Walking Into Wholeness: A 13-Year Promise
As a child, I was quite free-range. Then, like many adults, I lost touch with it. My life back then was wonderful and average. I was happy, but I wasn’t whole. But if I didn’t do something, I knew the part of me that was missing would be gone forever.
One quiet and cold early November morning 13 years ago, I woke up slowly. I made spicy chai tea, wiped a skin of frost from the window, and realized that an essential component of who I was as a kid was no longer a part of who I was as an adult.
As a child, I was quite free-range. I spent all day outside. I was happiest with dirt on the bottom of my feet, my hair in a two-day-old ponytail, and cold morning air in my lungs. My connection to the natural world was instant and effortless. I understood my place in the larger ecosystem, and I felt a deep sense of belonging.
Then, like many adults, I lost touch with it. It wasn’t an intentional decision, or even a conscious one, but at some point, being outside ceased to be a vital part of my day.
My life back then was wonderful and average. I had a fulfilling career in advertising. I was often on the road, traveling for commercial shoots and client meetings. I had a healthy family with two growing boys, and a sparkly collection of friends. But during those decades, I spent most of my time indoors, in conference rooms, in meetings, on planes, in the house, in the office, in the kitchen, in cars. I was happy, but I wasn’t whole.
No wise or elegant words arrived to help me convey what I was feeling that November morning. All I could say was all that I knew something was missing. I remember reading a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe about the reason she painted, and the gist of it was: I don't know how to say how I feel, but I do know how to paint how I feel. That’s what being outside is like for me. I couldn’t be myself or know myself without nature as my teacher and companion.
But 13 years ago, there was little about self-care, especially for women. Or probably more accurately, I wasn’t aware of it. As a mother, putting yourself before others was at best, rebellious, and at worst, selfish.
But if I didn’t do something, I knew the part of me that was missing would be gone forever.
So, the next morning, I got up in the dark before the world had woken; I put on my shoes and went for a walk. It was a beautiful and chilly reunion with me. I promised myself that I’d get up early every morning and go for a 60-min walk, no matter what.
That first week was wobbly, uncertain, dark, cold—and joyous.
I’ve walked in the snow, in the rain, on bright, sunny mornings, with all the wild birdsong accompanying me.
It’s been 13 years since I made my walking promise, and I’ve never missed a day. Most days, it’s very simple: out my backdoor by 5:30 a.m., walk for an hour. A few years ago, walking alongside my sons, I calculated that over the course of these many mornings, I’d traveled the circumference of the Earth.
After more than a decade on foot, I’ve seen much of it, too. I’ve walked in the great cities of the world and in the Badlands, which are not bad at all.
There was a walk in Hornstrandir, a remote protected nature reserve located in the Westfjords of Iceland, about six hours from Reykivik, where I hiked with a group of 15 women over tundra, cliffs, flowering fields, and ice. We were hosting “The World's Most Remote Film Festival” for 10 days, off the grid. (If you’re wondering how it’s possible to host a film festival off the grid, the short answer is … very creatively.)
I was overwhelmed by the steep cliffs, the darkness of the dark, and the brilliance of the light.
Claire cheered me on as my 62-year-old eyes or inner ear or equilibrium faltered on the switchbacks, with a steep cliff on one side. Bradlee kept her hand on my pack, tender but steadfast in her care of me. In each step, we made a promise of love to ourselves and each other.
Once, at home, I walked all night long through my community on the North Shore. I’d received some upsetting news late that evening at the office, a tectonic shift in my life and my family’s. I walked what I’d come to call “the Loop,” five miles around the neighborhood and through the woods. And that night—through grief, anger, and uncertainty. I asked myself after each circuit, “Do you want to keep going? Do you need a hot shower, a cup of tea, a call with a friend, new socks, a hug?” What I needed was to keep walking. I walked until morning, 13 hours in total. My walking practice held space for me, but what I came to realize was that my walking practice also had me.
My favorite walk on the West Coast is an out-and-back on a dirt road that ends with the kiss of the Pacific Ocean. I take a gentle, sunny slope down to the water, pausing briefly in the shade of the eucalyptus trees and bay laurel, which are so fragrant it feels as if I’m wrapped in my father’s arms. In this sacred space, you might find a bobkitten as I once did, which causes you to stop, not in fear, but in wonder. She might be surprised to see you there—or she might not—because you’re part of her ecosystem, her homecoming, too.
This walking practice is not about the number of steps or the number of miles. It’s about the intention, the action, and the promise. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t started to walk, but I wouldn’t have gotten far.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
Walking Through November
November is the month that I started my walking practice. November 3rd, to be exact. My dad’s birthday. I always try to take a very special walk on that day and ask my dad for advice. He always shows up.
