A magical journey from inner conflict to clarity
As a young teenager, I was sure I was a witch. A friendly one. I brewed potions with herbs from our garden, spoke with animals and plants, and was captivated by spirits and their mysterious power.
My parents had a book that fascinated me, about a magical place in Scotland, where people could talk to fairies who made cabbages grow nearly as tall as I was and roses bloom in the snow. I still remember the black-and-white, grainy photographs of the creatures, and have always wondered whether I’d ever see them.
That curious, dreamy child gave way to an adult shaped by a harsher reality. As a news correspondent, I witnessed humanity’s darkest capabilities: conflicts, torture, villages set on fire, earthquakes that collapsed badly-built apartment blocks and buried thousands. I suppose we all have to grow up.
Yet something of Findhorn’s fairy tales lingered in me. So when an invitation arrived to go to that same Findhorn – for an “Eldest Daughters Retreat” – from a friend who wrote The Eldest Daughter Effect, I accepted. “Our upbringing has shaped us into serious, caring and capable women, with ‘responsibility’ as our middle name,” her email said.
I looked forward to meeting other eldest daughters, to exploring how we manifest leadership qualities in our personal and professional lives, and to finding out “how we may better balance what we can do and what is ours to do”.
And to be honest, I was dying to finally discover whether the fairies were real.
Souls
When the car swirled onto the runway of the former British military airfield Findhorn was built around, I rubbed my eyes. Was this it? Instead of enchanted gardens, I saw caravans, shacks, cheaply built holiday houses, a lot of tarmac and cars everywhere.
One of the long-term inhabitants and community elders, Mari, took us on a tour. She guided us along many nice buildings between the pine trees further down the runway. They were made of recycled wood, and some had had a previous life as enormous whisky barrels. But I couldn’t sense the presence of any fairies.
We ended up in the original garden where it all started. “It’s not much loved these days,” Mari said. I nodded when I saw the neglected flower beds and abandoned vegetable patches. To one side stood the rusty blue caravan where the three founders and their three children initially lived in the early 1960s. Having lost everything when their previous occupation collapsed, they had to move here at the start of a long, harsh winter.
It dawned upon me that they never meant to build a miracle garden, but just wanted to grow something to eat. They didn’t have a clue about gardening, let alone in sand dunes. But the two women, Eileen and Dorothy, believed they were receiving instructions from God and nature’s spirits. The man, Peter, carried them out. These apparent revelations did the trick. The miraculous results soon attracted publicity and people from all over the world. But rather than curious farmers, the new arrivals turned out to be souls in search of spiritual connection.
“Work is love in action.” That’s what they say in Findhorn.
Circles
We were invited to join a spiritual gathering. My hopes of finding the magic rose. We gathered in a theater hall, lovingly crafted in wood by members of the community. The participants were all quite old. And we had to stand in a circle, hold hands and spin around while singing. I had to swallow hard before joining. This was not what I’d expected from the world-renowned birthplace of The New Age.
As I sat down in the circle of eldest daughters to go on with our retreat, I felt resigned to the fact that I’d go home with one less illusion. Then, Mari started sharing more of Findhorn’s story.
Brexit reduced the number of visitors. During the pandemic, none were allowed to come. Without its lifeblood, the foundation faced bankruptcy. A devastating fire set by a disgruntled employee destroyed their sacred communal spaces. Governance structures crumbled and their collective identity was shaken.
Yet, from these ashes were now rising new structures: literal buildings built with top-of-the-bill recycled, eco-friendly materials, wind turbines and solar panels, and new internal frameworks for governance, mission and identity. Findhorn still aims to be a beacon to the world.
Somehow, I recognized that feeling of coming out of the end of a dark tunnel.
I glimpsed its deeper truth. This wasn’t merely an aging community clinging to a vanishing dream; it was a reflection of resilience itself. Though deeply wounded, they stayed true to their core values. That’s what made them totally authentic and how they were bouncing back from catastrophic loss.
Eldest daughters are said to have a similarly tenacious tendency to want to go it alone. I certainly value my independence. But these people were teaching me the power that lies in the courage to trust one another, to surrender.
And Findhorn was about to do its magic.
Quest
In an eldest-daughter exercise around our own idea of an ideal world, I spoke of a reality filled with dignity and abundance for all. The opposite invoked images of conflict, panic and grief. Unexpectedly, memories of my parents’ traumatic separation flooded back.
Suddenly, I saw clearly that my lifelong quest to foster mutual understanding had begun at age 16, trying desperately for several years to reunite my parents. At the time, I nearly collapsed under the weight of that responsibility.
Without realizing it, I’d carried that same impossible mission into my professional life. As a journalist, I was driven to help resolve the conflicts I was reporting on by clarifying differences. When too often nothing changed – just like I had failed to bring my parents back together – I eventually went under, forced to face the toll my eldest-daughter-sense-of-responsibility had taken.
Findhorn was gently guiding me toward the recognition of a lifelong pattern. My urge to resolve other people’s conflicts – including the inner ones that I now focus on – was an unconscious quest to heal my own childhood wound.
Clarity
Still reeling from that realization, I went into the next exercise and had an imaginary conversation with the head of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization set up to protect its 32 transatlantic member countries. Its headquarters are in Brussels, down the road from where I live.
I sometimes imagine meeting him in town. In my mind, he asks me what I do – in Dutch, our mutual native language. Usually, I’m searching for the right words, because I wear the different hats of writer, moderator, public speaker, mentor and healer. “Mark,” I told him this time, “we’re in the same business. We’re both striving to make people feel safe. You do it with guns and threats. My work involves confronting our inner demons.”
Later on, I walked through the yellow blooming gorse toward the beach around Findhorn’s small peninsula. I felt strangely detached, as though I were walking beside myself. Pausing, I consciously stepped back inside myself. In doing so, I touched a sense of wholeness and profound safety. I took a deep breath and smiled.
I saw clearly that I didn’t need to choose between my varied roles. They all share a common purpose of translating complex and threatening emotional realities into a language of clarity and safety. I want to help people not just to cope, but to transform themselves. Addressing internal conflicts at their roots remains my calling.
As for the fairies … Well, I never saw little winged creatures. Maybe I am too old for that. But I now understood their essence: it’s about helping each other grow. Their parting gift as I left was a truth I’d learned first-hand: when you embrace your inner demons and rewrite the narrative, you cultivate the safety to express your fullest potential. Perhaps that was Findhorn’s magic all along.
P.S. Every life follows a script, often one we don’t notice. Understanding your guiding force is a good place to start if you want clarity about what makes you thrive. Are you relying on the others-oriented We-Mind, self-focused Me-Mind, or a blend of both? You can take the free assessment here .
P.P.S. And if you’d like to explore how I can suppport you in finding your own clarity, please contact me for a free call.