Reflections on Body, Mind & Spirit: Walking from Sarria to Santiago: Lessons from the Camino
- Lisa Schaffer
- Oct 2
- 5 min read
My September Reflection...my friend's reflection...
For the past few newsletters I have made mention of the people I walked the Camino de Santiago with this past May. Last month my friend and organizer of our Spain trip shared her experience. This month, my friend, Tammie Kennedy, that I met as part of this trip is sharing her poignant and touching experience. After a long day of walking or waiting at the airport for our flights, one could see Tammie writing diligently in her journal. As she told me, she could have provided even more words about her journey. I think she did a brilliant
job with these ones.
Walking from Sarria to Santiago: Lessons from the Camino ~bTammie M. Kennedy
Thank you, Lisa, for inviting me to share my experience of walking the Camino with you. I hadn’t met you before our journey in May 2025, but I feel that our connection was one of those Divine moments when the Universe provides exactly what you need before you understand it.
I like to think of my life’s journey as lessons learned and unlearned and relearned. I first heard of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage after watching The Way, a 2010 film starring Martin Sheen. At the time of that viewing, I felt lost. I was leveled after the loss of my precious grandmother who I had cared for at the end of her 104-year-old life. My 14-year marriage was dissolving; I was struggling with workaholism, perfectionism, and drinking too much wine to smooth over the jagged edges of my grief. Although I knew that the walk to Santiago was part of a long tradition of religious pilgrimages, the movie version appealed to me more at the time: I could walk off all the pain, grief, and confusion I was feeling and plod towards a new, better version of myself.
Like most journeys, the Camino had its own agenda. With each step during those 100 kilometers to earn the Compostela certificate, treks along shaded trails in the rolling Galician hills soundtracked by a symphony of “Buen Camino” from people around the world on their own journeys, the reasons I wanted to walk the Camino ten years ago morphed into lessons that provide daily reflection now. Here are a few lessons that resonate months later.
Lesson Learned
To say I have a body means I carry history, hunger, and hope in my flesh—journal entry.
I have a body. I have a body, and it is not just a vehicle for my head. It breathes, moves, aches, and stretches with me through every moment of the Camino journey. My body is not a project to improve or compare to other bodies. My body tells me everything I need to know, carrying memory in my muscles, joy in the countenance of finding my own pace, and wisdom in its wounds that remind me to take better care. As an adult, I don’t think I had ever lived fully in my body for a sustained amount of time. The Camino showed me how to pay attention to my body—hunger, fatigue, tightness, pleasure—to be aware of those sensations from the inside. I do not merely ride within my body; my body is me.
Lesson Unlearned
Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place—Paulo Coelho
When you arrive, you are not there. The last day of walking the Camino de Santiago was the most difficult for me. It reminded me of Christmas morning as a child. After marking the days until Christmas, longing to unwrap the packages filled with my favorite things, hoping for the beloved toy I thought I so desperately needed, the day arrived and then disappeared within the child-joy frenzy of unwrapping. The trek into Santiago itself was onerous. As my calves quaked and burned with fatigue and anticipation on each hill, I noticed my thinking brain returned, telling stories about what I would feel and who I might be upon arrival.
The final steps into Santiago, seeing the other pilgrims bursting with smiles and tears within the cathedral square, felt triumphant and unfinished. When I arrived at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, I did not know what I felt except the sensation of the stones echoing centuries of pilgrims who reached the same destination. After all the hugs, photos, and silences to behold the majesty of the great Cathedral, another truth emerged: when you arrive, you are not there. Already missing the silence of morning walks and the cacophony of “Buen Camino” and cappuccinos that fueled my days, I realized the journey would continue within, shaped by the path that had unfolded. I hadn’t “walked off” anything; I had walked toward a more authentic version of myself that I would continue to discover and be.
Lesson Relearned
How am I to let myself be found by God? — Henri J Nouwen
I do not need to find God; God has already found me. For 10 years, as I navigated grief, fear, and hope, I imagined what the Camino journey would entail and how it might transform me. In my earlier need to “walk off” my pain, I assumed that walking in the silence, listening for God to speak to me, that I would find God—or, at least, deepen my relationship with Spirit. As I walked beneath skies wide enough to swallow uncertainty, I did not come to find God. Instead, I embraced what I had grasped as a child—God was always with me. The Camino reminded me that God was woven into every step—the connection with strangers, the tempo of setting my own pace, the agency rising from the ache of wanting to give up. In the hush of morning departures before breakfast, I felt no need to seek God. God had already found me long ago, quietly, persistently, waiting for me to notice again.
Perhaps, the most important realization that emerges after reflecting on my journey on the Camino is this: the Camino’s yellow arrows are mapped within my being, pointing me in the next right direction wherever I find myself physically, emotionally, spiritually. I only need to trust and follow them.
So good! Thanks again Tammie for sharing.
To your reflection and health,
Lisa Schaffer
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