AIM to Get Better© at Changing my Mind About my Body Blog #4: My trek across the Sahara
AIM to Get Better© at Changing my Mind About My Body:
Blog#4: My Trek Across the Sahara
I did it to raise money for the
Alzheimer’s Society with a fundraising target of £2200
It was arranged by Discover
Adventure.
MJ’s Sahara
trek journal:
Day 1:
Left home at 8am.
Got to Gatwick 11.40. Had coffee
with Peter, then met some people I recognised from the trek WhatsApp group, so
Peter left me with them.
We met the trek leaders at check
in.
Flight left Gatwick 15.45, arrived
in Casablanca at 16.20.
We had a scheduled four hour wait,
but additional delays of several hours plus meant we left Casablanca at 11.40
arrived Ouarzazate 1.20am. Didn’t take long for bags to come through. Coach took
us to hotel, arrived and got room keys 2.15am.
Day 2:
Up at 6.30am. Kit ready, bags
packed and downstairs for breakfast at 7.30am. After a quick introduction and
briefing from leaders , we went to get money from “a man who could give us a
good deal” (can’t take Moroccan currency in or out of country). Got in coaches before
9am for 4-hour drive across Atlas Mountains. This included a stop at market to
look round and buy scarfs (with demo how to put them on).
Arrived at starting point. Had
lunch, then started walking.
Started off going through
abandoned medieval town. Fascinating.
Walked for 10km, 3 hours.
From the outset, I was at the back
and struggling to keep up with the pace.
After an hour my imposter syndrome
had firmly set in. What was I thinking, believing I could do this? I knew I
could walk the distance, but I thought they would be pacing themselves, not
going off this fast.
I was almost in tears when the leader came and spoke to me. I told her I was struggling. She told me that the pace wasn’t that fast, but I had already got into “back of the pack” mentality. She told me that, every time we started to walk, I needed to place myself at the very front with the guide, and start at their pace. If you position yourself with the front of the pack, you are very likely to stay at the front of the pack. But if you believe you belong at the back and always start last, you will find it next to impossible to catch up and always feel like you are being left behind.
I took
this advice and, was amazed – for the rest of the trek I started at the front
and kept up with the pace, very rarely moving down to the middle of the group.
It was like magic; I have no idea how it worked, but it did.
Got to camp. Put up tents. Had cup
of mint tea on top of sand dune whilst watching sunset
.
Got stuff sorted for the morning.
Had dinner together. Given briefing
for next day. Retired to tents 9.30pm. As we came out of the dining tent, we
were all amazed by the night sky. Although people tell you about it, nothing
prepares you for the vastness and the sheer number of stars!
Didn't sleep all night. Painful
hips and the worst sciatica I’ve ever had shooting down left leg.
Day 3:
Up at 6am, beautiful sky just before sunrise.
Tents down, bags packed, filled up
with water.
Breakfast 7.30am. Stretches 8.15am,
started walking 8.45 am.
Walked over 20km in about 8 hours,
with water breaks and lunch breaks. Heat about 28C.
Mostly flat, river bed walking -
hard on feet as ankles turning all over the place.
A few sand dunes in the afternoon.
but not many.
Spent a lot of time walking alone. Thinking about Mum, but also all the other residents
living with dementia that I've looked after, and their relatives; how grateful
I am for all the things they taught me along the way. How every encounter,
every interaction, every experience has contributed to me being able to do the
job I do today.
I reminded myself that
before I came away, I knew that every step of this trek would be me
symbolically stepping away from my abusive past.
I spent a lot of time
consciously letting go of the shame and repulsion I had carried with me since my childhood, trying
to be in tune with my body, visualising where all that crap has been stored for
the last 50+ years and releasing it back to where it belonged.
As I did so, I felt a
significant change and adjustment in my gait. The tops of my legs and hips felt
like they had been released, the muscles in my hips felt like stretchy elastic
bands, and I found myself standing tall, increasing my stride, and feeling my
buttocks moving the way you see models wiggling up a catwalk. Most of all, the
sensations in my abdomen completely changed. For the first time ever, I
genuinely felt like I had a feminine, woman's body.
