Trekking and Transforming Family Dynamics on The Camino de Santiago with Lauren Duke

0:00Lauren Duke:We were forced to be in continuous, uncomfortable circumstances and figure out solutions, which is why there was so much family healing that happened, because we didn't do that before. We were just in the same scenarios again and again and again. And now here we are. We're in a foreign land. We have no idea what we're doing. We don't speak good Spanish. There was just one situation after another that we had to figure out a solution and come together and be a family.

0:43A few months ago, our team got a pitch from writer, yoga teacher, and entrepreneur Lauren Duke. And it really made an impression on us. Lauren holds a master's degree in psychology with an emphasis in physiology and body-based behavior. She spent her career thinking about how physical movement can help us process our emotions. In 2023, Lauren turned that curiosity into a very personal experiment. She invited her family on a 535-mile trek across the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Relationships with family members can be complicated, and Lauren's family is no exception. She planned to do this trip with her two siblings, one of whom she'd previously been estranged from for over a decade.

1:30They also invited their mother, who Lauren described as an out-of-shape, struggling alcoholic. For some people, spending a month hiking across Spain with their parents and adult siblings doesn't sound like a party. On the trail, there's nowhere to hide from intense family dynamics. The only option is to keep moving forward together. But that's why Lauren thought this walk might be the thing her family needed to finally work through decades of baggage. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

2:13Lauren Duke, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living, 535 miles in another country, the Camino de Santiago. Why? How? Tell me all about this.

2:27Lauren Duke:Okay. So I had been working on my master's thesis. I'd been in grad school for two years. I had two frozen shoulders. So I went to go see my massage therapist and she says to me, you don't need a massage. You need to get off the computer and you need to go for a walk, right? What she really meant was go walk down the block, right? But what I did was I was like right in that moment, literally, it was like a full body somatic experience where I just knew in that moment, I am doing the Camino de Santiago and I'm going to take my family. When I was young, when I was a teenager, my mom was a barber and she had a woman sitting in her chair.

3:08Lauren Duke:She was giving a perm and the woman had just come back from the Camino de Santiago. And she was using adjectives, like just words my mom in her survival mode brain had never heard, you know, spiritual, magical, transformative. And my mom was like, single mom, three kids, two baby daddy in prison. And she had never heard of the Camino de Santiago. She had never even used words, spiritual, magical, transformative. And the woman is telling her about this kind of pilgrimage that she'd went on. And my mom was like, well, I want to go do that. And for her, it wasn't for pilgrimage reasons. It wasn't about the long distance walking.

3:49Lauren Duke:You know, it was literally just to exit her life and the suffering that she was experiencing. But I remember as a kid, she told us about it. And it was like, there was always a little nugget in the back of my mind, like, I want to do that. So then when it came to that moment on the massage bed, I was like, all right, this is something that was my mother's dream and I'm 40 years old and I'm going to go do this dream. But then your mom came with you. How did that happen? I wasn't sure that she was going to come. But when I pitched this idea to my brother and my sister, my sister was going through a divorce.

4:25So I think that felt at first she was like, I can't do that.

4:28Lauren Duke:She was out of shape. Like the idea of doing something so big like that, you know, when you're untrained. It's amazing what the body is capable of. Once you just start walking, you're like, wow, actually this feels pretty good, right? But I think for her, there was something in accomplishing something like that, that she knew would make her feel strong and empowered and a level of like self-efficacy that she wasn't feeling that would help her kind of move through the healing and grief process of her divorce. My mother, we pitched her on the idea and she was literally like, this woman hadn't walked more than like to the fridge or to the car in several years.

5:11Lauren Duke:She's golfing more now, which is good. So she's getting her steps in. But at first she was really not into it. And then I reminded her like, this was your dream. Don't you remember that? This is the thing that you wanted to do. Let's do it together. And then she was like, okay, I'll do it. And my brother was just like along for the ride. you know, and he was like, oh, this is a free vacation, free beer, get away from being a boat captain for a month. Like he was just kind of the balloon floating in the sky. So I think for him, this is, he's always kind of been the buffer between all of us, the peacemaker.

5:46Lauren Duke:That was his role in the family. And so I think he was almost innately like, uh-oh, I kind of got to go to buffer it too.

5:57There were hangups and concerns, but at the end of the day, each of Lauren's family members agreed to the adventure. The Camino de Santiago is a network of ancient pilgrimage routes that run across Spain, France, and Portugal. There are many different ways to walk it. Some people spend just a few days on the trail, while others take weeks and even months. Ultimately, every route ends up at a cathedral in a city called Santiago de Compostela. Lauren and her family chose to walk one of the most difficult mountainous routes called the Camino del Norte, which begins in the city of San Sebastian in Spain.

6:34They also decided that because she wasn't in the best shape, their mom would meet them halfway through the trek. In April 2023, Lauren and her siblings flew to San Sebastian to prepare.

