Lauren Duke holds a master’s degree in psychology focused on physiology and body based behavior, and studies how movement helps us process emotion. In 2023, she tested that work on a 535 mile Camino de Santiago hike across Spain with her family. The month long trek surfaced unresolved family dynamics, leaving no real option but to keep walking and stay in relationship.
Lauren Duke holds a master’s degree in psychology focused on physiology and body based behavior, and studies how movement helps us process emotion. In 2023, she tested that work on a 535 mile Camino de Santiago hike across Spain with her family. The month long trek surfaced unresolved family dynamics, leaving no real option but to keep walking and stay in relationship.
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Lauren 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.
Shelby Stanger:
A 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's 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. They 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.
Lauren Duke, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. 535 miles in another country, the Camino de Santiago. Why? How?
Lauren Duke:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me all about this.
Lauren 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." What she really meant was go walk down the block. 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. She was giving a perm. And the woman had just come back from the Camino de Santiago and she was using adjectives, just words my mom in her survival mode brain had never heard, "Spiritual, magical, transformative."
And my mom was 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. 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."
Shelby Stanger:
But then your mom came with you. How did that happen?
Lauren Duke:
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, so I think that felt ... At first she was like, "I can't do that." She was out of shape. The idea of doing something so big like that 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." 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 self-efficacy that she wasn't feeling that would help her 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 to the fridge or to the car in several years. 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." My brother was just along for the ride, and he was like, "Oh, this is a free vacation, free beer, get away from being a boat captain for a month." He was just kind of the balloon floating in the sky, so I think for him ... He's always kind of been the buffer between all of us, the peacemaker. 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.
Shelby Stanger:
There 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 Sebastián in Spain. They 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 Sebastián to prepare.
Lauren Duke:
So we arrive at San Sebastián. We have a few days to work off the jet lag, but day two, I have this idea. I'm like, "Let's go get our Camino legs on. Let's just try to walk off the jet lag a little, and it's going to help us sleep better. It will help regulate our nervous systems and help hopefully re-regulate our circadian rhythm." So we go walk down the... it's a whole cobblestone road. We walk all the way into San Sebastián. We go to the old church. We're going up all the way at the top of this mountain. We did a big hike, and this was just supposed to be like a little stroll down the road.
And so on the way back, I see these signs which are clearly Xs, 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 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. 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," 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 X is saying, "Don't go this way," which is very typical eldest child. 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. I can see she's a ways behind us and she's just pouting. I can hear her huffing and puffing back there. And 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, and she's like, "What?" And Danny goes, "Yeah, waterfall. Private secret beach waterfall." All of a sudden her vibe just ... She just jets around the edge of the cliff. And here we are. We're on this secret, beautiful, private beach with a waterfall hitting the sand. I mean, it was just so beautiful.
And so we went from, there's about to be a meltdown, at any moment, we are all going back into our 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. We can 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 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. All of a sudden we are in the same place. It's so beautiful and we were so happy, and we were high-fiving like, "Oh my gosh, this is awesome."
That was so cool for us because we've just had so many experiences that end bad, that we have a loop. Our bodies actually believe and our psychology actually believes that it's always going to turn out how it turned out before. And now all of a sudden we have a new story and we are all on the same page as we are walking back up the hill, back to the hotel on day one.
Shelby Stanger:
The 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 through-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.
How many miles are you hiking a day?
Lauren Duke:
16 to 24 miles every single day. And yes, it's a lot.
Shelby Stanger:
And what are you eating?
Lauren Duke:
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 jamón and cheese sandwiches from the little sidrerías 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, pain au chocolat. Was literally the best we'd ever had in our entire life. We're just eating all things. We're eating seafood. But literally, all of us were disgustingly full every single day, and that's also one of the things that is pretty well-known about the Camino de Santiago. At some point it was also like a wine trail. You're drinking wine and you're eating and you're doing this with other people, so there's a level of communing.
Shelby Stanger:
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 a hotel or a hostel or a church or somewhere.