November is an important and elegant month. The light shifts. The time shifts, and it marks for me the month that I started my walking practice. November 3rd, to be exact. My dad’s birthday. I always try to take a very special walk on that day and ask my dad for advice. He always shows up. This year, it was: Keep walking. Work on physical strength and focus on emotional tenderness. Such solid advice.
I have been fortunate to learn a lot on my walks. I feel as I continue to walk, the more significant the lessons, and that I would only have access to these lessons by walking into them.
A few of the lessons that have arrived during my walks.
Spend time by yourself. Enjoy your own company.
Change is inevitable. It happens every moment of our lives. The only thing we have control over is how we show up in the face of that change.
Surround yourself and hold close the community who loves you and cheers you on.
We are the natural world. We are not separate from the natural world.
Trust that when we walk in the space of the things that light us up the universe will acknowledge and honor that.
What is for me isn’t going to miss me.
Talk about your dreams in the present tense and they will be so.
Try something. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Stand up, try again. Fail big. Recognize it may not be meant for me.
Note the change of seasons. November can be a time for introspection, active rest and honoring our animal intuition.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
A Walk With My Father
Written by Guest Author, Shannon Miller // Walking wasn’t proof of life for you, it was proof of living. There was no duress to your outings. No sense of obligation. You often walked with coffee in your hand and took your time unfurling the thin blue dog poop bag. For you, walking was the entry point to life, not the escape.
Written by Guest Author, Shannon Miller
Dad,
You never understood why I ran, no matter how many times and ways I tried to explain it.
It was healthy.
It was social.
It got me outside, away from mothering and computer-ing and spinning.
It was an escape, the physical expression of white noise, a blurring of the obligations and pressures that punctuated my day and prodded me awake at 1:32 am with the inexplicable feeling of lateness.
Running was proof of life, that my body was strong, that I could endure the next pandemic or election or other Big Terrible. All I’d need to feel better, no matter what happened, was a few miles.
You were a walker. Not evangelical particularly, but dedicated, rain or shine, every day through the bulrushes near Lake Wilcox or up the road past Tom’s place with the hydrangeas and good lawn. You knew every dog in town, which ones your dog liked (practically none), which ones he would tolerate (few), and which ones made him snarly and murderous (a vast majority). You walked because it was healthy. It was social. It got you outside. And you were obsessed with your FitBit the way my kids are obsessed with Minecraft.
You often left a message to let me know when you’d hit your step goal. At the end of the day, you’d leave another message letting me know how many steps you’d exceeded it by. Occasionally, we’d get competitive with metrics. I told you my marathon was around 53,000 steps. You told me you saw six ducklings and listened to four chapters of James Patterson.
But walking wasn’t proof of life for you, it was proof of living. There was no duress to your outings. No sense of obligation. You often walked with coffee in your hand and took your time unfurling the thin blue dog poop bag. You took pictures, sometimes with the Canon, and researched parks and little lakeside villages you wanted to visit. For you, walking was the entry point to life, not the escape. I saw the appeal, though I’d never admit it.
Running versus walking seemed like a perfect, good-natured thing for a father and daughter to argue about. So we did, for years—steps versus miles, this shoe versus that one, trail versus road.
You died in July on a very hot Thursday. You were wearing your FitBit and it was the Biggest Terrible I could imagine:
Choosing the music and clothes for your funeral.
Rooting through the desk drawers for your passwords.
Casket rental.
The awful moment after someone is gone when the ones left behind decide what every little thing means and doesn’t—leather shoes? Books? Unchewed sticks of gum? Your university degree? A time capsule of a life, made after the fact.
I took five tee shirts, some guitar picks, a thin gold chain, and your FitBit. You’d gone for the unsporty kind with heavy links and frosted black everything. I thought about taking the charging cord and plugging it in but never could. I was too afraid to see what your heart did right before you left and how many steps you’d taken on your last walk earthside. I never used it, I just wore it around like an odd piece of jewelry and said it was out of batteries whenever someone stopped to ask for the time.
The watch was awful to run with. For one, it didn’t fit and hung down close to my knuckles. It also jangled in the heavy way of loose change and made me self-conscious, like a cat embarrassed by her bell. The combination of my sweat and the metal stung the tender, nearly translucent skin around my wrist and left a terrible welt.
By mile four of my third run with the watch, I gave up and started walking. I didn’t have a pocket to put it in and I didn’t want to lose it, even though it was clunky and desperately un-fun. The adrenaline drained from my body. My breath was sour. Sweat dripped down my back like rain on a pane of glass. I saw the world without you in it. And my God, it wasn’t the sort of thing I could ever outrun. So, I just kept walking.
I walked through a tickseed meadow and by a slow, brown river. I walked past a man with a white beard and a matching white dog. The blood left my cheeks and returned in a warm flow to the other parts of my body. I took down my hair, which was stringy and wet. I got a coffee.
