Your Heart Is Broken—Now What?

Could the Camino de Santiago be the cure for heartache?

By Regina Winkle-Bryan

I had a friend who was in unrequited love.

For months, his would-be lover toyed with him before deciding that it was another man she really wanted and left my friend heartbroken. He was split in two.

He needed to heal and regroup. He packed his supplies and decided to hike the Camino de Santiago, an old pilgrim trail that crosses the northern part of Spain ending in Santiago de Compostela, a sacred city in Galicia. You may have heard of the well-trod path or seen a movie about it.

I was living in Barcelona at the time, and I saw him before he laced up his boots and hit the trail. He was not the first to approach the Camino as a salve. In fact, most of the people I met when I did the Camino some years prior were on it to recover from something, whether it was an illness or a lover. Love can be like an illness when it’s no good, so maybe it’s all the same motivation.

The people who walk the Camino are called pilgrims because they are making a pilgrimage, or were back in medieval times, when the Camino was in its heyday. Pilgrims are peligrinos in Spanish.

A few of the pilgrims I met on the Camino walked for someone else, fulfilling a promise to God: “If I walk the Camino, God will cure my father’s cancer.”

Other times, they were making good on a promise they had offered at the time of a diagnosis or emergency: “If my brother comes home safe from combat, I’ll walk the Camino.”

Some pilgrims were grieving a loss, either of a loved one, a job, or a relationship. And some people were just doing it for fun—for a milestone birthday, or because they had heard it was awesome and life-changing, so why not do it now?

I did it because I was assigned to write about it for a magazine. But it did change me, and I still remember it as one of the most profound travel experiences I have ever had, all these years and countries later. The quest aspect of it and the community found along the trail, mixed with good Spanish food and wine, make for an epic adventure.

My friend chose to nurse his heartbreak on the Camino. He chose travel as his cure. A trip can be just what the doctor ordered, but sometimes it is nothing more than an escape from a problem that needs deeper work. It could be that therapy is needed to address patterns that won’t stop surfacing. Sometimes, both approaches help—travel for a change in perspective and then working through harder issues with a professional.

I’ve used travel to heal a few times. I know the power of leaving a toxic situation in search of a fresh start. Travel reminds us that there are other ways to be in this world. Your routine and rut are not the only way to live. You pack up and head to Costa Rica, where people teach yoga on the beach or run boho B&Bs. Maybe you could do that? You volunteer at an NGO in Guatemala and suddenly appreciate what you have. You go on a road trip across the American West and fall in love with Santa Fe, open a coffee shop, and never look back.

Travel, when we do it right, puts us in contact with others who have dared to live differently. New friends and relationships are found on the road. And if nothing else, travel is a beautiful distraction from all the pain.

Consider the book Eat, Pray, Love. You don’t have to like the book or the author to understand that it is about healing. Why did that memoir enjoy the success it did? Because the courage to use travel and adventure as a remedy for heartache resonated with millions of readers, most of them women who then said, “screw this!” and went off to seek their own exploits.

Or how about Wild? Another memoir-turned-blockbuster-film all about what one woman—Cheryl Strayed—did with the grief from her mother’s death and her broken marriage. She hiked. She searched for the most courageous part of herself. She actively pursued a new perspective along the rough and solitary terrain of the Pacific Crest Trail.

When it has been a stressful few months (years?) it’s time to find water and negative ions.

The impetus does not always have to be a life-changing catastrophe, like the death of a parent or divorce. We also travel for smaller wounds. Stress. A bad few weeks at work. The end of a friendship. A fight with a partner. Burnout.

Where do you go when you need that quick salve?

I find water. When I lived in Oregon, it was the coast. “Beach therapy” is fairly common among many of us on the Pacific shores of the United States. We talk about “needing” the ocean. We gush over walking the sands and staring at the rhythmic churn of the waves. We want those negative ions to work their magic and wash away our anxieties. A couple of nights near the water can soothe the soul and work wonders. In Oregon, I like Manzanita or Short Sands for a bit of respite.

A hot spring can be good, too, or anywhere without WiFi. I am partial to the San Juan Islands, a place where I am immediately at peace when disembarking from the ferry.

Nine times out of ten, travel will offer enough distraction and perspective shift to cure what ails you, or at least allow time to come up with a new plan. But it doesn’t always work.

My heartbroken friend earnestly set forth on the Camino de Santiago and walked many miles a day. He camped and stayed at albergues along the route. He met a few people. But he never made it to the holy city of Santiago de Compostela. “I spent eight hours a day walking,” he told me later, “and the whole time, all I thought about was her!” Frustrated, he gave up and went home, not much better off than when he left.

Choose your journey wisely, or you might find yourself alone on a remote trail in Spain, with no company but your own thoughts, all of which revolve around the beautiful woman who smashed your heart. Sometimes, travel is best with a buddy.