The Walk Toward Wellness

By Seth Miller

Today is my fourth day back on the Camino, and I am getting into the rhythm of hydrating, eating, walking, and sleeping. I have made walking and hiking a regular part of my life, and it has helped me live a healthier lifestyle and feel better about myself overall. It is easy to build these habits in the Camino, particularly when you and everyone else around you are living a simplified lifestyle centered around long-distance trekking. 

I am really lucky that I had and continue to have the flexibility and space to adopt these practices and keep them going. But it is hard, particularly for busy people and, more acutely, for so many of our clients at IPF who, for years, were deprived of normal, everyday tools to maintain their health and wellness while wrongfully incarcerated, making it hard to adopt solid approaches to healthy living post-release.

For all that has gone horribly wrong for our clients, for what the criminal legal system has done to them, they deserve to have access to the tools needed to incorporate wellness practices in their daily lives. This can look like critical education on balanced nutrition and intentional opportunities to access nature, physical activity, and mindfulness.

Freedom is not only in the sense of being relieved of wrongful physical restraint. It also requires the ability to live happy and healthy lives. IPF would like to better support our freed clients in learning these skills. While some of this exists within our current transition services offerings, it is my hope that in the next year, we can expand this service area to bring a greater focus on building up and sustaining the health and well-being of our clients. 

My walks and the Freedom 2 Walk are just one part of this new effort, and we look forward to telling you more about this program in the coming months. 

As for now, I will keep walking! I reach Oviedo and the end of the Camino San Salvador soon and will continue to Santiago on the Camino Primitivo from there.

Buen Camino!