Shikoku Pilgrimage: A journey of faith, healing, and rebirth

Natalie Smith Start Date: Jul 28, 2025 - End Date: Nov 27, 2025
  • Shikokuchuo, Ehime, Japan
  • Tokushima Prefecture, Japan
  • Ehime Prefecture, Japan
  • Kochi Prefecture, Japan

My Travel Story

by: Natalie Smith Start Date: Jul 28, 2025 - End Date: Nov 27, 2025
I’m writing this from a place of deep surrender and trust.
For much of my life, depression was my closest ally. I wasn’t really living—I was coping. Surviving. Hoping it would all end sooner rather than later. I had disconnected from life so deeply that numbness became my baseline.
But something has shifted.
I have said yes to life.
I am choosing life—fully, finally, and with all my heart. I now know without a doubt that God Is, I Am. And it's life-changing.

This campaign is not just to help me travel to Japan and walk the Shikoku Pilgrimage—this is a call for support in walking the sacred path of becoming, of returning to my spirit, of saying yes to life, joy, healing, and the Divine.

For 13 years, I worked with teenagers living with mental illness. The work was raw, intense, and beautiful. I gave it everything I had. Their pain often mirrored my own, and without realizing it, I poured all of myself into caring for others as a way to avoid facing my own trauma.

When a natural disaster abruptly ended my work and disrupted life as I knew it, I was forced to stop. Everything outside me collapsed—roads destroyed, homes shattered, entire landscapes upturned. And for the first time, I saw the extent to which my inner world had been in ruins for a long time. I had spent so many years putting others first, I had stopped taking care of myself. I let the depression do that by numbing me out while my ego wore a mask that pretended I was present and "successful" in the world.

That ego died. And in its quiet aftermath, I began to hear the voice of my soul again. I began listening inward. I began healing. I began remembering the truth of who I am. I began feeling a presence more Divine than I had ever allowed myself to believe in before.

And in this process of listening, of being rather than doing, I received a clear message from within:
Walk the Shikoku Pilgrimage. Something is waiting for you.

The Shikoku Pilgrimage is a sacred 1,200 km journey through 88 temples across the island of Shikoku in Japan. For centuries, it has served as a path of spiritual awakening and deep transformation. For me, it is a rite of passage—a threshold into the next chapter of my life, where I live in communion with the Divine and walk in alignment with faith, joy, and devotion.

I do not currently have the financial means to make this journey happen. But I am choosing to trust. I am practicing a new way of being—one that releases scarcity and welcomes the abundance of Spirit, the Universe, and the love of those who resonate with this path.

Asking for help and receiving support are two things I’ve never really allowed myself to do. The fact that I’m writing this at all assures me that I am doing my work. I am walking my path.

I am free-falling into the unknown—not recklessly, but faithfully.
I ask for your support not from a place of lack, but from a place of deep listening and honoring.

If my story touches your heart--
If you’ve ever longed for a life of meaning beyond the systems we were handed--
If you believe in the power of pilgrimage, healing, and saying yes to life--
Then I humbly ask for your support.

Your donation, no matter the amount, helps me take one step closer to this sacred calling.

With gratitude, humility, and faith.

  • Shikokuchuo, Ehime, Japan
  • Tokushima Prefecture, Japan
  • Ehime Prefecture, Japan
  • Kochi Prefecture, Japan