The Cypriot walking Japan

Sofia will wear white – a stark, deliberate choice. It’s the colour of purity...

Today Sofia begins her pilgrimage.

Over the next several weeks, she’ll cover 1,200 kilometres: tracing an ancient Japanese path through misty mountains, past weathered shrines, along the edge of the sea.

Step by step, 9,000 kilometres from her homeland in Cyprus, she’ll be sleeping where she can, carrying what she needs. She’ll wear white – a stark, deliberate choice. It’s the colour of purity; the colour of mourning. A hue that marks her journey as one of grief. And healing.

Because, for 38-year-old Sofia Christodoulou, the Shikoku Henro pilgrimage isn’t just about the path beneath her feet. It’s a journey of love and loss. And every step has meaning.

“When you lose someone, the world keeps moving,” Sofia sighs. “But you – you’re standing still.

“The grief doesn’t end on the day they die. It lingers in the spaces they should have filled, in the conversations you never had. That’s why I’m here in Japan, walking the path of reflection. It’s my way of honouring Nicholas Artemiou, carrying his name forward, remembering him with every step. I can’t bring him back, but I can walk.”

Sofia’s story, like Nicholas’, begins in the past.

“In 2023, I was living in London, working in finance,” explains the second-generation Cypriot. “Life was hard, stressful. And I found myself chatting with my friend Alexia in Miami every few days – our conversations a lifeline for us both.”

More often than not, Alexia was in a hospital when the two spoke. Her eight-year-old son was undergoing treatment for Ewing sarcoma – a rare and aggressive cancer that develops in the bones or soft tissue. Born with a diaphragmatic hernia, Nicholas had spent his first weeks fighting to survive. And since his cancer diagnosis, hospitals had become a way of life for the family: rounds of chemo, surgeries, procedures and experimental treatments.

The search for care led Nicholas’ family from country to country: from Cyprus to Germany, Austria, and eventually to the United States.

“Through it all, Nicholas remained full of hope,” Sofia recalls. “He was always there when Alexia was on the phone. He’d blow me kisses through the screen. He’d ask about my travels – my life in the UK, my volunteer work in Costa Rica and Tanzania. He wanted to know where I’d been, where I still wanted to go.

“His world was hospital rooms and treatment plans,” she adds. “But his mind was always somewhere bigger, somewhere brighter. Even when he was weak, even when the treatments took their toll, he remained curious, engaged, warm.”

And then, one day, Nicholas was gone. In October 2024, the nine-year-old succumbed to the disease he’d fought with so much strength, so much hope. The treatments, the surgeries, the endless search for a cure had given him time, but not life.

For his family, the world didn’t just stop – it shattered. The routines that had revolved around his care, the hospital visits, the quiet hopes between treatments; all of it was over. And yet life outside kept moving. The sun still rose, people still went to work, the world still turned. But for those who loved him, nothing felt the same.

“My grief arrived in echoes,” says Sofia. “When I reached out to Alexia, there was silence where Nicholas’ laughter used to be, the absence of his curiosity and warmth.

“That unbearable weight of losing a child – that’s something I can’t comprehend,” she adds. “But I know what it is to lose loved ones to cancer. And I know the questions it leaves behind, the way it changes you, the way you wake up the next day and nothing feels the same. You carry them with you, always, but you also have to find a way to keep moving.”

In the months that followed, Nicholas’ friends and family launched the Nicholas Zoe Foundation, a charity dedicated to advocating for paediatric sarcoma patients. Their mission was clear: to help fund ground-breaking research, raise awareness and bring hope to other families facing this devastating disease.

And Sofia knew she had to help. Nicholas had left a mark on her life; she couldn’t just stand still. She wasn’t a doctor, a scientist, or a researcher – but she could walk. She could take on a journey that would honour his memory: a pilgrimage that would carry his name forward.

If Nicholas couldn’t walk this earth anymore, she would walk it for him. In his name.

“The Shikoku Henro is one of the world’s oldest and most revered pilgrimages,” Sofia explains. “For more than a thousand years, pilgrims have walked this 1,200-kilometre route around Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, stopping at 88 sacred temples to reflect, to seek peace and to find meaning in life’s hardest questions.”

Winding through towering mountains, dense cedar forests, rocky coastlines and remote villages, the pilgrimage is as breathtaking as it is demanding. Steep passes test endurance, long stretches between villages require patience and the weather – unpredictable and often unforgiving – adds another layer of challenge.

Pilgrims carry only what they need, walking for weeks with little more than a backpack. Nights are spent in simple lodgings, temple shelters or under the open sky. Every step is a lesson in resilience, humility and devotion.

“It’s not Everest,” Sofia says, “but it’s my challenge. Some walk for enlightenment, some for healing, and others in memory of those they’ve lost. For me, it’s all three. I’m walking it for a boy who will never get the chance to journey this world himself. Who will never see it the way he dreamed.”

And so, today, February 16, Sofia takes her first steps in Nicholas’ name.

As she sets out on the long road ahead – temple by temple, through mountains, forests, and quiet villages where the world feels still enough to remember – she walks with purpose. Every cent she raises goes directly to the Nicholas Zoe Foundation, funding research that could change the future for children like Nicholas, children who deserve more time on this earth.

Halfway around the world, Sofia walks because Nicholas cannot. And with every step, she carries him forward.

To support the Sofia’s journey for the Nicholas Zoe Foundation, visit the GoFundMe page ‘Shikoku 2025 – A Pilgrimage in Loving Memory of Nicholas’. To follow Sofia’s journey, visit the Instagram account @givingwanderlust, the TikTok account @givingwanderlust, of the Facebook page Giving Wanderlust