Lauren Duke:
Yes, different places. There's all sorts of places along the trail, and for kind of everyone's comfort level. There's hotels, there are monasteries, there are churches, there are albergues. We're staying at all of them. The 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. 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, there's a very long table. There are multiple long tables. So everyone's breaking bread, which is, again, a tale as old as time of 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. 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, but also, it's so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable. There's just, you have all these people in a space, and people smell and they have different sleep circadian rhythms and people fart. You're not sleeping. So there's a level of irritableness and grump that comes along with this journey as well because you're not comfortable. But there's something about doing that with my family that, well, I think made it more comfortable for us, but also made it so funny. 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, and it's just creating these outlets for us to relate and laugh hysterically, which is totally different than our historical narrative.
Shelby Stanger:
In 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?
Lauren Duke:
Yes. The second my mom joined us, it was reversion to all childhood patterns and behaviors. At this point, we're in a town called Navia.
Shelby Stanger:
And how many days have you been hiking by this point?
Lauren Duke:
We're over two weeks in, so we've gone hundreds of miles at this point.
Shelby Stanger:
This is so interesting. Okay. So finally, you guys have been doing this for a couple weeks, you meet up with your mother. You guys go back to all of your childhood terrible habits, but then what happens? Talk to me about it. Is there a shift at some point?
Lauren Duke:
Yeah, yeah, there is. Mom shows up at the hotel and we're having dinner, and me, my sister, and my brother are doing our normal banter and we're making jokes how walking this pilgrimage or this long journey is how we're 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 "Rrrrt." I think to all of us it becomes very clear that, "Uh-oh, there's tension." And where we were 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, "Oh no, this is going to be a very different trip" after she got there.
Shelby Stanger:
So then how do you guys keep going?
Lauren Duke:
The next day we start in Luarca and we start walking up this winding road through this big ... It was like a cow pasture. And it was pretty steep. And my mom was making us stop a lot, and again, my brother just took off. 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." And so we're being overly cautious. I think this is the moment where I really, really start to see my mom's humanness and majorly where the roles reversed, where we are not our mother's daughters, we are now parenting my mother. We need to come together and take care of our mom and make sure she makes it through this.
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's already up there. And before my mom was there, we were crossing highways and freeways left and right. So here we are, we're at the top of this road and we're looking at each other like, "Oh no, I don't think that we can cross this freeway with our mom. She's not even fast enough to do this." We're not saying this in words, we're just looking at each other. And we've all known each other for so long that 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. I have basically been getting myself through the muck since time immemorial."
She just 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. We just all looked at each other and we are just like little ducklings chasing our mom across the road, whereas 10 minutes ago we're 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. Her confidence after that moment completely transformed.
Shelby Stanger:
Sometimes 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.
The very last day when you get to the very end, tell me where you go, and what is that moment like?
Lauren Duke:
So, one thing I didn't mention is that the entire time, my mom is struggling with the worst blisters on her feet, and so is my sister. But my mom, her feet were ... They were a monstrosity. They were puss-y, they were liquid-filled, they were swollen, they were bloody, and we were grooming and nursing and bandaging my mom's feet every single day. And there's actually lots of research about how long distance treks like this, there's a level of social grooming that creates so much bonding, social grooming that you don't normally do in life. And so here we are, we're bandaging my mom's feet every single day and taking care of my mom. And she makes it to the finish line. She gets all the way to the Compostela even though her feet are annihilated, just bloody, really.
So we make it into Old Town Santiago and we walk into Old Town, which is just so beautiful. It's just these narrow cobblestone roads and there's all these people who've already made it. You can see the elation and joy on people's faces, and there's just all these pilgrims sitting around and drinking beer and celebrating. You can hear the accordion music in the distance.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing.
Lauren Duke:
So it was just a cacophony of sights and sounds and smells. And we get all the way into the square where the cathedral is, and we're just expecting something magical, like, "Here it is. It's the end and it's going to be the most magical, mystical and transformative place we've ever been." Dun-dun-dun, it's just all under construction. All of it is under construction. There's tarps everywhere, there's drilling going. It's just not the scene that we imagined, and none of us really know what to do. It's this experience where we're all looking at each other like, "Well, what now?"
