Cris reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina. And I cannot be more excited to share that if the right people would read this blog, the Caminoheads would be candidates to the Peace Nobel Prize. Yes. Just as you read.

Yesterday, I was listening to a mind-blowing talk with Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Dan Siegel, Sará King and Angel Cordero; it was part of a documentary called “The wisdom of trauma” and they were talking about intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, social justice  and racism. ~~These terms might sound complicated, but they are not, bear with me!~~

The conversation was full of science behind the reasons why our minds and bodies identify the other as someone different from “me”. All these ideas that are so imprinted in our beings that have the capacity to pass by in our genes from generation to generation (this is what “epigenetics” is, and let me make a side note here with a brilliant explanation by Dr. Dan Siegel: genetics, our DNA, is like the books in the shelves in the library; epigenetics is what allows the book to open). With this, what he meant to say is that we have the capacity to modify the “epigenetics”, we cannot modify the book, that comes with us, but we can modify what we express. And here is what would jump us to the Nobel Prize: WE, the Caminoheads and pilgrims, HAVE PROOF OF WHAT CHANGES THE EPIGENETICS!!!!

~~Bear with me a bit more, please; I swear I am not crazy!~~

Yesterday, these 4 experts concluded that this imprinted belief that the other is different from us is at times so intense that we can only see what is different as a “threat”; so “the cure” for this is to imprint instead the belief that we are “similar” not “different”, because when we are “equals”, we “belong”. This doesn’t mean to ignore our genetics, what is in our DNA cannot change, we cannot expect all of us being purple skin or have blue hair to “belong to the same group”, we need to find our sense of belonging in things led by epigenetics. And we pilgrims and Caminoheads are the guinea pigs that confirms this is true.

In the Camino and the Caminoheads neighborhood, we became experts in “togethernessing” (Dan Siegel calls it “MWE” and the Zulus “Ubuntú”). We figured out that we are all equals, we find joy and safety in becoming closer to the other , we welcome the other (won’t you be my neighbor?), we hug each other, we BELONG. We understood that the real healing happens in community and we healed and continue to heal together.  

I wish I could take all of us to the laboratory and study our telomeres, I am sure they are all super long (which would be scientific proof)… That is the only piece needed for us to win the Peace Nobel Prize. Meanwhile, let’s take pride on the fact that these are the believes that we are passing to the next generations, and to those that we cross our paths by. It is even more important to change the world than to have a trophy in the shelf, don’t you think?  

This is what we have figured out Loves,

Cris