Catholic family of 10 walks 35 kilometers on pilgrimage

For Kym Allex, a Catholic homeschooling mother, her husband Preston and their eight children — ages 17 to 4 — the pilgrimage has become an annual tradition. The “Allex tribe” — as they are called by their community — first participated in the Walk for Mary when their oldest son was just 8 years old. At the time, there were seven children in the family and they all participated in the two-mile version of the pilgrimage during their first walks. The pilgrimage includes several entry points along the route that allow participants unable to walk the entire distance to participate.

“For that kids’ walk — the two miles — it was great to have seven kids just walking around, excited to walk for Maria,” Allex told EWTN News in an interview. She added, “It didn’t seem like a very long walk to be able to have a 2-year-old on my back or my 5-year-old running as fast as he could because he wanted to catch up to Maria, which I don’t think he ever did, but it was just a beautiful experience for our family for the first time and every year after.”

Children convinced their parents to travel the entire route

After the first few years participating in the two-mile version of the walk, the Allexes began expanding the distance they completed. This year, for the first time, they plan to walk the entire 35-kilometer route. And it wasn’t the parents who made this decision — it was the two oldest children. “My 17-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son came up to my husband and I after last year’s 14-miler and said, ‘Next year we have some big prayer intentions,'” she shared. “They’re in the moment of looking at colleges and figuring out where they want to go and where the Lord is calling them, so they said, ‘Mom, I’ll do the 22 miles if you’re okay with it. I’d like our whole family to participate.'”

The Allexes then came together as a family to discern what God was calling them to do and what goals they needed to achieve so that everyone would feel comfortable making the entire pilgrimage. With this in mind, the entire family has been preparing physically and spiritually for this event. “Even our 4-year-old has been walking and biking around the neighborhood every day she can to get her little legs ready for this beautiful opportunity,” said Allex.

She added that it is her older children who want to ensure that participating in the Walk for Mary is always part of the family culture. “They take time off from work, they told their athletic trainers, ‘We’re not going to be able to go and do this race’ … because our family really wants to keep this as part of our family tradition,” Allex said. “And it’s great that it’s my teenagers who want to continue to pass this on. There’s no fighting because we grew up in this together.”

Allex admitted he was hesitant when his children first brought up the idea of ​​making the full pilgrimage. “I’ll tell you, those 22 miles make me a little nervous and yet my kids are the ones that say, ‘We can do this, Mom. We did 18 miles at Disney. So we can do 22 miles for Maria.’ And I think, ‘What a beautiful thought, right? If I can do it for pleasure, I can certainly do it for Mary, for my faith,'” she shared.

Pilgrimage taught children to pray for each other

When reflecting on how his family’s faith was impacted by participating in the Walk for Mary, Allex shared that it reminded them that “the Virgin Mary is such an incredible spiritual mother to us all.” She added, “Especially for me as a mother in this world today, sometimes I can get lost in the worry, the anxiety, the stress of life. And then to know that our Virgin Mary will wrap me like a blanket in her mantle and bring me to Jesus is so comforting.”

“The fact that my kids have seen that I go to the Virgin Mary when I’m struggling and ask for her help to get closer to her son, so they see the humanity of their own mother and think, ‘Wow, Mom may not have it all together, but she knows someone who does and she’s going to lean on that.'”

The Catholic mother highlighted that the pilgrimage also taught her children to pray for others. She recalled a time when one of her sons approached a man while walking and asked if he had an intention he could pray for. The man was from Brazil and was walking on the pilgrimage asking for healing for his wife. “My hope is that they feel inspired to be these missionary disciples… and that they are cultivating hearts of missional discipleship — walking with people, being inspired to go and pray with people,” she said.

Allex added that each family member has a prayer journal and the children are already “collecting people’s prayers and have already involved them in our evening rosary that we do every night.” When the Virgin Mary appeared to Brise in the forests of Champion, Wisconsin, one of the messages she gave the young girl was “gather the children together in this wild country and teach them what they must know for salvation.”

This is something that has deeply impacted Allex’s faith and a message she carries daily in her vocation of motherhood. “I memorized (the message) because right there, that’s the role for us as parents,” Allex said. “I think each of our homes can feel like a wild country, and you go in and… to me sometimes it feels like that. It feels like a wild country. But if I can keep bringing my kids together and teaching them what they should know — I might not be preparing them for Harvard. I’m going to prepare them for heaven.”

Summarizing his experiences participating in the Walk to Mary and how it impacted the entire family, Allex concluded that “this walk is truly this pilgrimage of grace.”