support – WELL WORTH BEING

The Walking Stick is a symbol of those people in one’s life who assist in upliftment, encouragement and forward momentum. Having an emotional, physical and spiritual staff to lean on can help traverse tricky terrain.

I don’t walk with poles or a walking stick—in fact the few times I have used someone’s for a difficult crossing or steep downhill, I have fallen. This indicates to me that I need to become more familiar with asking for support. My innate tendency is to always be self supporting and to hold others up. This can be to my detriment if I can’t equally find the people and resources to support me in supporting others.

A Walking Stick can be seen in the negative light of a crutch and using one can be seen to highlight one’s disabilities. It is, therefore, imperative to give this an archetypal symbology that encourages its use. The sense of outreach in difficult times is so key to reducing suffering and restoring well-being.

This current campaign to walk 1,000km to raise awareness for mental health and suicide prevention made me extremely vulnerable in the asking for support and extremely disappointed. My lessons around support are to lean in only when the support is actually there and being mindful of expectations of it, without using the lack of people believing in me to snap back into being 100% self supporting again.

When you carve a walking stick that ultimately provides support for your pilgrimage, it is like an analogy that can translate into the care and love offered to and infused into another human being that ultimately become the food that fuels that individual to be the support you one day may reach out for.

The pilgrim’s Walking Stick is a symbol that young, able-bodied people also make use of this often necessary tool for of support and that there is no stigma attached to utilising it, whether walking 5 or 45 legs of the Pilgrim’s Way. Using a Walking Stick can be a practice of mindfulness and gratitude—a way to honour the self and the body in recognition of its strength and also acceptance of its fallibility.

It holds the intention and reminder that there is always support at hand and it will challenge a different response when either needing to ask for or accept the offer of help from others. I can lean on something/someone temporarily and it’s ok to then lay it down, until needed again, without a) feeling obligated to be enslaved, and b) depending on it always being there.

Questions to ask yourself:

What held me back—cognitively, emotionally, somatically—in asking and/or receiving a hand of support today?
Who are the people in my community, tribe who are my walking sticks in life and how do I honour these people more by being receptive to their care?

You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.

As I plan the next Pilgrimage, I reflect on how I got to this point and how my embarking on this journey to raise awareness for Mental Health has both negatively and positively impacted those in my circle, my community and my life in general … and the corresponding impact others’ attitudes, words and actions have had on me.

Depression has become that kind of familiar place that I am now able to visit—albeit unintentionally—and, despite the mostly unbearable discomfort and burning desperation to either just die or get out, I can sit in the stench of it and allow it to show me the neon signs of my next destination.

Sometimes I simply want the signs to say, JUMP! or TAKE A VERY LONG WALK INTO THE OCEAN! Sometimes I don’t want to notice the EXIT sign because life outside of this black hole can seem too scary compared to this familiar discomfort. Most times, as in this current case, the signs are so glaringly powerful that they kick my ass out of there with no choice but to follow the trajectory they are pointing me to.

When I stopped anaesthetising the discomfort of my dysfunctional marriage with alcohol and sugar 15 years ago, I took to running … and running … and running some more. And when I again chose an abusive relationship that ended in verbal and sexual violation, I walked 450km in Portugal on two separate and consecutive Camino de Santiago routes.

Sitting in the trenches of this most recent depression, I was booted out only on reaching the point of knowing the only thing that could literally save me was to walk … far … long … intensely and intentionally … and in collaboration with my most pronounced character trait and, consequent greatest value: showing up in service to individuals, communities and to the environment in a manner that allows whatever it is that life is wanting to live through me.

I can inordinately deliberate over choices. Reaching the decision to walk 1,000km across Spain, and subsequently coming to the realisation that I wanted to do it in an altruistic manner, however, happened in less than 24 hours. It took another 24 hours to reach the decision to turn it into a community collaboration by launching a BackaBuddy fundraising campaign to ask for support in order to support.
https://backabuddy.co.za/campaign/walking-for-mental-health

With full transparency and gut-wrenching vulnerability, I have revealed truths about the foundations of my innate need to walk and my motivation around raising awareness for Mental Health whilst guiding others on their own unique walks to wellness. And I have revealed my desire to do this through my existing social media channels, a new YouTube channel and on a crowdfunding platform so that others can ride the karmic wave of altruism and awareness.
https://linktr.ee/Walking_for_Mental_Health

Asking for help is the most difficult thing for me—it exposes me to the vulnerability of growing up with no support. I may as well be standing stark naked in front of the cathedral for how open my heart is in the asking. This led me to writing about the Symbols of the Camino de Santiago and back to the beginning paragraph which I will elaborate on in another post that will detail each of the most significant (to me) of the symbols and how they have highlighted so rapidly the support, direction and purpose that have come from somewhat unexpected places.

These astounding growth moments in life shake up my prior beliefs, hopes and accidental expectations and fully recalibrate my mind, my heart, my soul and the entirety of my very being into a new stronger holding pattern that weaves a new narrative around the thread … that single piece of fibre … I am left holding, when all else has unravelled.

This is the end. And what I choose to weave—and with whom—is where I begin.