6:51Lauren Duke:So we arrive in San Sebastian. We have a few days to kind of work off the jet lag, but day two, I have this idea. I'm like, let's go get our Camino legs on, right? Let's, let's just try to like walk off the jet lag a little and it's going to help us sleep better. It's, you know, we'll help regulate our nervous systems and help hopefully kind of re-regulate our circadian rhythm. So we go walk down the, we're, you know, it's a whole cobblestone road. We walk all the way into San Sebastian. We go to the old church. We're going up all the way at the top of this mountain. Like we did a big hike and this was just supposed to be like a little stroll down the road.

7:28Lauren Duke:And so on the way back, I see these signs, which are clearly X's, like don't go here, but I didn't want to go back the way that we came. And the way that we came was on this kind of winding highway. And so it was really loud. And so I was like, okay, I can see that there's a path right here. And maybe if we take this path, we can find a different route back to the hotel. My sister is losing her mind. She is like, we are supposed to be resting right now. We have to walk 500 miles. Like, what are we doing on this walk? I should be resting. And she's telling me and my brother, we're not going that way.

8:06Lauren Duke:But me and my brother were like, well, we're going that way. You could go whatever way you want, but we're going to go that way. And so she actually ends up, she's screaming at us from behind because she can also see that the ex is saying, don't go this way, which is very typical eldest child, right? She's safer. She wants things to be predictable. So she's screaming at us. She's very upset. We walk her along the edge of this cliff and it's a little sketchy and she is like, I can see she's a ways behind us. Like, and she's just pouting. Like I can hear her kind of huffing and puffing back there.

8:40Lauren Duke:And, um, all of a sudden I hear my brother from around the corner and he's like, Oh my God, waterfall. And my sister, all of a sudden in 30 seconds, her whole vibe changes. Right. And she's like, what? And Danny goes, yeah, waterfall, like private secret beach waterfall. And all of a sudden her vibe just, you know, she just jets around the edge of the cliff. And here we are, we're on this like secret, beautiful, private beach with a waterfall hitting the sand. I mean, it was just so beautiful. And so we went from like, there's about to be a meltdown. Like at any moment, we are all kind of going back into our, you know, first child, second child, third child patterns and our sibling rivalry to now all of a sudden, we are on the most beautiful beach and there is a waterfall coming down into the sand and just trickling down into the water.

9:32Lauren Duke:And we can like so explicitly see a path that wanders back up to the brick road that goes back to the hotel. And if we hadn't gone the other way, if we hadn't gone the kind of less traveled path, we would have never had that experience, which was actually the first experience on the Camino where we kind of bonded as a team. Like all of a sudden we are in the same place. It's so beautiful. And we were so happy and we were like high fiving like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. And that was so cool for us because we've just had so many experiences that end bad that we have a loop like our bodies actually believe and our psychology actually believes that it's always going to turn out how it turned out before.

10:21And now all of a sudden, we have a new story.

10:25Lauren Duke:And we are all on the same page as we are walking back up the hill, back to the hotel on day one.

10:35The day after that waterfall hike, Lauren and her siblings set out on their 535-mile journey. The interesting thing about the Camino is that it passes through all these little Spanish towns with simple hostels called albergues, which catered to thru-hikers and pilgrims. Because they were staying in these towns, Lauren and her siblings carried backpacks with clothes and water, but they didn't need to bring sleeping bags, tents, or food.

11:06Lauren Duke:How many miles are you hiking a day? 16 to 24 miles every single day. And yes, it's a lot. And what are you eating? Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about through hiking is you kind of never know when your next meal is coming. And so we're eating everything. We are eating everything and anything. We're eating a lot of jamon and cheese sandwiches from like the little, you know, citerias on the side of the little cafes. Lots of coffee, lots of tea, lots of granola bars. The best chocolate croissant that you've ever had, Pana chocolate, was literally the best we'd ever had in our entire life. We're just eating all things.

11:55Lauren Duke:We're eating seafood, but literally all of us were like disgustingly full every single day. And that's also one of the things that is pretty well known about the Camino de Santiago, like at some point it was also like a wine trail. You're drinking wine and you're eating. It's like, and you're doing this with other people. So there's a level of communing. There's this element of safety on this pilgrimage because there's hotels, there's cafes, there's coffee shops, there's all sorts of things on the way. Okay, so you guys are doing some really big mileage. It's impressive. And then every night you're staying in like a hotel or a hostel or a church or somewhere.

12:32Lauren Duke:Yes, different places. There's all sorts of places along the trail and for kind of everyone's comfort level, right? There's hotels, there are monasteries, there are churches, there are albergues. We're staying at all of them. The kind of main thing, and you'll hear a lot of people on the Camino talk about this, which I don't necessarily believe this to be true, but whatever. Everyone can say whatever they want. But that the albergue is the pilgrim experience. Like the albergue is a big dorm style room essentially. And there's 25, 30, 40 beds in a room and you have a big community meal. And that's part of the experience of the Camino and the albergue is you get there.

