Over the past twelve years I have had many incredibly difficult challenges. I have been aware, throughout this time, how important my surroundings have been to me. I live in a beautiful valley, and every day have the opportunity to walk in the woods that are right outside my door, and be with trees, stream, grasses, flowers and sky. Many times, when I have been faced with the absolute insanity that is part of our human-created world, I have sat with or walked beneath the trees and been reminded of what is real, true and in alignment with natural law.

For most of our evolutionary history we have known and understood that we are a part of the natural world, deeply and intimately connected to all of Life. With the industrial revolution we began to move away from the natural cycles of life, and over the past 30 years the speed of separation has increased rapidly as we take more and more and give back less and less. A name has been invented for the sickness caused by this separation - Nature Deficit Disorder. It is not only damaging us. It is damaging our beautiful Mother Earth too.

Nature reconnects us and reminds us who we are. As I recover my health and find balance once more, it is time to share this beautiful healing sanctuary more, and I invite you to become part of a Healing Earth project.

Spending time alone, walking or sitting on the Earth, or doing simple tasks such as planting seeds, watering a garden, chopping vegetables or collecting wood, helps us to slow down and reconnect to a healthy rhythm.

For some of us, solitude feels comforting and peaceful. For others it can feel isolating, especially when our experiences have already left us feeling lost and alone. Being with like-minded people and working together can be healing too.

For many years we have been gathering here to honour and celebrate the turning of the seasons with Wheel of the Year ceremonies. These have helped many to reconnect to the cycles of sun and earth, and by remembering how to flow with these natural patterns, have found a healthier way of being. We also hold Moon Ceremonies to work with the ebb and flow of monthly cycles.

As well as gathering for an afternoon or evening of ceremony, we now invite people to join us for a day, a weekend or longer periods -  working together, sharing food and gentle time on the land. We have already planted more fruit trees and bushes, built polytunnels to grow more food and herbs and have starting up the beehives again. In 2018 we have begun create a new, more accessible, ceremony space with a compost loo close by, and later we plan to extend the chicken flock and create more healing retreat spaces - always working as a supportive community in ways that enable us to express our gifts and learn from each other, while loving and healing the land.

Last year we had our first HelpX volunteer and will invite more in the future. We are also opening to people who wish to find healing through being close to Mother Nature and working with us at the pace of her rhythm.

Mother Earth helped me in a time of desperate need, and now I want to share her beauty and blessings with you.

But there is another part, which is what we can give back to Mother Earth.  At this time in our evolution, it is crucial that we move beyond what we can take or receive to what we give. The second part of my story of healing concerns how we can work with the land to help bring back balance and harmony.

As many people know, I have been a National Trust ‘tenant custodian’ for over 30 years, taking care of this old house and the surrounding land. Once upon a time, this place was a small farm; one of several on the estate. As small farms became ‘uneconomic’, the house was separated from the land. When I first moved here in 1984, the land was rented by the ‘next-door’ farmer, to increase his acreage. The valley was absolutely beautiful. There were still many of the cherry trees that had once been an important crop before transporting food for thousands of miles became normal. Sheep grazed beneath the trees; the farmer kept a small number of cows and our children played on hay bales in the barn.

As greed and disconnection became the norm in our society, it changed here too, and I had over ten years of deep sadness, confrontation, aggression and bullying. The land was rented cheaply to someone who did not care for it at all, and cows and sheep were brought in and out on trucks. It was heartbreaking to see the awfulness of this kind of 'modern farming’ with abuse of both land and animals being allowed, enabled and supported by the National Trust. The trees were cut down. Far too many cows kept on steep slopes caused over poaching and erosion leading to diversion of waterways and subsequent flooding of my home. Sheep were kept with no care by people who had been banned from keeping animals by the RSPCA. There was no maintenance of barns, walls, hedges or gates; machinery that was far too big for this small place caused destruction of trees, drives and lanes; there was no respect for the land or my home in the midst of all of this and no care whatsoever by the organisation that receives public money to 'protect and look after special places for everyone, for ever' on the land they have been gifted and have responsibility for.

The many exhausting battles that I fought during those years contributed to my exhaustion and ill health. I was clear that my personal battle, with one woman fighting for the land against arrogant, greedy, bullying men who held all the power, was a tiny piece of the bigger story of the abused feminine and destruction on Mother Earth. I am pleased and relieved to be able to say that, with the help of social media, finally change began to happen.

Below you can see some Before and After pictures that I hope will warm your heart.

Those of you who know me are aware that I am a very private person. So why do  I share this story? I share it in the hope that it might encourage you to believe that you too can make difference, however small, to stand up for our planet.

My story is just one small part of what is, and has been, allowed to happen on our beautiful planet. And what I have spoken of is just one small part of what happened here.  I've been fortunate to have beauty all around me, including good friends and sacred teachings, and am only too aware that this is not so for everyone. A journey is made one step at a time,  one woman loving one small area and weaving a bit of magic leads to change. Many small changes add up!

There are lovely new farmers on the land, and they are keen to repair much of the damage that was done, and take action to protect and work with nature. They are working really hard to repair and tend to old hedges, and to fence steep areas of land to prevent further erosion and allow the land to regenerate. They are experimenting with new ways of keeping animals, based on observation of animals in nature. And I am now caretaking a new area of land – the place where the poor cows were gathered before being loaded onto trucks to be ferried back and forth between farms.

This is an ongoing project, with many plans unfolding. In spite of a year of alternate extremes of wet and dry, our new grass grew well and the first stages of creation of our new, more accessible, ceremony circle has begun. 

We will be inviting more volunteers to join us in the future.