There was a time when the bedtime books lost their magic. I’d be sitting with my daughter, reading the same stories over and over. Stories that had once sparkled, but now felt flat. She was growing, curious, alive with imagination. So instead of reading, we started making things up. One sentence would lead to another, and suddenly we were inside a world no one had written yet.
She would ask me, “What happens next?”
And often, I didn’t know. The characters told us when they were ready. It felt less like we were inventing stories… and more like we were tapping into something already alive. Something waiting. Something quietly magical.
One day, she said, “You should write these stories down. So everyone can enjoy them". And that was it, the seed was planted.
At the time, I was still wrapped in a life that looked like success. Money, work, busyness, distraction. But none of it felt real. I started to feel that what mattered most wasn’t on any screen or schedule. It was time. And love. And the look in her eyes when the story surprised us both.
So I walked away from that world.
Now I live in the mountains of central Portugal. I’m building a tiny house with my own hands. Growing vegetables. Tending to bees. Drinking from the spring that runs through our land. Writing stories that remember what the world has forgotten. We called this life 'The Beekeeper Writer' because it’s part story, part soil and entirely alive.
The books became Leila’s Light. The honey became Mel da Terra. Our raw, forest-born honey, gathered from bees that live among chestnut and black walnut trees. Slowly, a new creation began to take root: Terra Escura Botanica, a wildcrafted wellness line born from the same intention, to care, to heal, to remember.
None of this was a plan. It was a return.
To wonder. To truth. To what matters.
And it all started with a bedtime story.
