What Walking the Camino de Santiago Taught Me About Manifestation, Playing Small, and Dreaming Bigger
Finisterre. The end of the Camino. With my friends.
We made it to the end of the earth.
Finisterre. The final stop after 10 days and 200 kilometers of walking the Camino Português. The top of the hill where the land runs out and there is nothing left but ocean. The 0 km marker. The photos we had been dreaming about for 10 days.
Except we couldn't see anything. Cloud, everywhere. The reward view, the one you walk 200 kilometers for, completely swallowed.
So I did the thing I had learned to do somewhere back on a trail that smelled like cow shit. I asked. Loudly, and with certainty.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
If you're just joining, Part 1 of Camino Confessions covered Shit Town, the Hill of Death, and the core wound I didn't know I was carrying. This is Part 2. Part 1 was about the wound. Part 2 is about what I found underneath it.
The part of me that underestimates me
In the first few days of the walk, as I fell into my pace, I noticed something.
I kept projecting myself forward into the day. Bracing for the giant hill coming that afternoon. Bracing for when my feet would start to hurt. Bracing for the Spanish heat.
I was walking through some of the most beautiful landscapes of my life, and part of me was already living in the hard part that hadn't happened yet.
Then the hill would come. The heat would arrive. My feet would ache. And every single time, the same discovery: it was hard, yes. And I was good.
That's when I saw her clearly. A part of me who underestimates me. Who braces for a version of events where I can't handle it, and spends today's energy rehearsing tomorrow's hill.
We all have these parts. And here's the thing about them: when I'm blended with that part, when she's hijacking my reality, I have less room. Less capacity to show up for all of it. The beauty, the pleasure, the joy, the vineyards, the ocean light.
The hill was never the problem. The bracing was.
Unblend, and capacity comes back.
So I asked myself the question I would ask a client: where else is this showing up in my life?
The honest answer? Probably everywhere. Every launch I've underestimated. Every time I've capped my own financial potential. Every time I've reached for what seems possible instead of the magical, the wild, the audacious.
And it turns out that part of me wasn't done teaching. Because a few days later, alone in a Spanish heat wave with no one to commune with but the elements, I discovered something about asking that changed how I think about every dream I've ever had.
The rest of the story…
What happened next involves talking to the weather (yes, really), a fountain that appeared exactly when I needed it, the strangest thing my mind ever offered me in a moment of literal magic, and the question that stopped me in my tracks:
Were my dreams even my dreams? Or were they just what I thought was possible?
The full story, all three confessions, and what happened at the top of that hill in Finisterre are in Camino Confessions Part 2 on Substack. Read it here.
And if you want the version I couldn't write down, the one I can only tell out loud, including a story from the trail I've never shared anywhere, that's on YouTube.
If you made it to the end of a blog post about weather negotiations and a part of me that offered up livestock as a wild dream, I have a feeling you're my kind of person. Nothing Is Wrong With You is a free audio series I made for women who are done making themselves wrong. It's where we start.
Already know you're ready? Apply for High Capacity coaching here: https://andreatessier.com/one-on-one-coaching
You might also like:
Andrea Tessier is a Master Life Coach and Level 2 Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner who helps leaders and visionaries trust themselves and lead from inner authority. Her work bridges psychology and soul, blending IFS with intuitive, embodied mentorship to support clarity, self-trust, and self-led living.
Learn more at: https://www.andreatessier.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IFScoachAndrea
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreatessiercoaching