To read more context for the letter below, check out this post here:)

An extra note this week. This letter lived between chapters about when I finally let myself get really angry (about a whole bunch of stuff I talked about in the book) during my 2017 hike. It was one of the best things I could have done, and I feel like I’m a slightly different person now because it. That being said, it took time to get to the point where it felt like productive, releasable rage.

Dear Pilgrim,

When the seed of the Camino first began to sprout in your mind, it may have been easy to fixate on the concept of enlightenment. We imagine that we will walk in peace like a Buddhist monk. We’ll be present in the moment even when the sweat drips down our back and the sun beats down on our skin. We will walk in silence and joy and bask in the freedom of what it feels like to finally be here. Above all else, we will never experience moments without gratitude for this experience that so many never get to see. If we’re not careful, it can be easy to mix up enlightenment with false peace.

This carefully constructed image of positivity, while it does wonders to get us out the door, can be poisonous when reality descends. The mind does not always settle into contentment and stability when we give it space to breathe. With the freedom to roam, it may start to address the pushed-aside misfit memories and emotions that lived trapped behind doors for far too long.

Among these forgotten misfits is rage. Not just anger or annoyance or sadness, but punch-your-fist-through-the-window, bellowing, eruptive rage. Rage itself is not evil. The feeling is only dangerous when it builds like steam behind a clogged valve.

Perhaps most frighteningly, the Camino leaves us alone with our rage. If we find a fellow traveler to listen, they are not there to tell us we are right, only to bear witness to your rage if they’re able. In most cases, you will only have the company of the dirt caught in your heat rash or the ripped fabric on the back of your boot that’s exacerbating a blister. You may have an occasional breeze, a stream, or a field of cows looking on curiously. But your rage is company enough as you walk.

So, what do you do with this forbidden feeling? Do you rage at those around you? Call someone at home? Scream at the next pack of slow walkers that block your way? When you drop into your rage and let it say its peace, welcome it the way you welcome all other emotions on the Camino. Walk. Walk and let it be there. There’s no reason to direct it outward, to put it somewhere, to try and find an answer that will make it go away. No one can justify your rage, no one outside of your mind can tell you the answer that will calm it down.

It wasn’t fair. How you were treated, what happened, how you were taught to respond. It isn’t right. You shouldn’t have needed so much space to hear your voice for the first time in so many years. It shouldn’t have happened. You shouldn’t have had to fight, or say goodbye, or accept things as they were. You have the right to light on fire with anger.

Don’t listen to the voices back home telling you to enjoy the moment or change your attitude. They are not here. They do not have the freedom to be angry like you do.