Natasha Serlin

Today we left Montserrat in Spain and we drove through the Pyrenees into France.

Tonight we're staying in this lovely kind of guest house with a woman called Sofia Alatea who is very devoted to Mary Magdalene.

So it's a kind of big rambling house with pictures of goddesses and saints and Frida Kahlo and beautiful flowers everywhere.

I wanted to meet the woman who created this haven.

So I'm looking at Alethea and her eyes are so sparkly and blue and beautiful and light and open.

It makes me actually want to cry.

Oh my darling, if I may say, I see it coming out of you too.

We are most definitely sharing love with one another.

It's two-way traffic.

My name is Alethea Sophia.

I first came to this region in 1999 and within days, like yourself, I was captured.

by some kind of spirit that was calling me on a quest.

And tell me about what you've created here.

It's an old summer schoolhouse for children run by the Catholic Church.

And even before then, where we're sitting right now, used to be a home for six to eight young Jesuit priests who were here for silence and solace and working the land in prayer.

You are being invited into a home, a sanctuary, a refuge for kindred spirits who are all being drawn here by the rose, Mary Magdalene, the safety, the somatic ease of the place.

It's a haven.

It's almost her embrace.

It's her heart that we're landing in.

How were you drawn here?