Places That Claimed Me: Matrilineal Lands and the Body’s Knowing

Walking where the Motherline still pulses, and what happens when land remembers you first.

There are places I visit, and places that visit me.
Places that call my name before I even know why I’ve come.
The land knows something, and I follow with bare feet and an open heart.

One of the things I love about travel is the planning. I search for places that call me to come closer, that ask for more than a postcard moment. These places feel like they remember a part of me. And when I arrive, I begin to remember a part of myself.

I’m drawn to places where the hum of the goddess rises through the soil. Where Gaia is not an idea or metaphor but a living presence underfoot. These are not sightseeing trips. They are crossings. Openings. Encounters that reshape me.

In most places, I’ll photograph the plants, learn the local herbs, maybe find a charm or poem in the market. But in the places that claim me, I forget what time it is. I walk without direction. I cry in quiet corners without knowing why. My dreams shift. Something old moves in my bones and tells me which way to turn.

I love to travel almost anywhere. I love the texture of history, the way a city holds its shape, the invitation to learn something new.
But there are places I stay longer. Places I return to.
Places that widen the space in my chest the longer I remain.

In these places, I’ve noticed something.

The land feels respected. The relationship between people and place has not been erased by convenience or cement.
The women feel steady and generous. They are not acting from fear. They carry something older than resistance. A rhythm that kept beating even when the world around them tried to silence it.

Slow travel allows me to find that rhythm. Sometimes it takes ten days just to unwind the part of me that’s been bracing against noise, to feel what this place has always known.   I want time to sleep, to wake, to find the rhythm of the land.  To the people here I might seem to be hiding in plain sight but for me I’d like to absorb everything I can 

Right now, I’m staying in the countryside of northern Netherlands. Friesland was its own country until just over a century ago. The farmhouse I’m in is almost two hundred years old and sits only nine kilometers from the sea. Water has always shaped this land. Early settlers raised the ground with earth, bone, clay, and ash to keep their homes above the flood. These raised mounds are called terpen. They are human-made, built to last through storms and centuries.

On this land there’s a gentle rise, a terp that holds more than history. At its edge stands a carved stone, worn and softened, a fertility figure watching the threshold between house and field. It is not ornamental. It is presence. It is memory. I see it as an altar to the ones who came before and a quiet guardian of the woman I become each time I step outside.

I’ve begun to call the mound Moedebult, which means Mother Rise. It sits at the southwest corner of the property, tucked in thick trees and still untouched by time.

This land holds something sacred. The house does too. I am surrounded by fields of hay and rotating livestock, and everything breathes. There is space to exhale without permission. There is room for me here, and the land seems to know it.

I watched a thunderstorm roll across the sky while sitting in a glass dining room, three walls open to wind and light. The clouds moved with weight and grace. The trees leaned into it. The dogs slept through it all. I felt like I was being sung to by something far older than language.

There is a way that women move here that I rarely see elsewhere. Their shoulders stay open. Their voices are steady. They do not measure their worth in performance or pretend. The land moves the same way. It does not shrink. It does not beg. It holds.

In many places, women feel tension from being seen. In these places, that tension fades. You feel welcomed, not managed. You feel part of something that doesn’t need you to be anything but real.

I think that’s what happens when the matrilineal line is still intact. The feminine doesn't have to fight for space. It simply exists, and everything around it adjusts.

In Matera, Italy, families once lived in caves carved into the hills. The churches there still carry images of cattle and humans in ecstatic embrace. The rest of the country once shamed Matera for being behind, for taking too long to convert to Christianity. But I felt something else. In those caves, I felt expressed. I felt remembered. I felt free.

Not far from there, in the south of Italy, is a town where a Temple of Isis was discovered during a renovation. In Lecce and throughout Italy, the grip of patriarchy is strong. But there are pockets of beauty and resistance, places where the worship of Isis was quietly woven into the edges of Catholic ritual. Only women were allowed in the temple. Priestesses walked those stone floors. And each time I return, I feel something deep in my body respond.

My hips knew those caves before I did. My breath slows in the Isis temple before I’ve even stepped across the threshold. My body remembers rituals I was never taught.

It is not just about statues or stories. It is the way your shoulders drop when you enter a space. It is the quiet joy of not having to explain yourself. It is the way a place can wrap around you like a prayer and say, You can stop running now.

Places That Claimed Me

Matera, Italy
Womb-like caves, stone silence, carved life. What does it mean when history is etched into limestone?

Lecce and the Temple of Isis
Layered spiritual authority and subtle erotic sovereignty. Isis as a cosmopolitan mother whose worship traveled, endured, and shape-shifted.

Tsangkarada, Pelion
Women still run the mountain, in myth and in rhythm. The scent of lemon leaves, goat bells, and stories about Hekate that move like wind through branches.

Easterein, Friesland
Land built on terpen. Quiet strength. Solidarity without needing to speak. A place where women are safe with one another.

The Body as Sacred Site: How I Carry These Lands With Me Now

These places gave me something, but they also asked for something in return.
They stripped away what was never mine to carry.

In Matera, I let go of hiding desire.
In Lecce, I released the fear of being misunderstood.
In Tsangkarada, I no longer rushed.
In Easterein, I stopped explaining my magic.

Each place offered me a mirror and asked me to step through. And I did.

They softened the parts I once held tight.
They helped me take off masks I had forgotten I was wearing.
They reminded me I was already close to the woman I wanted to be.
And then they watched as I laid down the stories that no longer fit.

I no longer separate myself from the places I love.
I carry Matera in how I pause when I enter a cave or dim room.
I carry Lecce in the way I bless my lovers.
I carry Tsangkarada in how I listen to trees.
And Easterein lives in the silence of my chest, in the way I know I belong without having to explain it.

A Love Letter to the Next Woman Who Wanders

You are not lost.
You are being remembered.

You may feel homesick for a place you have not met yet.
When you find her, your body will know.

She will not test you. She will not ask for performance.
She will wait for you to listen. And when you do, the door will open.

You will cross into something ancient and alive.
You will walk barefoot, and nothing in you will need to run anymore.