THE STORY · WRITTEN BY RACHAEL
A pilgrimage of devotion.
In late September, I will begin a coast-to-coast bicycle pilgrimage across the United States.
3,250 mi
WASHINGTON, DC
→ SANTA MONICA
$30,000
ACROSS THREE CAUSES
Sept 23, 2026
DEPARTURE
I am riding for people whose dignity has been stolen — and for the land whose story has been erased. But to understand why, you have to know something about me first.
I spent years performing for love I should have simply been given. That wound shaped everything. The jobs I took, the relationships I stayed in too long, the version of myself I kept trying to become so that I would finally be enough. The healing of it took plant medicine ceremonies, a yoga practice rooted in classical lineage, a van conversion and a leap into the unknown, and the slow unglamorous work of learning to trust what I already knew.
What I found on the other side of that unlearning is this: the longing to be seen, restored, and loved without condition is not a personal failing. It is a human one. And there are people in this world whose capacity to know that about themselves has been violently taken from them.
FOR THE SURVIVORS
Human trafficking is not abstract. It is happening now, in cities and towns across America and around the world, to people whose worth was never in question even when the world treated them as though it was. I ride for survivors who deserve to be met not as people who need saving, but as people who deserve to be deeply, fully seen. Restoration. Dignity. The radical act of being witnessed.
FOR THE LAND
I am also riding in a spirit of open-hearted accountability. My family line traces to the early colonizers of this continent — people who came to this land and took what was not theirs, including the right of Indigenous peoples to live freely inside their own wisdom and traditions. I do not carry that history as guilt. I carry it as responsibility, and as an invitation to do something worthy of it.
The plant medicines that were so central to my own healing carry the fingerprints of Indigenous lineages. The practices that restored me were tended by people whose communities were displaced from the very ground I will be crossing. I could not ride thousands of miles over this sacred earth without offering something back to the wisdom-keepers who have always been its true stewards — and who are still here, still carrying their knowledge, still deserving of our witness and our support.
This is not a fundraiser dressed as an adventure. It is a pilgrimage. Every pedal stroke is an act of remembrance, of responsibility, and of love.
The ride is the stone dropped in the water.
THE ROUTE
Mile Zero to the Pacific.
3,250 miles from Georgetown's Mile Zero up the C&O Canal and the Great Allegheny Passage to Pittsburgh, across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to St. Louis, along the Katy Trail through Missouri, then the length of historic Route 66 to the Santa Monica Pier.
RIPPLE 01
First $10,000
A home + a livelihood in Kolkata
Funds Philanthropic Femme's survivor-support work in Kolkata: furnishing a room that welcomes one more woman into a home of her own, and a food cart that employs five women while teaching skills they can keep — work I will join on the ground in 2027.
RIPPLE 02
Once that threshold is reached
Survivor Support
Funds U.S.-based survivor healing and restoration through a trusted nonprofit connection.
RIPPLE 03
Every dollar beyond
Land Reciprocity
Supports Indigenous-led sovereignty, land stewardship, and reciprocity initiatives.
HOW THE RIDE EXPANDS
The ride continues to widen its impact.
The campaign is intentionally structured in clear thresholds. Each one we cross together opens the next ripple of giving.
BUILT WITH INTENTION
Three clear pathways.
Every contribution - to the cause, the ride, or the sponsorship structure - becomes part of something larger than a fundraising campaign.
A coast-to-coast charity ride for anti-trafficking advocacy, survivor support, and Indigenous reciprocity.
