This is the story of how following the subtle signs of life can open you up to sharing your gifts in ways you never imagined.

To start this story, let’s go back to April 2023.

Heartbreak & the Unexpected Path

I was heartbroken, as I had just broken up with my boyfriend, with whom I was living in Portugal. The plan was to move to the Netherlands together, but our life paths split, and so without a clear plan of what would come next, I moved back in with my parents.

What was supposed to be a few months, turned into 1.5 years due to the difficulty of finding a place for Cleo 🐈‍⬛ and me.

In January 2024 my good friend Tessa said to me ‘Meli, you are the queen of manifestation. Normally you want something, and you get it fast. Do you really want to be here in the Netherlands?’ Uff I needed to hear that, because the truth was in that moment I realized I didn’t.

I had always had two “what if” options in the back of my mind: Madeira and Turin. The Netherlands was the logical place to be, career-wise; my family was there, it was a known place, and it felt safe. But it didn’t feel exciting, joyful, or aligned.

The First Call to Madeira

Back in 2021, during the pandemic, I had felt an intuitive pull to visit Madeira for the first time.

At the time, I was single and talking to men on dating apps, and as the intense woman I am, I asked them all: “What’s your biggest dream in life?” 😂 Strangely, one answer kept repeating: “To have a farm in Portugal.” It stuck with me.

Because my dream, still to this day, is to live on land of my own. To grow my own food. To live in deep connection with nature. But I had never consciously considered Portugal before.

So on the first weekend of April, I started looking at videos of Portugal on YouTube. And it didn’t take many videos to realize Madeira was one of Portugal’s most beautiful places to be. That was all it took for me to be convinced, I had to go to Madeira.

At the time, I was living in a studio of 28m2 in Amsterdam. Tired of being inside this cubicle during the pandemic, I asked myself if this was the life I truly wanted.

That next Monday I was determined to go to the ‘Hawaii of Europe’. I send a couple of boutique hotels emails to offer them content creation & article writing (I worked in marketing) in exchange to stay with them for a month. On Wednesday, I got a reply from a sustainable boutique hotel that they were interested.
Next week we had a meeting, it was a big yes and I booked my flight.
One month later, I was there.
I came to the island with one clear intention. To reconnect with my feminine energy.
The last year, I had spend healing my deep wounds, especially connected with my womb and sexual abuse. The island gave me healing and a new love that showed me what unconditional love felt like.
One month quickly turned into three, and I left the island completely in love with this place, fully connected to myself. I left my place in the Netherlands, sold everything and moved to the south of Spain and then south of Portugal with my new boyfriend.

Trying to Build a “Logical” Life

Now let’s go back to February 2024 in the Netherlands.

I began a Spirit Guide training. I already had my Akashic Records initiation and was channeling regularly, but wanted to go deeper into this fascinating world with teachers who have walked this path for a long time. In this training, we dove deeper into energy work, mediumship, and shamanic journeys.

At the same time, I had started a new job because I thought that it would help me get a place more easily (spoiler alert: it did not).

One day in the training during a trance journey, I saw myself completely in the mud and surrounded by mist. Unable to move forward and unable to see the horizon. A cow appeared and asked me to follow her.

She showed me a path on the side, completely dry, easy to walk and as we moved forward the clouds drifted away.

During class, we started practising mediumship with my classmates by channeling for each other, and with that, a message came through for me ‘Why are you choosing the difficult path? You can choose the easy path too. What feels light? Go there.’

I then instantly knew that this message was talking about Madeira.

I tried to rationalize it. Should I really move there? So I booked a flight to go (on the same day I came the first time in May), to feel into it. After all 3 years had passed, maybe I wouldn’t feel the same way.
2 days before the flight, it was Beltane and I joined a ceremony with my teacher. She had invited a breathwork facilitator who took us on a deep journey inwards.
In this journey, I was shown why I was being pulled towards the island.
I saw myself giving a ceremony for a group of people in the mountains of Madeira. The land Spirit of the island told me that I needed to be there to help people remember the spirit of the island and reconnect them with her. Both locals and people passing by.