13:19Lauren Duke:There's a very long table. There are, you know, multiple long tables. So like everyone's breaking bread, which is like, again, a tale as old as time of like how we commune with one another. And there's always wine on the table. So there's always food, there's always wine. And then it's different scenarios. Like some of them are old churches that have been turned into albergues. Some of them are old homes that have been turned into albergues. Most of them are dorm style though. And you really get to meet a lot of people doing that, you know, but also it's so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable.

13:56Lauren Duke:It's like, there's just, you have all these people in a space and people smell and they have different sleep circadian rhythms and, you know, people fart, you're not sleeping. So there's like a level of irritableness and grump that comes along with this journey as well, because you're not comfortable, you know, but like, there was something about doing that with my family that, well, I think made it more comfortable for us, but also made it so funny. Like it just created so many scenarios where we're just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're in this scenario again. And again, it's novelty, but they're funny situations.

14:41Lauren Duke:And it's just creating these outlets for us to kind of relate and laugh hysterically, which is totally different than our historical narrative.

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17:10In 2023, Lauren Duke and her brother and sister set out to walk 535 miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. For the first couple of weeks, it was just the three of them, learning how to navigate long days, sore feet, and the occasional disagreement. But two weeks in, their mom joined the hike and suddenly the family dynamic shifted. So you guys get about halfway together before your mom joins you. Is that correct? Yes.

17:41Lauren Duke:The second my mom joined us, it was reversion to all childhood patterns and behaviors. Like at this point, we're in a town called Nevia. And how many days have you been hiking by this point? We're over two weeks in. So we've gone hundreds of miles at this point. This is so interesting. Okay. So finally, you guys have been doing this for a couple of weeks. You meet up with your mother. You guys go back to all of your childhood, terrible habits. But then what happens? Like, talk to me about it. Is there a shift at some point? Yeah. Yeah, there is. Mom shows up at the hotel and we're having dinner.

18:21Lauren Duke:And me, my sister and my brother doing our normal banter. And we're kind of making jokes how walking this pilgrimage or this long journey is how we're like working out our childhood trauma. And then all of a sudden, my mom just loses it and snaps. And she's like, what is all this talk about trauma? You guys don't have any trauma. And it was just like record screech, just like, just, I think to all of us, it becomes very clear that, uh-oh, like there's tension. And where we were kind of talking honestly about everything, our mom isn't really on the same program and narrative as we are. So that was the first night in the hotel where it just became very clear like, oh no, this is going to be a very different trip after she got there.

19:15Lauren Duke:So then how do you guys keep going? The next day we start in Luarca and we start kind of walking up this kind of winding road through this big kind of, it was like a cow pasture, right? And it was pretty steep. And my mom was making us stop a lot. And again, we were kind of, my brother just took off, like he was so annoyed. And my sister and I were walking with our mom and we just keep looking at each other like, oh no, we have this thought like maybe she's not going to make it, right? And so we're being like overly cautious. And I think this is the moment where I really, really start to see my mom's humanness.

19:55And majorly where the role's reversed, where we are not our mother's daughters. We are now parenting my mother.

20:09Lauren Duke:Like we need to come together and take care of our mom and make sure she makes it through this. And the funny thing is, all of a sudden we got to the top of that hill and we had to cross a giant freeway at the top of the hill. And my brother is already up there. And before my mom was there, we were crossing highways and freeways left and right. And so here we are, we're at the top of this road and we're like looking at each other like, oh no, I don't think that we can cross this freeway with our mom. Like she's not even fast enough to do this. And we're not saying this in words. We're just looking at each other.

20:43Lauren Duke:And like, we've all known each other for so long that like, we know what that look means. It's like, how are we going to get our mom across this road? And next thing you know, my mom is like, you guys are treating me like a child. I have been doing this stuff longer than you guys have been alive. Like I have basically been getting myself through the muck since time immemorial. And she just like pulls on the straps of her bag and she just runs out across the road into traffic to the other side. I mean, it was like things escalated quickly and we just all looked at each other and we are just like little ducklings chasing our mom across the road.

21:21Lauren Duke:Whereas like 10 minutes ago, we're like afraid that our mom is fragile and she's going to die. And now all of a sudden she's on the other side of the road, right? And her confidence after that moment completely transformed.

21:39Sometimes Lauren's family walked shoulder to shoulder for hours and other times they drifted miles apart. This constant ebb and flow ended up being nice because it gave them intentional moments to reconnect as a family while still leaving plenty of room for solo time. Step by step, Lauren felt the family dynamic shifting in subtle ways. Finally, after five weeks on the road, the family approached the Compostela.