Rather randomly, I had a song come into my head
from the 1970’s; “Remember you’re a womble”, except the words had changed to
“remember you’re a woman”. For the rest of the afternoon, I entertained myself
singing “remember you’re a woman, remember you’re a woman, remember- member-
member what a beautiful woman you are!”
Got back to camp at 5.15pm.
Did stretches, put tents up, had mint
tea and snacks on top of sand dunes watching sun set.
Had half an hour to freshen up and
sort selves out. Had dinner. Then briefing for next day.
Some of the men had gone out
searching for wood after we got back, so after dinner bonfire was lit outside. Some
people chose to sit around fire and sleep there.
Sarah and I slept outside, but
next to tent as too many people round the fire.
We settled about 9.30pm. Amazing experience sleeping under the stars.
Tried to take photos but not successfully. It’s also quite surreal to be
hearing the sounds of camels talking to each other as you are trying to drift
off to sleep!
Day 4
Up 6am. Kit ready and tents down
by 7.30. Got really stressed and anxious.
Breakfast, stretches, then off at
8.15
Walked 24km, over 8 hours. 30 - 35
degrees after lunch.
Spent morning walking across the
rocky terrain of the seabed.
Although I found this much harder
than the sand, I managed to stay with the front of the pack.
Despite my amazing positivity of the previous
day, I spent the whole time wanting to cry my eyes out. I knew this trek was
going to be tough, and I knew I could do it physically. But why was I falling
apart emotionally?
I thought maybe it was grief. It seems to have been a usual pattern throughout my therapy that when I have had a break though in my understanding, or a significant “letting go”, it is followed by a time of deep grief / emotional release. Maybe it wasn’t grief, but relief at never having to carry all that repulsive crap that had been stored in my body for over 50 years?
As I continued to reflect, I initially went
through the old negative thought patterns: what is wrong with me? Why am I so
emotional? How come everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves and having a
laugh, when I’m not enjoying any of this? I know I can do it physically. So why
am I falling apart emotionally? I
thought I had made so much progress with my therapy, I thought I was stronger
than this. I just want Peter. I just want to be home with him and the dogs.
I’ve been looking forward to this for months, this is an experience of a
lifetime, I should be enjoying it, not just wishing it was over….
Having spent all 5 hours of the morning walk in
this state, just managing to hold myself together, as soon as we started back
after lunch, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. I reached out to one of the
ladies in the group, and very quickly one of the leaders took me to one side
for “a moment”.
She suggested I got on one of the camels for a
bit, and I actually stayed on there for the remaining two hours of trekking.
This gave me the space to rest, take in the
scenery and appreciate the enormity of the fact that I was in the middle of the
Sahara Desert on a camel!
After about 20 minutes I had some clarity.
It struck me that I am strong and, in the
last few years, have learnt to feel secure in my “comfort zone”, when I have
Peter and the dogs to protect me. But here, out in the wilderness, I feel
vulnerable and exposed.
The whole situation had triggered me. Away from
home, away from Peter and the dogs and familiarity, spending 24/7 with
strangers, had exposed the vulnerability of the dissociated teenaged parts of
me. Feeling awkward, not knowing what to say to people, watching friendship
groups form and feeling completely left out, wanting to belong and fit in but
finding it far, far safer to keep my distance and isolate myself.
I realised at that point,
that I never need to do one of these challenges again. Many people feel the
need to push themselves out of their comfort zones in order to experience new
things and become stronger.
But for me, who has spent
55 of my 58 years living in a psychological space that is the polar opposite of
a comfort zone, it’s OK for me to go back to the safety and protection of Peter
and the sausage dogs and the familiarity of my new life and the “safe” people
that are in my new tribe, recognise and appreciate the “comfort zone” they have
provided for me and never force myself back out of it. I now understand that
people who started out confident, secure and safe inside a comfort zone may
want to push themselves out of it to experience what its like. But for myself
and others who have lived their whole lives in that space of stress,
insecurity, anxiety and even terror, who have spent far more time never knowing
what a comfort zone is rather than being in one, knowingly putting myself back
into situations that trigger a survival response of fight, flight, freeze or
dissociate is like a form of self-harm!
