TrailTracers 4

10 Powerful Life Lessons My Retreat Guests Learned While Walking the Camino de Santiago

Email 4 The Reluctant Pilgrim: How a Spreadsheet-Loving Sceptic Found Healing in a Sunflower Field

Marie’s journey from cancellation email to transformation shows why stepping outside your comfort zone might be exactly what you need.

“I thought I’d be the odd one out… I left with a new family.”

From Hesitation to Homecoming – Marie’s story reminds me why I do this work.

The email arrived at 11:42 PM, just three days before our retreat was set to begin:

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m not spiritual, I haven’t exercised in years, and the thought of sharing personal things with strangers makes me feel physically ill. Can I still get a partial refund?”

This wasn’t the first cancellation request I’d received, but something about Marie’s email made me reach for my phone instead of the refund policy.

The Corporate Warrior at a Crossroads

When we spoke the next morning, Marie’s voice was taut with anxiety. A 52-year-old financial controller from London, she described herself as “pathologically practical” and “allergic to anything woo-woo.” She’d booked the retreat during what she called “a moment of pandemic madness” after her doctor suggested she find ways to manage her crushing stress levels.

“I don’t belong in your world,” she insisted. “I wear suits, not hiking boots. I analyse spreadsheets, not feelings. And I certainly don’t write in journals.”

What Marie didn’t say—but I sensed in the brittle edge of her laugh—was that she was terrified. Not of the walking (though that concerned her too) but of being seen in her vulnerability by others.

“What if we make a deal?” I suggested. “Come for just the first two days. If you’re miserable, I’ll personally drive you to the train station and refund the remaining days.”

A long pause. “You’d do that?”

“Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is simply show up,” I said. “I think you’re braver than you’re giving yourself credit for.”

Three days later, Marie arrived at my farmhouse, looking, as she later described it, “like someone attending their own funeral.”

The First Steps: From Resistance to Release

That first evening, as we gathered around the farmhouse table for our welcome dinner, Marie sat slightly apart, her shoulders rigid, answering questions politely but briefly. When I distributed the journals, she accepted hers with the enthusiasm of someone being handed tax forms.

“You don’t have to share anything you write,” I assured the group. “The page is your private space.”

The next morning, our first walking meditation through the sunflower fields was met with Marie’s sceptical glance. “Just walking? That’s it?” she whispered.

“Just walking,” I nodded. “But with all of yourself present.”

By lunchtime, something had shifted. As we sat beneath an ancient oak tree, Marie was the first to remove her shoes, pressing her bare feet into the cool grass with a small sigh of pleasure.

“I can’t remember the last time I felt the earth,” she said quietly, almost to herself.

That evening, she stayed at the table after others had retired, staring at her still-blank journal.

“I don’t know what to write,” she admitted.

“Start with what you notice,” I suggested. “Not what you think or feel—just what you observe.”

The Breakthrough: An Unexpected Mirror

The turning point came on day three during our equine-guided meditation. Marie hung back as others approached the horses grazing in the meadow.

“I’ve never been around horses,” she confessed. “They’re so… large.”

“They’re also incredibly sensitive,” I explained. “They mirror what we carry inside. Try approaching that mare over there—Tooske—with the same energy you bring to important meetings.”

Marie squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and strode purposefully toward Tooske. The mare immediately raised her head and backed away.

Marie froze, her professional mask crumpling.

“What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing wrong,” I said gently. “Tooske is just showing you something. What if you approached her the way you might approach someone you care about who’s feeling uncertain?”

Marie’s second approach was tentative; her body language was completely different. She stopped several feet away, lowered her eyes, and simply waited. After what felt like minutes, Toos slowly walked to Marie and rested her muzzle against Marie’s chest.

The tears came suddenly—deep, body-shaking sobs that seemed to surprise Marie as much as anyone. Toos didn’t move, standing steady as Marie leaned into her strength.

That evening, Marie wrote in her journal for three hours straight.

