Most of us are, but we can’t admit it to ourselves. Suffering takes many forms, and for most of us it involves a world where change is constant, and the loss of people, treasured values, and a complex world is omnipresent. We don’t like to admit this to our consciousness, that our hearts are hurting so we keep ourselves busy, get involved in perpetual motion and search for that physician, the nurse, the shaman or healer that is going to take this aching loneliness out of our bones.

Suffering happens with transitions to change. Since change is a constant, this suffering is painful to stabilize. Remember how long it took you to get over a loved one’s death? Or think of the first time you lost a loved one and realized that your life had changed forever. Count how many people you have lost. It’s almost unbearable because each loss takes a bit of your heart away.  How do you cope with these feelings about people that cannot be interacted with on earth because they are dead?

It depends on what type of person you are. Do you need a group? Do you prefer your aloneness? Do you feel you have people who know and accept you for who you are? Do you have love in your life – both giving and receiving? If the world was small enough and storytelling appreciated, and a place where you gathered together to merely hear a person’s story and have the opportunity to tell your story the question is would you go?

This reason is why I write and why I write peoples’ stories because I can’t think of anything else that gives me satisfaction and helps me accept the world around me. I didn’t know I was suffering until I walked The Camino de Santiago in 2013. It was a difficult journey to take but illuminating because I felt I was whole in this place I walked. I think this was because I walked with people and listened to their stories. And I also told my stories when I was with the right person. I walked in groups, and some people were my daily walkers. But there were others who walked with me to tell their story and moved on. The telling of our stories was The Camino over the four weeks I walked it. Listening to people and walking with them, hearing their stories was magical. The take away of this journey left me wanting to walk and listen to more stories that came out of peoples’ hearts and souls. There can’t be any pretense when you are walking up and down mountains, along with country villages and cities trying to get to the endpoint.

Again I walked The Camino in 2014. Afterward, I came back to my husband’s farm in Oklahoma and had an experience with a stray dog that changed my life forever. I had to write to understand the magnitude of this experience. When it came out in a book, I caught this fantastic story in a book. The process of writing this book was transformative, and it could help people and their transitions and suffering.

So I moved my company in the direction of listening to people tell their stories and preserving what they tell me in books so that it’s a secure system for anyone wanting this. I handcraft these books and edit them so they are a masterpiece that people can treasure forever.

I have always loved books, but now I love that I am gathering and preserving your memories. It’s a bit of The Camino and a place where I know I belong.

Beth