(705) 443-9786 karenssoapbox@gmail.com

If you haven’t read the book “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle I highly recommend it. One of her main themes throughout the book and I believe the name of her new podcast is “We can do hard things”. Hard things is the next lesson on my Camino journey. 

 

I have spent most of my life not looking before I Ieap, many times in mid air, I look down and think holy shit what was I thinking, I‘m not going to make it, but I do. I may not make it the way I thought it was going to be but I make it nonetheless. I think I may make my life harder because of my lack of planning, but I would rather make it hard than be frozen in indecision. 

 

When I decided on this journey I really never considered just how hard it was going to be, a little jaunt through Spain with a 25lb pack. How hard could it be? Hard, I tell you hard!! 

Every. Dam. Day was hard. If it wasn’t hard physically it was hard emotionally or spiritually. 

I think I cried every single day if I wasn’t crying in pain, I was crying in emotional angst or yelling at God for making this all so hard. Making life so dam hard. 

 

Concentrated hard things helped me process through some really strong emotions that I was feeling at the time of my journey. My mother had died 10 years prior and honestly, I was mad at her for not taking care of herself enough to live. I had just closed my business and I was mad at myself for not being able to make it work and putting my family in a financial crisis. I was about to turn 50, who the hell was I?  My sore feet and my broken heart were healed with my tears and my screams. I forgave my mom because I was able to see her journey as her own, I forgave myself because sometimes things just don’t work out and I knew that this 50-year-old woman was going to be exactly who she needed to be. An authentic, messy, spiritual seeker with a gypsy spirit. 

 

What I realized at the core of my being while on the Camino is that “life is going to be hard” it is the human experience, I can’t side-step it, I can’t wish it away. I have to walk right through it because if I don’t it just stays hard. When I use the lessons of surrender and trust, I can do hard things.

The path of the Camino was as equally hard as it was joy-filled, but rubbing up against the hard was the only way that I would be able to see the contrast of joy.

 

Know that your hard things will eventually turn to joy, if you just let yourself do the hard things. 

 

In love, light, and laughter

Karen