The Story Behind the Temple...

Hello magical souls, thank you for being here. Let me introduce myself…

I am Laurie, a priestess, healer, and mother, and I began Of The Forest in 2017/2018 as a creative lifeline during the early years of motherhood. At the time, I was home educating my children and feeling the quiet ache of having lost touch with the artist within me. Motherhood was everything I had dreamed of, yet it also initiated me into a deeper remembering of myself. That longing to return to my own centre first arrived through macramé, and what began as the simple act of knotting thread became the first strand in a much larger weaving of my life.

Over time, Of The Forest blossomed into something far beyond creativity. It became a sanctuary for healing, rooted in earth wisdom, devotion, and the sacred feminine. As I tended to my children, I was also being tended to. Mothering became my first devotional practice. Through them, I was brought back to the earth as mother, back to cycles, presence, and the unseen threads that hold us. My path as a priestess was not learned in a temple far from home but awakened through the everyday rituals of caregiving, witnessing, and remembering. I am deeply connected to the Seabhean, the Celtic priestess lineage, and guided in all that I do by Shekinah, Mama Earth, and Pachamama. Everything I offer flows from this devotion.

I am now a Reiki Master Teacher, womb worker, circle holder, sound healing practitioner, and devotional Marian mystic walking the path of the Magdalene. I offer energetic healing, womb and bodywork, sound therapy, seasonal ceremonies, and sacred spaces for women to gather. I craft herbal teas and oils from wild and native plants, each blend created in prayer and partnership with the land.

My plant path began almost five years ago through foraging and meeting the wild medicines growing around my home. I felt as though I had stumbled into an ancient language. The teas, oils, and offerings I created for friends and family were not a new skill but a remembering—an ancestral voice calling me back into relationship with the green world.

As this connection deepened, I longed for community and sisterhood to share it with. That longing birthed my first women’s circle, and what began as a small gathering has now grown into a living, breathing lineage of women returning to themselves in sacred company.

In 2023, our family opened The Barn Temple, a soul-rooted sanctuary nestled beside the river in Pontblyddyn, North Wales. It quickly became a beloved space for yoga, sound healing, Reiki, ceremony, bodywork, and community. We created it with the simple but sacred intention of offering a place where people could take off their shoes, exhale, and receive. A place to remember the holy in the ordinary.

I am a home-educating mother, and our temple has always been a family-woven space. My children sweep the floors, carry blankets, light candles, and have even helped build the walls that hold us. This work supports the life we live together—a life rooted in nature, slowness, devotion, and allowing childhood to unfold freely. It matters to me that my children witness this work, that they see the power of community, ceremony, and feminine wisdom. The temple is part of them, just as they are part of the temple.

In summer 2025, we stepped into a new chapter as we moved to our new home in Dodleston, Cheshire. With it came the birth of our new temple space, soft and grounding, surrounded by open fields and ever-changing skies. Here, we continue to hold the same heart vision: to offer a sanctuary where women and community can gather in remembrance, rest, connection, and devotion.

This evolution has shown me something essential:

The Barn Temple was never meant to be a brand.

It was never about performance or polished images.

It has always been a temple because the work is sacred.

A studio is a place to train.

A business is something to build.

A temple is a place to return to.

A space where you can lay down your burdens.

A space that invites you to remember yourself.

A space that honours your healing as holy.

Here, you are not asked to become someone else.

You are welcomed, exactly as you are, to come home to yourself.