“I will finish this trek. I know I can. But I don’t need to do anything like this again. I have nothing to prove to anyone. I have survived unimaginable, prolonged abuse and all of the relational and mental health issues resulting from it. I am still alive. I have survived. I have overcome. And now I am beginning to thrive. I am enough. I don’t have to keep proving it over and over again”
When I got off that camel at the end of the day, I knew I had learnt a very, very important lesson.
I’ve done tourist camel rides before, but a genuine camel ride in the Sahara becomes very uncomfortable when going down very steep sand dunes! I was very proud of my “genuine camel bruises” – a trophy to how tight I was clinging with everything I’d got that day!!
I slept soundly that night –
everyone else was moaning in the morning about being kept awake for hours by
the camels, but I didn’t hear a thing!
Day 5
Walking across riverbeds again in
the morning.
At one point we noticed we were
walking on purple coral. Guide told us that it would have formed about 350
million years ago; they know this as they have found so many dinosaur remains
there.
The 350-million-year-old coral reef we walked over
This blew my mind. I could have liked
to have had chance to just sit there “connecting” with the energy of the place,
as I was having a spiritual moment, but we had to keep walking. I picked up a
number of rocks with fossils in them.
Spent 5 hours walking sea beds in
morning, 3 hours walking up and down sand dunes in afternoon. 30 - 35 degrees C,
so very hard work after lunch. Walked 22 km.
Feeling completely different
today. Not only did I feel much more positive, a number of people in the group
who I hadn’t spoken to up to that point, came up to check on me and I got into
lots of interesting conversations.
I realised how important it is to ask for help when you are struggling. So many people think they need to “stay strong”, and yet it takes more strength to make yourself vulnerable and ask for help than it does to keep struggling. I had learnt as a child that when I asked for help, the help never came and that, more times than not, making myself vulnerable in that way made things so much worse.
But in a normal,
non-dysfunctional, adult world, asking for help will result in you receiving
the support you need, even if you don’t know what you need at the time.
Tent up. Stretches. Mint tea on sand dunes to watch sun set. Dinner. Briefing. Took sleeping bag to top of sand dunes to sleep. Amazing experience. Didn’t sleep much as absorbing the night sky.
On the last night I slept on top of this sand dune, under the stars
Day 6
Up at 5.30
Walked up final, very steep sand
dune for 7am.
Watched sunrise which was the
official completion of the trek. WE DID IT!!
After 30mins, we came back down,
took tents down, packed bags and had breakfast.
After breakfast, as everyone was
doing the final bits to de-camp, I went to “toilet”. When I say “toilet”, I
mean a piece of tarpaulin draped over four poles, with a hole dug out in the
sand to wee or poo in. I spent 4 years in remote parts of India, so I’m used to
squatting over holes, but now I’m 20 years older, my hips aren’t as happy as
they used to be to crouch low enough to poo without missing the hole,
especially as the holes were dug so wide!! I therefore had to hold on to the
bars of the tent to support myself when squatting. This had not been a problem
until this last day. Having just come down from the top of the sand
dune, still on a “high” from finishing
the trek, I held onto the poles as I squatted, without realising one of them
had come out of the ground. I lost balance and fell backwards. Although I
mostly landed towards the back of the cubicle, my right leg and boot fell into
the shit hole!! Bearing in mind we had
no running water all week and were relying on large body wipes to clean
ourselves, I had to use up my two-remaining packets of wipes to clean myself
off!
We left at 8.45am: 4 x 4 rides across the desert. I loved this experience of racing up and down the sand and skidding most of the way! It took us 3.5 hours to get to the nearest road – that’s how far into the Sahara Desert we had been!
