@Jenifer Merifield looking forward to it! I’m traveling today, on my way back home, after a month of chaos, clearing and family health issues. The Way Home I think is its own Camino. It’s an interesting energy. I had to prepare myself for all I had to encounter in NY in March and it was pretty hard stuff. Now I’m excited to get home. I feel like it’s a whole other journey to prepare for, and rhythms to settle into…before I have to return again! Just thinking about these travels as mini-Caminos is really helpful to me. And as I think back on my 2014 pilgrimage, it was the rhythms I settled into that made all the difference. Do you know what I mean? How you move, how you breathe, what you carry, the shoes you wear, the poles that help stabilize you in rough terrain. This is something I can definitely work with in my life right now. It’s actually pretty empowering. Thank you!!

On my 50th birthday and 20th wedding anniversary I took a solo trip and walked the whole of the Camino de Santiago, actually the whole of Spain. Halfway through, my husband came looking for me--he wanted to walk with me, but I wouldn't let him. I was advised by one of the hostel owners against it. "Es tu Camino, Jackie-- It's your camino." I needed to walk my path and my husband needed to walk his. And so he started at the beginning just like I did, on the other side of the Pyrenees. We met up later. I walked 600 miles in 39 days to a place called Finesterre, the End of the World. He did about 150 and met me back at the Church in Santiago de Compostela. When we got home, I decided to stay with him and give us another chance. But forgiveness is a long road. My camino began the moment it ended, and turned out to be so much more difficult than my walk. But, I can tell you, we've never felt so much love for each other as we do now. Our way of being is completely different than it was. It took some really hard years, and neither one of us will ever go back there. I don't even think it's possible to enter that portal again. Forgiveness is a powerful tool, and something I also teach. I'm so sorry I missed that call, Jenifer, I hope you'll do it again!

@Jenifer Merifield The Alchemist! That is so trippy! I know it well. In fact I wrote to Coehlo before left, hearing he had a home near the Way. I’d hoped to catch him at a reading or something but never heard back. I didn’t really expect to either. It was shot. I can’t wait to see that decode!!💜💜💜

I had a great rejection letter from a pretty prestigious lit mag for a new poetry chapbook. I'll take it. They want to see "more of me"!

In the yoga sutras there's a term, pratipaksha bhavana--cultivate the opposite. It's about using the heat of tapas (yeah you can even think small plates here! lol) to kindle something larger and more beautiful with that energy of anxiety and those worrisome thoughts. For me, it's a daily practice. Not bypass, though. The energy of worry makes me look harder at what's cooking it. And then I have to (I HAVE TO) go to my body and breath and writing practice to stir that stew. Worry always pushes me. And hard. But I have to be present for it, or it will do (and has done) great harm.

@Jenifer Merifield Gotcha! 🤚And yes, we would!!!

@Jenny Rader-Bakos Mine knew about my father-in-law's cancer before he even told anyone!