rule #1, but it’s up there for sure. It’s as if I can handle anything as long as there is an escape route.
Funny thing happened though, I made my escape plan and then began to experience a life I didn’t want to escape from. Every day wasn’t perfect, but life felt good. It felt possible. I let myself be more vulnerable. I began to accept the love others kept trying to share with me. I leaned into my art and my dream of building a non-profit. I built deeper relationships with neighbors, coworkers, customers, and friends. Instead of thinking I could go nowhere with my dreams, I just started doing it. It was as if I suddenly had nothing to loose, so why not try. To my surprise, people really supported me! I even met someone special who has made my life even better. It turned out I didn’t need to escape my life. I needed to be embracing it.

Signpost directing where the Camino continues.

So, then I considered not going on this trip at all. I balked at the risk of leaving a good life, finally, a good life. The thing is, I had heard this call to adventure and I accepted it. My current level of comfort at home should not hinder me answering the call and stepping into the unknown. A person won’t grow well unless, from time to time, they face the unknown and seek the new knowledge and wisdom it has in store.
The beauty to this evolution is that I don’t know what I’m walking the Camino for. I am no longer escaping. I’m not appearing, like the last Camino, for myself. They’re is no record breaking, comparing, or competing. I’m simply embracing the unknown by putting one foot in front of the other, and continue to walk.

Kansas City, MO

Gift in the Wound

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Life is full of ups and downs. The struggles are always real from the individuals perspective. We cannot dare to think we can compare or fully understand what another person goes through. Neither the elation of joy and happiness or the sorrow of sadness and fear. I have felt many emotions both those from my shadow and my light. Life is a duality, two things exist at once at all times. Though it is night here it is also day somewhere. Though, right now, my body is in crippling pain and my soul is crying huge tears of sorrow, I know that I will find joy and relief again. I know that these two things coexist inside me.

It has taken years of wandering, searching, listening, learning, and trying to even begin to understand how two opposites co-exist at once. In my original holistic PTSD program, Save a Warrior Cohort 018, they suggested that in my wounds I might find a gift. In my mind I have many images when I think of what this might look like. I’ve a romantic, fantastical imagination. So, when I suggest that we might all find gifts in our wounds I picture a Phoenix rising from the smoldering coals of its’ own death. The ashes remain, yet something new blooms and can live again. It didn’t erase the previous existence but built on top of it.

I have in my wandering been blessed with mentoring 10 different groups of women through another holistic PTSD program, Warriors’ Ascent. I have encouraged them to find the gift in their wound even as my own gift reveals itself in my work with them. It isn’t enough to just pass the gift though. I have to live it myself. I have to give the gift in my wounds to myself. I mention these groups of women though because they too are doing the work, they too are on this journey. I’m not the lone wanderer, others are traveling too.

Daily, as I wander through the various employment, volunteering, creating, and exploring I continue to unwrap the gift in my wounding. There are days like today where the wounding is deep and crippling. My physical injuries take my peace and open the door to my mental wounding. It reminds me of how I’m different, how I must treat myself more gently, and how I have to ask others for help. I struggle to see the gift in this wound. I start to shut down both physically and mentally. I wonder how I’ll make it through the night and the next day and day after that. Less pain feels like a distant memory, let alone no pain which was eons ago. The tears stream down my face, unabashedly. I let them leave trails on my face and I feel my skin tighten as the trails dry. I focus on a sensation that is not my pain and I try to breathe.

One of the things I’ve found in receiving my gift in my wounds is that I cannot stop the feeling. I cannot numb that which is unpleasing to me. If I sent this shadow self then I will inevitably deny my light self. It is the same when I let this shadow-self run rampant it will overrun my light. Finding the gift in the wound is the first step to finding balance after and through wounding.

I want to deny that this physical pain has a gift. I rail against it, full if venom and curse words. I am tempted to sink deeper into it, to give everything I’ve accomplished and strived for up, to live in darkness. This seems ridiculous to those whose darkness and wounding doesn’t have such a hold on them. I however have lived inside my darkness for a long time now, for a long time I couldn’t see the light at all. I find an odd comfort in my pain. It is the feeling I know the best some days. If I’m going to be honest though, being able to write is my gift in the wound. It is the gift I give myself to put all of this pain and suffering into something more than just my body. It is a gift I hope I can give to others who struggle like I do. I don’t know what other gift these wounds might give me, but I will keep wandering. I will keep searching for the value, the purpose, for the next chapter of my life. In the meantime I’ll put into play all the many things I must do to care for myself. I have to force myself, but I will keep trying, because if I’m trying, I’m succeeding.

So if you too find yourself wounded and struggling I hope you can find a gift in it to give yourself. However begrudgingly you may also feel towards it. I know it exists because I have found gifts in other wounds. If not for the gifts I’ve found I would be dead. Take the journey, allow yourself to wander and search out the gifts in your wounds.