The Integration: Finding Voice and Community

“I’ve spent my entire career making myself smaller,” Marie shared during our fireside circle on the fourth night. “I thought power meant being impenetrable, never showing weakness.”

She described how her relentless drive for perfection had gradually isolated her, from colleagues, from friends, even from her adult daughter who had stopped calling except for obligatory holiday check-ins.

“I realised today with Tooske that I’ve been approaching my whole life like a battle to be won rather than a journey to be experienced,” she said. “No wonder I’m exhausted. No wonder I’m alone.”

The group’s response was immediate and embracing. As it turned out, Marie wasn’t the only one carrying the weight of impossible standards. Claire, a pediatric nurse, shared her own struggle with perfectionism. Jean-Paul, a retired professor, spoke about his divorce and subsequent isolation.

What had begun as individual journeys was transforming into a web of connections.

During our wild swimming experience the next day, it was Marie who led the group into the cool river, laughing as she splashed water over her face. “I haven’t played since I was a child,” she called out, her voice lighter than we’d ever heard it.

The Return: From Stranger to Family

On our final evening, as we sat among Louis’s vegetable gardens for our closing ceremony, Marie read aloud from her journal—something she’d insisted she would never do.

“I came here thinking I needed to fix my stress,” she read. “But what I really needed was to come home to myself. To remember that efficiency isn’t the same as purpose. That vulnerability isn’t weakness—it’s the doorway to connection.”

She looked up, her eyes clear and direct. “I came as a stranger. I’m leaving as part of a family.”

The Ripples: Beyond the Retreat

Two weeks after returning to London, Marie sent me an email that made me weep with recognition:

“I had a meeting with my team yesterday—the same team I’ve led with an iron grip for eight years. Instead of opening with our targets and metrics, I asked each person to share one thing they were proud of from the past week. The silence was deafening at first. Then the magic started. My ‘problem employee’ revealed he’s been caring for his mother with dementia. My quietest analyst shared a brilliant idea she’d been too intimidated to mention.

“For the first time, I led from my humanity, not my title. We still covered every agenda item—actually more efficiently than usual. But something fundamental has changed. I’ve changed.”

Marie’s transformation extended to her personal life as well. She scheduled a weekend with her daughter—not a rushed dinner, but two full days in the countryside “with no agenda except being present.”

She began practising daily walking meditation in a small park near her flat—”just 15 minutes, but it resets everything.”

The Annual Reunion: A New Tradition

The most beautiful postscript to Marie’s story? She and three others from that retreat have created their own annual tradition. Every September, they return to my farmhouse for what they call their “TrailTracers Reunion.”

I provide the space, but they largely create their own experience now. Last year, I watched from the kitchen window as Marie-the woman who once “wasn’t spiritual”—led the group in a sunrise meditation among the sunflowers.

Later, I overheard her telling a new participant: “The greatest gift of this place isn’t what you learn during the retreat. It’s who you become after you leave.”

Marie now keeps three journals: one for work insights, one for personal reflections, and one specifically for letters to her future self. “Writing,” she told me during her third visit, “is how I remember who I am when the world tries to tell me otherwise.”

From a last-minute cancellation request to a life transformed, Marie’s journey reminds me that our most profound growth often waits just beyond our greatest resistance. Her story isn’t exceptional among my retreat participants; it’s extraordinary in the way all genuine transformation is—unique, unpredictable, and perfectly aligned with who she was always meant to become.

Want to know if this is right for you? Just reply to this email and ask. I’ll be honest—promise.

Want to read a few more testimonials (or guestimonials) as I call them? Visit my ‘Transformational Retreat Testimonials and Tales‘ collection to see how others experienced this retreat.

Buen Camino,
Margaretha Montagu

PS. This e-mail is part of a series I send to subscribers to my mailing list. If you would like to receive the free series, as well as the free 10 Powerful Lessons My Guests Learned While Walking the Camino de Santiago guide, you can subscribe by clicking here: Download the Guide.