And me and my sister, we're like, "Well, we have to go inside the cathedral. There's going to be a mass at 4 PM. We at least need to go in and see what's going on." My mom was like, "No, my feet hurt," and my brother was like, "Yeah, I want to have a beer. I'm just tired. Let's just go to the hotel." So here we are, we're kind of in this push and pull, and my sister and I were just like, "Okay," and we just leave. But the interesting thing is, on the way back to the hotel, I'm just replaying the last month in my head of all of these experiences that I just got to have with my sister and my brother and my mother and our family, and this new relationship that we had actually, because now we're seeing it. All of us are looking at each other differently. We have a different ending.
And I just have this realization, like, who cares? The whole thing illuminated my life and my relationship with these people and the relationship I wanted to have with these people. It was never about making it to the cathedral, it was about being on that journey together and creating a new story together. So I kind of let go of the big ending moment and realized it wasn't about the ending, it was about the journey. As cliche as that sounds, it is so true. I mean, of course, there's still a part of me that wants to go back and have the big peak experience, but that wasn't what the universe had in store for us. The universe had a 40-day Lent-ish pilgrimage where I got to completely transform my relationship with people that I have historically had a really tumultuous relationship with. That was the peak experience, transforming our family.
Shelby Stanger:
Walking the Camino helped Lauren and her family move through tension and break out of their usual patterns. When they were on the trail, pointless little conflicts that previously would have led to full-blown fights carried less weight. Today, Lauren and her family still have occasional conflict, but they rewrote their story on the trail. In fact, they even took home a permanent reminder of their growth as a family.
Lauren Duke:
So after Santiago, we're in a rental car and we're driving to Madrid because we're going to spend a few days in Madrid, decompress, and then we're going to fly back to the United States. And while we're driving, I just have this wild idea that we should get a Camino tattoo. I just pitch it to the car and my brother's like, "Yeah." My sister loves tattoos. And my mom's like, "I'm not getting a tattoo," and immediately goes into this very rigid, contracted space. Her generation doesn't get tattoos. Like, "Why would I ever get a tattoo?" I say to my mom, "It's not about anyone else. It's this tiny little talisman that every single time you look down at it, you remember what you just did with your children and you remember how empowering this experience is."
And all of a sudden, just that right there, I could just see her face lit up and her mind just change and she goes, "Okay. Vale." And it was like, "Oh, I guess that's our tattoo." What it means is you roll with the punches, and that's what we're going to do now as a family. You never know what's going to happen, but we're going to get through it together.
Shelby Stanger:
So you all have "vale" tattooed on your arm?
Lauren Duke:
We all have the tattoo.
Shelby Stanger:
How would you invite someone to go on a walk that you have a difficult relationship with?
Lauren Duke:
Gosh. Well, I think I would ask them if they want to go on a walk, but I think the other thing that's really important is you ask them if they want to go have some fun, because we need to do more things that are fun together. Walking is therapy. It's our original therapy. It's how we got up and developed our brains and it is the original medicine, but I also think maybe some people think it's boring. And so I think that the integration of the fun piece and the joy piece is ... And that's why the Camino is so fun, is like, you're meeting people and it includes eating and drinking and music. And you just never know what you're going to get into. Actually, it's not just about, "Do you want to go on a walk?" It's about, "Do you want to go have a wild adventure?"
Shelby Stanger:
Lauren and her siblings decided to continue their tradition of taking long walks together. This last July of 2025, they did the Tour du Mont Blanc. And to promote her upcoming book about their trek titled, This Walk Will Change You, Lauren and her family are going back to hike a different route along the Camino. If you want to keep up with Lauren, you can follow her on Instagram @laurendollieduke. That's L-A-U-R-E-N-D-O-L-L-I-E-D-U-K-E.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber, our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. Thanks again to our partner, Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.