After returning to Findhorn from England and the art therapy courses, I became more involved in the Foundation than when I was teaching. I worked in the Home Care Department at the Community Centre and also on the Wednesday Replacement Cooks team and for a short time, became a focaliser of that. I started a Permaculture Course (Francis painted a wonderful advertisement which I put up in Elgin and Forres) and about 40 people turned up at the Town Hall presentation to hear a well-known teacher from the South of Scotland, whom I had invited to talk to us; it was quite an inspiring time and felt very good with meetings and activities at our cottage in Findhorn.

In 2004 I accepted an invitation from an art therapy colleague living on Vancouver Island, Canada to help her set up her therapy practice. This eventually led to my teaching again at a small start-up Steiner School which was a beautiful opportunity to meet Canadian children and learn differences in their learning needs, being part of a far larger geographic and cultural world than small ‘Great Britain’. It also tested my strength, (I was then 63) and with a worsening insomnia, returned to Findhorn eight years later.

At 71 I became a Living in Community Guest for a month at Cluny so finally I got to know much more about how the Foundation was run.

Living in East Whins’ Housing Community

Learning to live as part of a housing community of 30 people in 25 dwellings was a real learning curve! We were all very ‘idealistic’ about how we intended to live but we were mainly strangers to each other and I guess community always demands a lot of learning! We represented more than eight nationalities and we were very keen to be a caring ‘family’; there were no children initially but now we have several from baby-age to 12 and it does feel to me, more like a family. The first three years were not easy as the building project had been very unsatisfactory and we all had many defects which still needed correcting. However, we learned Sociocracy by enlisting the help of experts and that is still being practised through ‘Circles’ concerned for every area of community need. A Land Stewards Group was one of these, and with four other colleagues and help of several of the community, we took over the Courtyard area which was mainly sand and building bits. We bought in tons of soil and compost, rocks and plants, shrubs and trees, we constructed a Courtyard Garden which is now fully established with paths winding throughout and a tiny pond!

The period of Covid became destructive in many ways and where we had used to shared meals together fairly regularly in our Community House, East Whins House, and had many meetings…everything stopped. We also had different views about what was happening, as did the world! However, since then a group outside and within East Whins has set up a Thursday Community SOUP for any and everyone, which is free of charge. Two organic, bio-dynamic farms plus Cullerne and our Phoenix Shop contribute vegetables for volunteers to cook and others to clean up afterwards. So far we’ve had from 20 up to fifty people attend! It has been a wonderful event with a real feeling of COMMUNITY! Lots of fun and noise!

Our community practises SEVA every month, whereby EW residents, permanent or temporary, will come together for a Saturday morning, (finishing with tea and bikkies) to attend to the various areas of need such as garden, laundry, maintenance etc. Here again we feel the advantage of being in community and the intimate feeling of togetherness that is built up.