Very special thanks to my friends, Bíbor Demkó and Emőke Soproni for the professional translation. Girls, you are great, and you did an incredible job! <3

Host: Gina Prónay-Zakar is the next presenter, who had been working almost one and a half decade in the communication business when she decided to quit her actual work, life and ordinary ambiance. She decided to make a step out of her comfort zone to make changes and to change. One day at the end of December she set off on an internal and external journey to Spain with her backpack. In September this year she arrived back home to Budapest as a new person. The way was not so simple. Let’s listen to her story: ‘The thousand-mile first step’.

Gina:

Start living your life” – do you know the song? Then I don’t have to sing it to you. Lucky you! Start living your life to be able to tell stories to your grandchildren when they’ll surround you.” I came here to tell my story. To tell you about what happened to me in the past year. Because one year ago – oh, I’ve got it – one year ago I was standing here. Here. Not here, not here in the middle of the red circle, a bit behind. This is me, the girl who’s got white face, the only one who isn’t smiling because she is in charge. Let’s admit it, I was a bit chubby. I was desperate to make my hair straight. There are hopeless fights but I thought this would be all right. I was standing here a year ago. Dark circles shadowed my eyes and I was exhausted. All right, I don’t want to be unfair with myself. The truth is - about my eyes rimmed in dark circles - that our licence licence told me at 2 am that now YOU must go home because we need at least one person to have a fresh mind tomorrow morning at 6.30.

And I was rambling home at 2 am. In the streets there were only young people going clubbing and two of them stopped me and asked: “Excuse me, do you know by any chance where the “GROUND ZERO / NADIR” is? (referred to the name of a bar meaning: to be at a low point. TN). I stared at them and  said:- Me, who wouldn’t know it? “

Seriously, 2012 was a year of hitting the bottom, and not only because it was almost the crack of doom – you’ve almost forgotten about it, haven’t you? – so not only because the world had almost ended. For me that year started in the following way: in January I was sent to a blood test for sugar level and I turned out to be an insulin resistant. I don’t want to bore anyone, basically it means I was welcomed among the border line diabetes. Since I had already had a qualification as a coach by then, I looked liked that – doesn’t matter – but I was a qualified coach, I was vegetarian, so that was a slap in the face. For a reason it was good because finally I had an excuse for putting on 15 kilos, as I was insulin resistant. But if honestly I looked deep into myself then I realised that the thing I had on me was ‘fat of grief/sorrow’.

Luckily I didn’t have much time to feel sorry for myself because the next day I was fired from my workplace. And if that hadn’t been enough as it was, then some weeks later the phone rang. It was my mum who tried to tell me calmly, that my father (who’d been suffering of cancer for two years) that my father’s chemotherapy would be discontinued, as there was no point in going on.The doctors said that he had only days or weeks left. Since I had no job, luckily I didn’t have to think about the next step. I grabbed my most important things, threw them into my car and I moved home. We had two more months together. After two years of disease, two months of end stage and two weeks of dying my father abandoned his body at home on that bed, where we had been taking care of him and as the two of us were staying there, I was sitting next to him and I definitely felt his presence and definitely not in his body. In a minute it became clear to me that death has power but only over the body.
If death has power only over the body then death does not exist. If death does not exist then we don’t have to be afraid of it and if I am not afraid of death then I am not afraid of anything. That is what I thought then...

I came back to Budapest and got down to work for some money, volunteer work. I did a lot of volunteer work. I earned only a little money but I worked 14-16 hours. I didn’t meet my friends anymore; I didn’t even leave my flat. I didn’t live. I was sick continuously. And then one late evening in August, it was a special day as I wasn’t ill so I went jogging to the Margaret Island. It was completely dark. But I wasn’t afraid of it. You know “THE GIRL WHO ISN’T AFRAID OF ANYTHING.” And as I was running suddenly I heard a mocking voice saying something in my
head: “ – You aren’t afraid of death? Fantastic! Do you know what you are afraid of young lady? Life, of life! “

I kept on running, but that was a slap in the face and made me think about what on earth I was doing? What I am doing right now is running off my life. That cannot go on like that, it will definitely kill me, and I’ll die a bit earlier than I should. I don’t know whether you know this feeling, when you have been thinking about something for weeks, months and even for years and you cannot see how you could come out of  that situation and then suddenly, out of nowhere the solution is there clearly. That is what happened to me there on the Margaret Island. It was one word: FREEDOM.

So I thought, all right, then I would go on a holiday. But not to my flat as other times I usually go on holiday, and not to Lake Balaton, but then I have to go somewhere far, far physically. Thousand miles, doesn’t matter but far from here. Why not Spain, I love Spain and not for a long weekend, and not for two weeks either but then let’s do it properly, so I have to get out! Then first I must get trough the doomsday obviously. So let’s wait till that time. End of the world, Christmas and then I would leave in December for a half year, so it means till June. People go on holiday in summers, so it isn’t great, then till September, it makes 9 months then. Within 9 months a new life is born, so that is perfect. Being free for 9 months in Spain.

