My philosophy
The Camino wasn’t calling me to walk. It was calling me to grieve
You’re in the right place if…
You’ve been doing the work. Therapy. Grief counselling. Somatic sessions. Maybe a gong bath or two. Maybe years of 12-step. And it has helped — it really has.
But something doesn’t feel quite right. Like there’s a piece of the puzzle that hasn’t quite slotted into place yet. You’re progressing — you can see that — but it’s a long slog. You get glimpses of a shift and then it fades. And you can’t quite put your finger on what’s missing.
You keep trying things but nothing seems to have the answer. AND something keeps pulling you towards the Camino.
If that resonates — you’re in the right place.
Here’s what I believe.
Most of the modalities we use to process grief and loss are brilliant. Therapy, Compassionate Inquiry®, Internal Family Systems®, somatic work, EMDR, 12-step — I’ve used them all and I will defend every single one of them.
I remember the moment Gabor Mate’s work came into my life. Years into recovery, years of doing the work — and suddenly something clicked that hadn’t clicked before. Not because the other work wasn’t good. Because this was another missing piece of the puzzle.
But here’s the thing. All of these modalities — however powerful — share something in common. They happen in containers.
An hour on a Tuesday. A series of twelve sessions. A gong bath that ends when the sound fades. A weekend retreat. And then the container closes, and you go back into your life — your inbox, your family, your to-do list — and what you were just touching has to squeeze itself back in there with you.
The shifts happen. But they are glimpses. And life doesn’t give them room to land.
This is the bit nobody talks about. Not the work itself — the integration.
What’s really going on.
You’ve been carrying something. A loss, a grief, an ending — or perhaps something you can feel coming. A role slipping away. Someone you love slowly disappearing. A version of yourself you’re not quite ready to let go of.
And you’ve been trying to process it in the gaps between everything else.
The work you’ve done has given you awareness. Maybe even understanding. But awareness and understanding alone aren’t enough. What’s missing is the third part — integration. From there, and only from there have I found the true acceptance.
Integration requires something that normal life cannot provide.
Space. Real space. Vast, uninterrupted, ancient space. Days and days of it.
Not a system. Not a programme. Not a process. A space. The kind of space where everything you’ve been working on so hard in those contained sessions can finally land. Settle. Breathe.
What’s at stake.
Here’s something I want to say carefully, because it matters.
There’s a difference between resignation and acceptance.
Resignation sounds like: I suppose this is just how it is. It wears the mask of acceptance but underneath it, nothing has really moved. The grief and hurt is still there. It has just gone quiet. You’re functioning — but you’re not free.
Real acceptance — the kind that actually sets you free— only arrives after you’ve understood. After you’ve had the compassion for that little hurt part of you that has been carrying all this hurt. After you’ve given it space to be witnessed, to be felt, to be integrated into the story of who you were and who you are now.
Without that third step — integration — awareness and understanding stay in your head. They don’t get into your body. They don’t get into your life. And we mistake resignation for acceptance, and call it done.
It’s not done. And somewhere in you, you know that.
What I think you need.
Whether you ever work with me or not, here is what I believe:
You need time away from your life that is long enough for your nervous system to stop bracing. Not just an hour or a weekend. Long enough for things to actually move.
You need movement. Walking is not incidental to this process — it is the process. Something about putting one foot in front of the other, day after day, accesses things that no room-based session can reach. It works things loose that have been held tight for a very long time.
You need the sequence. Awareness comes first — the realisation of what you’re actually carrying. Then understanding — the compassion for that part of you that took it on. Then integration — the space for it to become part of your story rather than something you’re still fighting. The Camino holds all three, if you let it.
You need space for what the Camino sends. On The Way, things arrive. Lightbulb moments. Godincidences — people who appear at exactly the right moment and say exactly the right thing, not because they’re trained to, but because that’s what happens out there. They will appear.
And you need someone who has been there — not just on the Camino, but in the middle messy bit of resignation. Someone who knows what it is to carry grief and hurt on the path and find a way to lay it down.
That’s what I’m here for.