I Want to Remember the Layers of Wales

Layers of Wales

By Nadia Aldea

Prelude

How much do we pass every day without noticing. The massive trees that sway in the backyard. The ruffling of leaves that bring breath to our lungs. The sky that dances through blues into greys, violet, pink, orange. Lightning that thumps in your chest like a fist to the ribcage, bringing the heart back to life. Rain that drenches everything except the hidden you beneath so many layers. A puddle from the night storm that reflects the morning’s violet sky. Your reflection, if you take the moment to look. Not just look but feel. Truly look, not peek and rush on. What will you see, what will you feel.

Some experiences refuse easy description. Writing about them can feel like theft. Keeping them only inside feels safer, as if a tight grip will preserve them. But daily life loosens the hold and the edges blur.

This is me choosing to write. About five August days in Wales. To try to understand what made this trip so special. To let it live on the page. Maybe the fear is simple. The fear is to forget. Perhaps writing is how it stays.

How Wales Found Me

I was not a dreamer for a long time. When my husband asked me, early on, what I wanted from life, I did not really have an answer. Desire was not a word I knew. I learned to focus on the next task, the next corner.

He is a dreamer. He dreams and then builds the dream. He coaxes others to dream too. The space for what Nadia wants arrived late, later than I would ever want for my kids. I did not know I had permission to want. They do.

A recurring image began to visit me: green hills, wide and open. Maybe it came from my grandmother’s garden. Maybe from ancestry. Maybe from a film set in Ireland where the scenery swallowed me whole.

In the beginning of 2025, an Instagram reel found me. Green hills. Wide spaces. Wern-y-Cwm Farm. An art and rest retreat for creative women, hosted by Marloes De Vries, an artist who spoke honestly about being tired and lost and then finding her core again. Her rawness drew me in. Not just the drone shots, but the feeling of permission to say we are not always fine. I watched the reel again and again, absorbing every square inch.

I had to go.

My dreamer husband barely blinked. He said I should go. We both felt it could be good for him and our three kids too, to bond without me as the default. I booked my spot and prepared the hardest part: telling the kids. They were briefly surprised, then hugged me and said have fun, Mom.

That is when the dream stepped into reality. That is when the journey to Wales began.

Arriving

I planned around the senses. I flew to Gatwick and mapped a train route to Abergavenny. I have an early memory of a train bunk, cold metal, the hum of tracks, greenery passing. I wanted that again.

Three trains carried me from brick cityscapes and small classic homes into storybook fields and farmhouses. I wondered about the lives inside them the whole way. On one train a father asked for tea and biscuits in a soft accent. A white cup, a saucer, a tiny silver spoon, a proper biscuit arrived. My heart said yes. This was already worth it.

In Wales, the station name flashed in Welsh. I leapt off, then panicked about my bags, then laughed with a couple who had also guessed right. Bram, Marloes’s husband, picked us up. I was deep in jet lag, walking inside a dream.

From the start, the retreat came with flexibility. Everything on the schedule was an offering, not an obligation. I kept asking myself, what does Nadia want.

Place

Narrow lanes hemmed by tall grasses ushered us in like green ushers waving us forward. Left-side driving blew my mind. I arrived at 1:30 in the afternoon local time, 5:30 in the morning in Vancouver. I worried about socializing and how I might be perceived. A backup plan formed quickly: if the people were not for me, I would walk alone and be happy.

I did not need the plan.

I have never been in a room with so many like-minded women. Open, vibrant, warm, funny. No one came to perform, to critique, or to outshine. The room felt soft and safe for art and conversation. Almost immediately, the topic of neurodiversity landed like permission. One hundred bricks fell from my shoulders. These were my people.

I met Laura and Emily, the hearts of the farmhouse. They fed us, morning to night, with care that felt like grandmother energy. Not in age, but in feeling. The kind of home where warmth begins in the kitchen, and you are told to sit, eat, rest, and have seconds.

Layers

Presence

We had the luxury of time. No quotas. No calls. The landscape demanded attention and gratitude. The pause revealed the speed I usually live at. At home, even rest hums with to-do lists. Here, silence was complete.

