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Camino Francés: Day 50 (Santiago)

Santiago, Spain, April 18, 2025



Day 50. Back in Santiago after the coast — my last solo hours before Jason arrives. 


Journal entry–0730, Friday, 18 abril, Side Chapel, Santiago


Writing today is just an attempt to empty, focus. So that I can be. Still. I was last here, in this chapel, with a heart filled with longing for home. I don’t feel that now. Does that mean I’ve found it or lost it? What is going on inside?


I feel as though I’ve dropped most of an octave. Like something inside settled much deeper. Truer. There’s more peace, less angst, for sure. Might this be home?


Let go.

Sink.

Trust gravity.


I keep thinking of solitude/silence and the process of the nervous system settling in terms of an extended stretch/hold in the clinic. I'll be in a position, pushed to my max, for several minutes. Suddenly, I let go somewhere, find more space in the joint, and I'm told, "Yes, that!" Yet something inside me always wants to say, "Oh, that? That was easy. I could've done that a while ago if I'd known." It's a letting go that feels too easy, only because the long stretch made it possible. 



That's a bit how I feel now at the end of this journey. That it only required letting go, giving in to gravity, which seems it should be the most natural thing in the world, yet fighting it is default. 


Can I find those places I'm still holding to? Those, "Oh, that?" spots where I'm still fighting? 


I'm newly (it seems) aware of my body...maybe listening to myself, my body, has other implications. It still feels foreign. Yet I oddly feel more at home with my body. Like it's more a part of me and I a part of it. More interwoven, as it were, rather than just a vessel that holds me.



Journal entry–1237, Pilgrim House, Santiago

Outdoor terrace

Under roof

Pouring rain


This space is MAGIC. Drinking hot cocoa, looking at the green walls, listening to the drum of rain overhead, otherwise quiet. It's so therapeutic being in nature/outdoors. I'm more aware of that now than ever. After spending most of my waking hours outside for 50-ish days straight.


It calms heart, body, soul.



I wrote my thoughts.

Left them there.

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