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Sharon Black
Having worked as a journalist in the city for many years, our arrival in rural France in 2001 proved a bit of a culture shock to say the least. When we founded our first retreat (a small venue just a few miles north of where we live now) our children were very young and I poured all my energy into being a mum as well as helping to set up the business.
A couple of years later, I completed a training course to become a qualified Louise Hay (author of 'You Can Heal Your Life') workshop facilitator, having been helped enormously by her self-development ideas in my own life, and I worked for a time with individuals and groups, sharing her philosophy and methods.
Since then we have moved location, buying the beautiful hamlet of Gardoussel in 2005, and have set up a larger venue for our holiday courses. A lot of renovation and building work was required in the first few years and now, with the venue completed and our work-life ticking over increasingly smoothly, both Alex and I have more time to focus our energies where we want them to be.
Recently I have returned to my original passion of writing. No longer articles for newspapers and magazines but my own poetry. Living in the mountains is a huge source of inspiration. I also find being with other writers enormously inspiring in itself, and to this end I launched a small program of writing events - so that I can spend time with fellow language-lovers to my heart's content! This venture has its own website www.abricreativewriting.com. Details of my own poetry and published collections can be found on my website: www.sharonblack.co.uk
I also run Pindrop Press, a poetry publisher based between Scotland and France: www.pindroppress.com
My greatest achievement in life is having somehow managed to raise two daughters who are the kind of kids I would have chosen to have, had I been presented with a list of personal attributes when I was heavily-hormonal and pregnant with our first daughter. They are both far lovelier than I could have hoped to imagine - a constant source of amazement. Other than that, to have a supportive partner who is happy for me to go off for days at a time to contemplate my literary navel in some far-flung place when I feel the need. (On second thoughts, not really an achievement, more a lucky landing...)
What I love about living and working here is the many wonderful people we have the privilege to meet and get to know as they pass through our home and into our hearts. There's something special about the place we live in: an intimacy with nature and with others than the cradle of these mountains provides. The sky so blue and hills so green that you can almost believe you've stepped out of the normal colour spectrum until you realize that the change is not in the world around you, it's inside.
