THE GOD OF GREEN VALLEYS and JACQUELYN STRICKLAND - A DREAM COME TRUE
I cannot express what I felt while choosing photos for the presentation of this small and intimate retreat. "The God of Green Valleys" is a symbol, a key that during years Jacquelyn Strickland and I we have both used to refer to what I felt in the deepest in my heart, the most impregnable of myself. 
For years in which Jacquelyn has guided me and gave me some light to recognize and discern what I truly felt in my inner and what from the outside try to make you wrongly feel, we both used to refer that "God of Green Valleys", and I used to say, sometimes in the darkness, that "I would wish that Jacquelyn could come here and walk with me" by the sandy road with pines, oaks, and scrubland bushes of the Castronuño Wildlife Reserve, where, at the sunset, herons "rip the air" with howls and boars and foxes go down from the mount to sleep in the reedbed, near the river. 
At that time, at the sunset, the sky speaks and I don´t want to leave there. At that time God communicates with the heart of the human being that know how to listen, and it is the moment to pray. It is a dream made reality that Jacquelyn comes from Colorado to stay in this place where I used to pray every sunset, where the "God of Green Valleys" sleeps placidly nearbe the river. After many years of darkness the light, a beautiful brightning light, has come to my heart, after that "dark night of the soul" without Faith; the delight to "coming home" has alredy come back, of feeling that I am part of a Whole, of feeling that everything fits and that life flows and makes sense. And this joy is what I want to share with whom you come to this little Paradise. Welcome home.
I have chosen a picture that I amade some years ago in front of the river and the reedbed. It is a picture that I used to the first editions of the novel, since the surface of the river appeared sparkling, just in the way it is seen in the mornings, like I describe in the first chapters, in the way I used to see that "Paradise of Ilimited Love and Beauty" in my inner, and also manifested in Nature; "it was the god of First Times, of Prime Times, the god of Love, of Tenderness, of Compassion, of empathy, of comprenhension...", emotions and "noble values" that connect with the Whole and may allow to see and joy the face of God without veils, just like the ones have told us who have seen It in the different spiritual traditions.
I am very enthusiasticc about Jacquelyn´s vison when she has referred to this "small and intimate retreat" of Highly Sensitive People as a sense of "coming home", since "a back home" means the "god of Green Valleys", as well as the central part of this book; "New York, at home" refers to, like Jacquelyn says in her Newsletter that announces this retreat, "the more intimately we begin to know ourselves and follow those inner knowings, the closer we become to God". I wrote this book "to know the truth about the Castilian establishment", thus this retreat is for those women who are, like Jacquelyn says, "highly sensitive, empowered and spiritual... It is for those who are truth-seekers, truth tellers and sometimes challengers of the status quo".
A HOST VERY THANKFUL to JACQUELYN STRICKLAND
Thus, I am very enthusiastic of being the HOST of this small and intimate retreat that Jacquelyn has promoted this time, and to who I want to honor, bless and be thankful. Since the moment that we saw the possibility of this to become real, I started to be in prayer, to be in service of this beautiful, deep, useful, and full of colour retreat that she used to organize. We will enjoy some scrumptious Spanish organic meals.
WELCOME to a SPECIAL HOME in a SMALL PARADISE - The "RIBERAS DE CASTRONUÑO-VEGA DEL DUERO" WILDLIFE RESERVE
You, empowered and spiritual HSP dear friends, are welcome and cared with extreme care into a house "Beautiful Alamedas" that symbolically represents the Faith that I lost when coming back from New York. It was my grand-mother´s house and I was sheltered there during that "dark night of the soul". At the walls of its inner patio are engraved the lyrics of this "God of Green Valleys", that is wahy I always say that coming to this house and specially for this retreat, Sensitive and Empowered Women, symbolizes, a "Spiritual Pilgrimage", a "back home" to the True Self.
It is a house full of life, joy and colour that I have decorated with dedication, love and care during all these years. It is the house of a woman of the "Aphrodite" type who is me, and who also was Teresa of Ávila, our Spanish mystic, whose I descend and with whom I ahve a special connection, and, to who I presented, in a research two years ago in the World Teresian Congress, from the perspective of the Greek mythology and from the "Aphrodite" and "Hestia" archetypes.
We are romantic, passionate women, who used to fall in love. In her own search, Teresa "fell in love of Jesus of Nazaret figure to "serve him" and be detached from ego. 
MUSIC and POETRY
Here you can enjoy some music:
ORGANIC FOOD FOR THIS RETREAT
In a retreat like this one, in which we make honour and we live together and in peace and tune with Nature, by integring us into It, in a exercise of Spiritual and Deep Ecology, as a matter of course, the meals are organic, rich, tasty, delicious, and from the organic farming and local producers; my father´s farm, who, carefully, grows. 
Meals are going to be provided by José Colina, this jewel of young chef of Castronuño, who cooks scrumptious dishes, just like if we were in the NY Upper East Side, and who has already received several awards and recognition in media. Xocoreto.