We had lunch, then had a further 7- hour bus journey through Atlas Mountains to get to Marrakesh. Breath-taking scenery – a bit like driving through Cheddar Gorge but for over 6 hours!
Got to hotel 7.15pm. Had an hour to shower and change into decent clothes, then went out for final meal together.
Day 7
Up, packed and ready for 6.30
breakfast before driving to airport.
Plane to Casablanca late leaving
due to a large party of people boarding (presumably going on a trip for
Ramadam) – many of them hadn’t flown before, just sat in any seat and refused
to move when asked to sit in the seat number allocated to them! Many of them
had full sized suitcases, so more delay while crew got baggage labels and got
cases moved into the hold. Many people had at least 2 very large items of hand
luggage.
Two ladies sat next to me – possibly
in their early 30’s, wearing full Niqab and head to foot Abaya. Once plane took
off, they took off their Niqabs to reveal that they both had a rucksack on
their backs and a large bag strapped to their bellies, in addition to the large
bags of hand luggage they had put in their over head lockers!
Eventually took off 45 minutes
late. Landed at Casablanca 12.00 Our next flight had already started boarding at
11.45! Fortunately, we all managed to get onto the flight without missing it!
Arrived at Gatwick 14.45; met
Peter in arrivals at 15.30. So pleased and relieved to see him! Back in my
safety zone!
FINAL
THOUGHTS!
·
I've done something incredible!!
· Always position yourself with the leaders. Believe you are worthy to be with them. Start at the front because you believe you are worthy to be there, and you are much more likely to stay there. If you start at the back because you believe that’s where you belong, you will always be feeling like you are being left behind and trying to play catch up. You will always feel like you don’t fit in at the back, because you belong at the front!
· Stop trying to fit in with the crowd. Stop feeling there’s something wrong with you if you are not in the middle of the loud group, especially if you are unable to have genuine conversations with them. The loud ones are most likely to be the bears, hiding their vulnerability. Seek out the authentic ones. It’s not that I don't fit in, just that I want to spend my time with authentic people. I am me and that's okay. there's nothing wrong with me if I am on my own but being true to myself rather than being 'in' with others who aren't showing their true selves (In her talk “The Power of Vulnerability”, Brene Brown writes that the biggest barrier to belonging is trying to fit in! You won’t belong if you are changing yourself in order to fit in rather than being yourself!)
· Ask for help when you are struggling. Don’t be ashamed to reaching out for support. Vulnerability is a sign of strength and courage, not weakness! Don’t be afraid to ask for help – it is a sign of strength.
·
It’s OK to stay in your comfort zone when you
have spent the majority of your life at the other end of the spectrum, living
in terror and insecurity, relying on innate survival mechanisms just to exist, not
even knowing what a comfort zone is.
I AM The butterfly.
I have demonstrated great strength in vulnerability.
I have pulled myself out of the sticky gooey mess created by others, in
order to set myself free.
I am a beautiful, delicate, feminine woman made strong through the
protection of my friends and the security of my safe places.
I don’t need to fit it!
By being my authentic self, I will be a sign of grace and hope to others
Mary-Joy Albutt
1.4.25
Mary-Joy has currently raised £2134 out of her £2200 target for
Alzheimer’s society. If you feel you could make a small donation to help her across the
finish line, you can donate here:
The
references in this blog about bears and butterflies refer to her recently
published book.
“The Bear, The Bull and The Butterfly: A
Journey to Authentic Healing” is available from many online retailers,
including Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, Everand, Bookscape and
Overdrive.
Mary-Joy
Albutt is an Expert
in positive dementia care and an expert by experience in trauma and trauma
informed care.
She
is currently undertaking a PhD at University of Worcester, exploring links
between trauma and dementia.
She
works as a freelance consultant, trainer and speaker.
You
can contact her by email at: maryjoy.albutt@aimtogetbetter.com
Please
visit her website: https://aimtogetbetter.com
You
can read more of her blogs at http://maryjoyalbutt@blogspot.com
©Aim to Get Better 2025
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