And suddenly, there you were in light roast and the outstretched wings of a bird on a wire. You were the pebble lodged in the gummy pink grooves of the shoe I’d argued was best. You were the picture I took of the shagbark hickory. You were there, in every single step. And just between us, you were right about the walking.
Among your legacies is a mile of aliveness every morning, where joy comes and pain comes and nothing is blurry. Where I miss you and feel you in equal measure, a place to linger instead of escape.
I walk because it’s healthy, it’s social, and it gets me outside. I walk because you’re gone and because you’re everywhere, because all of my steps, hundreds of thousands, are yours, too.
Walk on,
Shannon
Shannon Miller a best-selling collaborative writer and editor who works with authors, agents, and publishers to tell courageous, unifying stories. Her book projects have gone on to become national bestsellers, receive starred reviews from prominent literary magazines, and garner praise from celebrated authors including Elizabeth Gilbert, Glennon Doyle, Dolly Parton, and Cheryl Strayed. She lives in Nashville, TN with her super-awesome family and she's just finished writing her first novel.
WALK Down the Street
I was thinking about the feeling of beauty on my walk today—a generous mile down the street and back again. It wasn’t the look of beauty I sought to know, but the feeling of it.
I was thinking about the feeling of beauty on my walk today—a generous mile down the street and back again. It wasn’t the look of beauty I sought to know, but the feeling of it. A cool breeze came, and I remembered a little church in Hornstrandir Nature Preserve, Iceland with my beloved hiking pals. That memory felt beautiful. It was also in the neighbors’ sprinkler set slightly too close to the fence that shyly kissed my ankles, and in the Little Library on the corner with a fresh coat of paint, a color that must be called “Summertime.” Truly, that’s what flowed through me. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I know this, but how?
What does beauty feel like? Safety. Warmth. Comfort. Bright. Sparkly. Enveloped. Related. Connected. Novelty. Nostalgia. A flush on my chest and cheeks. A laugh that escapes and seems to kick up its heels. I’ve seen the heart-shaped leaves on the redbud tree, the smiling dog with its purple tongue, the identically pitched rooftops against the sky, every sight along this strip of sidewalk—still, I feel a new kind of beautiful each time I set out. How?
What is beautiful? What is beauty?
There are no words for an answer.
All I know is that it comes walking with me.
It was there in the sunrise, the first lilacs to bloom, the owl in her nest, the kids getting on the bus, the dog walkers in conversation with their furries. I smelled beauty in the first batch from the bakeries, the pot of coffee, and the wood smoke from the morning fire in someone’s hearth. I often hear it in the sounds of waking up, the gentle lo of a serious, deep-voiced bird, the pop of the toaster, the first hello. It is all so beautiful. It was there when the wild rose was born in spring and then again, when she began to die, her fragrance ripening to sweet and sour, her petals browning at the edges, her body softening into the earth. How can beauty come so wild and alive in death? How can it be here... and there…. and there? How?
All I know is that it comes walking with me.
Perhaps the beauty, the beautiful, isn’t this place or any place but the presence to take it in. Perhaps beauty is attention, devotion, the ritual of quiet in my head. Perhaps it's in the choice to listen, see, smell, feel, taste. Perhaps beautiful is simply the hug of my green cozy coat. What could be more beautiful than a hug? Perhaps everything is beautiful. It must be.
To open the mailbox!
To meet the new puppy!
To see the flowers in the flower market!
To hold their hand? To kiss them? To brush up against their shoulder?
To go for a walk. Even just in the neighborhood.
How can it all be beautiful?
All I know about beauty is that it comes walking with me.
PromptS
What is beautiful about my home?
What is beautiful about me?
How do I create beauty in the world?
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
WALK in the Rain
The birds are silent and hiding wherever birds do. Roads shimmer and shine, empty. People wait inside for the weather to pass, but I can’t pass it up.
The rain. Pouring, pouring rain. Musical rain that melts the sand to slurry.
Big rain that flows in tributaries from puddle to puddle to puddle.
Rain that soaks me from my temples to my toes.
Walking in the rain, there’s just something about it.
I’m alone, but somehow, not. I’m cold, but somehow, not. I have the warm, wonderful feeling of good company having just gone.
I pick up the wriggling pink worm and move him to the grass. I take time to shake water from a heavy bough, straightening up in my little world, happy as can be. The rain scours the sidewalk and rinses the car windows while I wash my boots in a just-formed pool. The clouds hang low and dark like drawn curtains.
The birds are silent and hiding wherever birds do. Roads shimmer and shine, empty. People wait inside for the weather to pass, but I can’t pass it up.
Petrichor fills my body, minerally and enlivening. Along with a sparkling hope, too.
“Let the rain kiss you.” Langston Hughes invites us, “Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
The discomfort of wet socks and water dripping down my back is temporary, but the kiss stays with me.
PromptS
What does peace sound like?
When do I feel alone with the world?
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.