Care

We were tended to. Most women spend years tending to others. Here, we were the ones tended. It changes your breath. Not only through Laura and Emily’s meals, but through the energy Marloes carried — she held a safe space, her openness quieting our fears. And through the presence of artist Marna Lunt, who painted with feelings, sensing her colors by emotion, and offered us the same openness in how we created.

Belonging

Intros were awkward in the usual ways. Do we hug, shake, wave. I now simply ask. Very quickly that gave way to ease. We wanted one another to be comfortable. We wanted one another to openly and freely create. Belonging came in many forms: laughter spilling through the farmhouse, comfortable silences, and at times, tears.

Senses

Sight

Green to the horizon. Old brick homes. Sunflowers over picket fences. Pinned laundry on a line. The farmhouse composed with intention. Every corner held beauty. At night, falling stars cut across the vividly present sky. On the mountain, a full circle of counties unfurled, the view melting into me like honey into warm milk.

Sound

Crickets at night. Livestock murmurs. The deep swell of the gong bath rolling through my bones, sometimes sending shivers head to toe. Late conversations by the fire. The playful laughter of musical chairs. The silence of reading in the hammock while friendly bees buzzed by.

Smell

The very first breath outside the car was sweet and startling, as if the air itself carried flavour. Each inhale passed through my nostrils and into my throat, leaving a faint taste behind — grass, heat, earth. Even the sharp tang of sheep manure made me grin.

Taste

Freshly made breakfasts drawn from the local land — fruit picked at its peak, perfectly soured Greek yogurt from the farm that woke my tongue alive. Hot coffee steaming in the early morning air while I overlooked the UK landscape, its bitterness set against the sweetness of calm. The crunch of fresh-baked bread with the softness of melted butter. Pints and burgers at the pub after a hot hike through lanes and gardens. Dessert after dinner, every night — sweet endings that lingered like gratitude.

Touch

Hammock fabric hugging me under the apple trees, the swing grounding me. Wind on the mountain like a cooling blanket. Tall grass at my back in the sit spot. Massage hands unknotting muscles and time. The bark of the oak tree, rough but steady, pressing into my palm like a centuries-old creature leaning close. The soft burst of berries along the trail, vines brushing our ankles as if to say hello. Welcoming textures of paper and paint beneath my fingers, colours chosen by feeling rather than thought.

Sit Spot

A naturalist led us under a 200-year-old oak. We each went to find a place to sit alone. I walked farther than the others, nerves whispering about predators in the bushes. I kept going until the land opened. I sat in tall grass on a hill where the farmhouse was a distant shape.

There, grief and memory visited. My grandmother, my childhood, the best part of it. Tears came. I steadied myself, then let them come again. But alongside the missing was something unrecognized. It was anger. At eleven, I was moved far away from my grandmother into instability. I did not have words for it then. I have alexithymia. Emotions can take days, weeks, months — even years — to name. At thirty-eight, the word, the feeling, finally arrived.

A bird call gathered us back. I wrote in my journal immediately so I would not forget. The words poured out of me like lava — hot, unstoppable, claiming space on the page — and cooled into the shape of a poem. A fragment reads:

“…you’re as lost as a broken compass

but determined as a bull

we shipped off into treacherous sea

no compass, no guide

only a raft not built for this ocean

steered by anger

and not understood emotion…”

Later, in the day after this nature walk, we had an intuitive painting session, without knowing it at the time —- I ended up painting my poem.

Thread

At our goodbye dinner, a story was told of childhood loneliness — of being bullied, of not having many friends — and how different it felt now to stand in a circle of creative, strong women who all wanted to play together. I wondered how many of us carried echoes of that same feeling: odd, awkward, other. Perhaps that is the last layer under everything.

One of the women described it as a cloth — each of us a strand of colour, woven together into something more than the sum of us. Individually unique, yet stronger in connection. Together we made a shared memory, an ongoing friendship, a small sisterhood.

Within

I dream now of returning to this place, if I am ever so lucky again — to put my feet on the land, breathe in its sweetness, and embrace the friends I made on the other side of the world.

In the meantime, I will ground my feet in the green grass, on the sand, in the tide that glides in and out. I will listen to the songs of the ocean — they have always been there. I will breathe in its potency, let the breeze move against me, and keep asking: what feeling do I feel, and what does it mean. As I slow down, I will remember: what I found in Wales also lives within me.

Thank you for reading.

Nadia