Mairela Retreat

I wanted to come and live in the forest before I died, and I wanted the opportunity to unravel the unhealthy strands that had brought me to such a devastating illness with no real outwards signs. I had been the one to alert doctors to s strange pain in my back but it took a year of being obstinate before they looked and found 6 tumours....

It seemed as if I would have to fight my way every step of the way. A court battle to bring my daughter along with me as her father was concerned about her living in this “shack in the forest” I lost the case as the court deemed my low survival expectations as bad parenting. The judge (male) told me that if I were any kind of mother I would send my child away to her father so that when I died she wouldn’t be so upset....

I waited patiently, and then in 2003 he relented, once faced with the prospect of having to financially support us if we stayed in the UK.

Even before my daughter arrived our house was broken into, a large amount of money stolen, my daughter’s Disney film collection stolen and her little money box smashed....

Then another 4 years of trouble from a local man determined to control our lives. Perhaps all these distractions kept me from thinking about cancer and so perhaps they all played their part in the miracle of me still being alive and well nearly two decades later.

A 7 year abusive relationship perhaps the backdrop of showing me something about myself?

The garden has been my saviour. When I first arrived it was overgrown with willow bushes and the removal of just one root left me totally exhausted and defeated! Until I armed myself with a rotivator and the battle commenced!

Being in nature and trying my hand at gardening was a steep learning curve but that’s the thing about gardening......if it doesn’t work one year then you just try again the following year!

I had already done all my reiki training and that helped me to incorporate energy awareness into my daily life which made observation and restoration of a more resilient energy field easier. I found that I liked energy working and recognised it as a natural way of conceptualising the world, something that I had done naturally since childhood. There had always been weird lights and people showing up around me since as long as I can remember and now living in nature appeared to have strengthened and re-ignited it once more.

I studied with the UK School of Energy Healing for a couple of years following the work of Barbara Ann Brennan, learning about working on different aspects of the energy field, inner child work, past life regression as a healing tool, entity release (a mirror of soul retrieval) and many other useful energy healing techniques, as well as gaining strength and insight into my own consciousness.

In 2010 I met a wonderful man, Arto Kiiskinen, who was a biodynamic farmer. We exchanged so much about Earth spirits, forest sprites, angels, gardening and Love! Arto, or Afa as everyone called him, had mesothelioma from asbestos exposure as a young man. We had a glorious year and 3 days together before he passed, and although I still miss him intensely I am proud to say that he said it was the best year of his life......and I believe that the last year of life should always be so! We showed each other the meaning of unconditional love .

He had wanted to buy the piece of forest next to Mairela from the church who owned it but the process took too long and he died before it happened. But not before he gave it the name Art Garden, which was the name he had wanted to give his beloved farm but the new owners chose something else. The name was quite magical as it incorporated both our names (I was Sara Gardner at the time) he was into gardening, he loved his art (many of his healing paintings adorn the walls here) and it was also his “Jazz name” from when he was a young student in Sweden! We had plans for the old forest part because we were both very interested in the communication of trees......but the church sold it to a higher bidder who has since logged it.

These days I continue to develop the garden by reclaiming the swampy area in the middle! I’m currently building a little meditation hut there to tie in with the access gained to the underworld via swamp. Finland is literally the land of swamps Suo is swamp and Finland is Suo-mi.

Afa taught me about the Steiner view of the Underworld where the plant sap goes during the winter time, and takes on the energy of the Earth just as it takes on the energy of the Sun via photosynthesis during the summer. Learning about the natural forces and tides is not only extremely interesting but it also allows me to run stronger energies when I am doing healing work.

In 2016 following a series of “human errors” whilst in hospital having a bowel resection brought on by fairly normal complications of my cancer surgery, I was severely traumatized. I experienced what I can only describe as being locked in at the bottom of a well shaft looking up at the nurse asking me a very reasonable question, after pain meds and water had been refused to me. Since then it seems as if a stone were taken from a whole dam that had been holding back a mound of childhood trauma and I was powerless to stop the oncoming tsunami. But working on the theory of better out than in I am slowly recovering and have learned an awful lot about trauma and dissociation. I also now recognise that my cancer was really just a symptom of a deeper dis-ease.

Following this I’m attempting to change the outlook of my healing work these days, to encourage those in need of recuperation and recovery to just come and just sit in the garden, let the wind caress their skin, take a sauna, walk in the forest, let the garden inspire.......but the commercial corporate world seems to have grabbed the healing world as their next cash cow and my tiny voice is lost on the wind.....

For now I continue to work in my garden and see what comes.....

My website is quite out of date because I do not yet know where Spirit would have me be next....