To which I replied ‘*whom am I to do this? I am not even from the island…*’ She replied that this didn’t matter, but that I should reconnect with the elders of the island to help me with this work.

(This is a painting I started in 2022 through a vision of a Tree Spirit I channeled. I finished the painting in Madeira in 2024, knowing that his vision had been preparing me to come to the island. The artwork is titled ‘Coming Home’, and shows the spirit animals that accompanied me in these years.)

Searching for the Elders

A few days later, I arrived in Madeira and started my mission to look for these elders, thinking they were people. I asked around, but I got nowhere; nobody knew what I was talking about.

Until one day, I was walking through the mountains alone, and the path led me towards 3 enormous trees. I instantly knew they were the elders, the trees.

The information started to come together and I asked the spirits of the land to help me in my move to the island. Within one day, I got the house I am living in. In that week, I met incredible people who joined me in meditations in nature and in caves, and I shared my story with them.

Alongside this quest, the job I had started became heavy. Working overtime, huge pressures, nothing was enough, and I started to notice the personality of my boss was more than just picky or difficult. I had difficulty sleeping; my cortisol was through the roof.

I started to prepare for the move, and even though my role was remote, it felt impossible to continue with it. The pressure turned into mistreatment and ended in a meeting where I was shouted at and called names for not being willing to stay.

Two days before the big move, I joined the Summer Solstice ceremony of my teacher, where she took us on a Shamanic Drum ceremony.

It was here that a huge tree spirit appeared in my vision. It said to me, to go to Fanal forest when I arrived on the island, that they would be waiting for me there.

So I did.

Now Your Mission Begins

As I arrived at Fanal forest, I ran up the hill towards a specific tree that called me (in the picture below, you see the tree I connected with!).

I put my hand against its trunk, I closed my eyes, and they took me in directly.

A deep voice said to me, ‘Welcome back, we are so happy you are here, thank you for listening to our call’ and I hear all the trees of the forest saying ‘Thank you’ with all their different voices.

‘Now your mission begins’, the tree said. Tears started rolling through my cheeks (I tear up as I write this too), I felt at home for the very first time in my life.

They show me how there is an energetic grid that the trees create here that uplifts the frequency of the entire island. It is an important energetic vortex for the island, and with the amount of tourists coming every single day to this beautiful place (with trees over 800 years old), it has been hard for them to keep the energy high. They are not angry at us, they just need help.

‘And that is why we called you’ they said.

They asked me to bring people to anchor their hearts to the grid and help uplift and fortify the network. Humans and Earth, working together again, remembering our sacred connection.
And so I did. I started organizing groups to come together with me to this magical forest, to journey towards the underground realm and feel this connection.
What was most surprising to me was that even the most skeptical people would feel the spirit of the trees and could sense the grid.
Three weeks after my encounter with the trees of Fanal, I met a local man who was giving a full-day workshop about the Ley Lines and power places on the island.
As I arrived at the meetup point, he said ‘*The island is calling old souls to come help reconnect to the spirits of the island and help her heal*’. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Even though I was already following the whispers of the land, to hear this from the mouth of someone else, especially a local, was the confirmation that I didn’t know I needed. (The reason why this calling is happening is a long story for another time).

Walking the Path

By the end of 2024, I began offering Tree Communication workshops to teach people this skill we all have access to. Since then, I’ve guided multiple groups, and continue to do so. I’ve co-created ceremonies with Miguel, the man I met, who has now also written a book about the magic of this island. I’ve deepened my work with the land, and built a life I never could have planned.

I never thought that I could ever feel so at home on a land that wasn’t where I was born. Sharing my psychic gifts here feels natural, and nobody looks at me with strange eyes; on the contrary. People want to know more, share their own stories and feel seen through my own honest expression. My land healing work here continues every day, from singing to prayers and communication.

If this story found you… Maybe there’s something calling you, too. Thank you for reading. I hope my story can help you bring you back to this connection to the Earth that also lives within you in every cell and particle of your body.

How a Land Spirit told me to move to a paradise island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.