It seemed to be absolutely obvious that it was a good decision. I cannot explain why but from the moment I made the decision, everything helped me on the way. Everything helped and supported me so that I could really set off and make it. Looking back now by the way I think the hardest was to press the ‘go’ button when making the reservation of the online airplane ticket because Spanish friends helped me to find a job, volunteer work. That was ‘working on a farm’ for board and lodging. The Hungarian friends on the other hand assured me that look, you are doing a great thing, go, but we are waiting here for you to come back home.

On the 28th of December I finally set off with Irén, my backpack. There is something very important, I can’t say I didn’t have any doubts, because I had fears sometimes, but somehow I could see myself - I have no idea where this picture came from - but I could see myself in God’s palm. That I am standing there only with this rucksack and he is carrying me all over Spain and I don’t have to be scared of anything here.

So we started our journey with Irén on the 28th December and I spent the first three month here. I posted such pictures on facebook although it was raining all the time by the way, but I didn’t post everything on facebook. The crying, the despair and my fears I did not post but such things I did. This photo was taken in January. I worked on an eco-farm from January to April. Was it outside my comfort zone? ...At least a thousand miles away. An office girl who finds herself digging and hoeing in the vegetable garden, makes goat cheese and bakes bread. But the most difficult bit was not even the manual labour, but rather my heroic battle with the Spanish language. I have been a professional communicator my whole life, but I had such a panic that I could not get myself to utter a single word. Much later, I learnt that everybody on the farm thought I was quiet, not very bright, an aloof girl of few words who was, nonetheless, a very hard worker. As the weeks went by, Spanish silently began to seep into my veins and I started to open up. I’m not saying that I started to tear down the wall, but something changed. Let’s
say that there is a castle or a tower, and the top windows were opening. People started to say to me that my eyes sparkled differently from before. So, I guess, I was starting to feel I was inside my comfort zone once more.

It was time to hit the road again, so I picked up my backpack in April, and left Malaga, in the south of Spain, for the north. I take it you know Santiago, which is the final stop on El Camino, a well-known pilgrimage destination. From Malaga, I headed to Muxia, setting off on a journey of around a thousand miles.

As I’ve said before, I had no money, and if you have no money, you can only trust in people, and every day of my 95-day-long Camino was about trust. I never knew where I’d sleep that night, but I never had to sleep rough. Once, a pub landlord told me not to pay for my coffee. Another time, a large Andalusian gypsy family invited me
for a beer, purely for its mineral content, you understand. I accepted it! There was a time a mother of four said to me, after knowing me for about a minute, “Come and have dinner with us. We can put you up, and you’ll get breakfast in the morning, too” So yes: I did break down my walls. I demolished these walls made from pain
and fear, and there was always somebody there to help me remove the bricks.

And then I arrived in Muxia. It’s on the Atlantic coast, the town marked with a Y there, and I found myself on the other side. I was no longer a pilgrim but a pilgrim innkeeper. Now, wanderers came to me to talk about what prompted them to set off; what problems they wanted to solve; to talk about their fears and pains. I stood there with an open heart, without any walls, and I realised that this was not without risks, either. There was a reason I built those walls around myself, because if I have no walls I am defenceless and vulnerable, and I can bedamaged. It was not easy to decide that I would strengthen myself from the inside, and I will be brave enough to admit that this is what I am like: I am vulnerable. But I am enough. I AM GOOD ENOUGH.

I decided to say goodbye to Spain in style and in what I thought was an apposite way: on foot. I began my last walk in the country from Pamplona through the Pyrenees and after three days I arrived at the Franco-Spanish border. Standing on the mountain ridge, I looked back. Spain also said farewell in style: it was raining
cats and dogs, so I didn’t actually see anything, but I was very grateful. I was reminded of a line by Hungarian poet Kosztolanyi, who wrote, “I was the guest of a grand and unknown Lord”.

I arrived back in Budapest after nine months to the day. The sun was shining bright, and, having passed midlife, I could now start my new life. Yes, I think I’ve changed. Oh, I’d like to show you my favourite punk pilgrim. This is how I tore down my walls.

So I decided to go back to my coaching profession as a personal trainer, because my new mission after the midlife is to help others. To help girls and women like me, like I was, who hide themselves and their problems behind diabetes, insulin resistance, gynaecological problems, and ‘sadness fat’, to be brave enough to take the first step. It might seem like a first step that spans a thousand miles, but I want them to have the courage to take it. They have to be brave enough to get out their comfort zones, to face their fears and pains. And I would like to help them. It doesn’t matter whether I help them as a life coach or as a sports coach, because I know that a good coach can see more than just the body. A good coach is capable of seeing in the pale, chubby, sad girl with bags under her eyes the attractive, healthy and brave woman she can become.

I want to help them, to help you, to start living.