Pilgrimage: Pilgrimage in a changing season
“Something in me is changing season.”
—Raynor Winn, The Salt Path
I walked my three pilgrimages in the northern hemisphere autumn as the seasons changed. The leaves turned brown and dropped from the branches. There was a chill in the wind’s edge. I could see the beginning of winter ahead.
I didn’t know it at the time, but these walks reflected my own changing season, as my body and mind shifted into a new phase of life.
* * *
17 July 2020
I haven’t slept properly since last November so it’s not just the pandemic. Most nights I wake around two a.m. — sometimes it’s hot sweats, then cold chills, and sometimes it’s just my mind in overdrive.
Everything feels pointless. Some days I don’t care about anything at all. I just want to stay in bed all day. There is no feeling, no up, no down. I am a blank.
Jonathan said yesterday that I seem sad all the time and it’s true, there is very little that brings me joy at the moment. Work is monotonous. I am tired all the time. I don’t have the creative energy to write.
I’ve tried black cohosh, valerian, CBD oil, and other herbal remedies. I reduced my caffeine. I tried meditating. I sleep on the couch most nights so Jonathan can get a full night’s sleep without me disturbing him by constantly getting up. It’s a circle of night sweats, going to the toilet, drinking water as my mouth is so dry, getting chills, huddling back under the covers, and then the cycle repeats, sometimes several times a night.
There are waves of emotion and I cry for no reason. I’m not someone who cries like this, but some days I just can’t stop.
This is not like me. I have always been a default happy soul, but I don’t recognise that person anymore. I can still channel her positivity in public — fake it ’til you make it — and that helps me through. At least briefly, I remember how I used to be.
It’s an animal thing. I have no control over it. Days of bleeding followed by days of misery, a feeling of getting old, and the loss of a significant part of myself.
The wave sweeps over me and some days, I can ride it and others I am left spluttering in its wake. If I open my mouth, I could let the water rush in and then it would all be over.
But I guess I can make it through another day.
As long as I don’t run away from it all, as long as I don’t burn it all down, then I can get through this.
* * *
Thoughts of transience and permanence
What passes? What remains?
These questions kept coming up for me as I walked my pilgrimages, and remain with me still as I read the words from my journal above. So many transient emotions that some days I don’t even recognise as my own, and yet, I still remain.
The transience of the natural world was in evidence as I walked each autumn, particularly on my UK pilgrimages. Golden light on the leaves falling from chestnut trees. Beech nuts and acorns on the muddy path ahead. The last of the blackberries in the hedgerows, with rose-hips and elderberries growing nearby. Wild rabbits running through the fields and pheasants startled from the bushes. The cry of a kite in the cloudy sky above.
The death of another season as the world turns once more. The cold bite of the winter wind and the hope of spring ahead.
How many more turnings do I have left?
Pilgrimage teaches that the way can change according to fleeting emotion. Sometimes the map looked huge, the distances enormous. My will was diminished and my body was weak. I felt bruised and broken and ugly.
At other times, the kilometres disappeared swiftly under my feet, my spirit soared, and I walked with a smile on my face. My body was strong and well and beautiful.
At times, my feelings distorted the path, and at others, the way changed me. My pain and my emotions were transient. I could only capture them in writing each day, before they passed into memory.
The experience of pilgrimage itself is transient, but the lessons learned — and my pride in the accomplishment — are etched permanently on my heart.
* * *
NOTE: I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. It is just my opinion based on experience. Please see a medical professional for your situation.
Update November 2022:
I stopped sleeping properly in November 2019, before the pandemic, but later blamed my insomnia on anxiety about COVID-19. It certainly didn’t help! I tried all kinds of remedies and therapies but nothing worked. By April 2022, I couldn’t deal with the lack of sleep anymore. I spent my days teetering on the edge of coping, and I had to do something to fix it.
I spoke to a menopause doctor and went on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Within forty-eight hours of applying an oestrogen patch, I slept for a full night and have done so since. Tears well up as I write this, because it was truly a miracle.
My hot flushes and night sweats went away, my misery lifted, and I began to feel like myself again. I still wake in the night, but in a normal way, and I go back to sleep almost immediately. I can sleep in the same bed as Jonathan and no longer have night after night awake on the couch.
Of course, HRT is not for everyone, but at this point in my life, it helped immeasurably. Suicide rates for women are highest in the menopausal age bracket (forty-five to fifty-four) and I certainly felt a draw to it before HRT. Part of me did not want to mention such a topic within a travel memoir, but it has been such a significant part of my personal life in the last few years, I want to share the information in case it helps someone else.
If you or anyone you love is going through this time of life, I recommend Menopausing: The Positive Roadmap to Your Second Spring by Davina McCall, co-written with a medical doctor. It goes into detail on the many varied symptoms, as well as the evidence behind modern HRT.
Questions:
• What season of your life are you in?
• What part might pilgrimage play in the transition between the seasons of life and your acceptance of it?
Resources:
• The Salt Path — Raynor Winn
• Menopausing: The Positive Roadmap to Your Second Spring — Davina McCall
