Marie-Laure Valandro was brought up in Dijon Burgundy, France from the age of 6 months, but she was born in Tunisia where her parents were working. She spent the first 6 years of her life with her extended family from her mother the oldest of 12 children who lived on a very poor farm in the Burgundy hills and her father of Italian descent (Venice/Alps) where they had a home in their Italian/French compound on the outskirts of Dijon.
She learned to love the farm life at her grandfather’s and her many aunts and uncles who all played musical instruments. In the barns she ran around, with the cows, sheep, german shepherds, horses, etc. learning how to make butter and making a run to the store in the little village of Lantenay with her aunts trekking through the thick woods and down into the valley (about 5 miles round trip). That is where her love of walking stemmed from.
She attended high school, college and graduate school in the USA receiving a B.A. in education and languages and MA in romance languages and literature.
She moved back to Paris after teaching in the Boston School system for two years. In France, she visited as many sacred sites as she could afford. St. Denis in northern Paris was one of her favorites as well as Notre de dame cathedral.
The family moved to Wisconsin in 1996 and acquired a 60 acre farm in the East troy area which had a biodynamic farm and a circle of friends studying the work of R. Steiner. She began a painting school dedicated to the work of Liane Collot D’herbois whom she met in Holland in 1994 with Yanny Magger. The school was closed in 2006 due to lack of enrollment.
In 2012, she moved to the Pacific Northwest to be with her son, a fisherman and his wife and their growing family, 3 sons, of which she is in awe as a grandmother. She lives on a Native Indian reservation and enjoys the quiet and special atmosphere of the land next to the sea.
She has been blessed to be able to live in the land of the long icy, white fairytale winters in Canada, in the granite land of a New England village, Wisconsin farm land, and now the Pacific Northwest with its wealth of flowering trees (rhododendrons) and strong growth forces due to our long daylight hours.
Now, the surrounding very old mountain range, the younger Volcano Mt. Baker, facing her home and the ocean at her door step with its many islands, her large flower gardens, make it an ideal place for her love of the outdoors, which keep her healthy in body/mind/soul so that she can write a few more books.
