Texts in English

Elisa Roesch  President & Project Leader

Hello and thank you all for stopping time to welcome our eco-therapeutic project "LES TOITS DE L'ÂME".

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this introduction to Les Toits de l'Âme and the people who work with me in this association, which is so close to my heart and which has such an impact on our beautiful Alsace region.

I'm Elisa Roesch, 55, married with a daughter, living in Lautenbach (68).

I'm a former victim of serious child abuse and I campaign for prevention and support for victims and relatives of victims of sexual violence in childhood and adulthood.

Les Toits de l'âme aims to create a therapeutic environment accessible to all, where shared permaculture vegetable gardens will be developed. This represents much more than a new approach to gardening, it is a real philosophy of life in which animals, insects, human beings, plants and micro-organisms live in harmony in a healthy, balanced and autonomous environment.

The place of abused and abandoned animals is obvious to everyone, and their therapeutic benefits are well known.

We would like to thank and pay tribute to the people who have supported us on a voluntary basis in the creation of the association, for their generosity, availability and humanity:

Marlène Lyautey, lawyer at the Mulhouse bar

Mr Laurent Kachler, chartered accountant, Guebwiller

Vocation of Les Toits de l'âme :

Today, the Toits de l'âme association is very active in supporting victims of sexual violence and in developing and passing on therapeutic tools adapted to this type of trauma. We are at the foot of the Markstein in the Haut-Rhin. The association's aim is to create shared permaculture vegetable gardens that contribute to the therapeutic process, but also benefit the people involved in the process, by helping them to return to a healthy diet and giving them access to a place where they can thrive as a family or on their own. The creation of permaculture gardens enables us to meet our human needs, since the aim of a permaculture vegetable garden is to produce healthy, nutritious fruit and vegetables while taking care to respect nature and the ecosystem. Taking in animals is a very important aspect of the association, and we work with animal welfare associations to provide them with a loving environment in which to live. We welcome a variety of animals, including dogs, cats, goats, donkeys, chickens and ducks. Recovering our vital forces is the path we've embarked upon: we have something to pass on, something to share, something to support together!

Our wish today is to enable Les Toits de l'âme to grow in a setting that is suitable for sharing, welcoming and healing the wounds of the past, in a warm, family environment.

The aim of the association is to provide access, regardless of income, to therapeutic support tailored to the difficulties and needs of these people, and to recreate a secure family environment in which they can rebuild their inner security and self-esteem, so that they can regain a healthy and fulfilled physical and mental state and regain their emotional, relational and social autonomy.

As part of our efforts to prevent sexual violence, we will be organising open days with conferences given by various health professionals, associations, etc....

Under Pierre's guidance, we propose to learn how to approach, care for and share love with these animals.

Pierre accompanies the participants on meditative walks in the heart of nature, discovering living things, outings rich in emotion, sharing and serenity.

As Pierre is a man of great wealth, he will also be offering bread workshops where everyone can rediscover the pleasure of ancestral culinary knowledge, the softness of dough being kneaded and bursts of laughter!

For those who want to, there will be the opportunity to discover the beehives and honey production that have been in existence since this year, and which we hope to install on the future estate.

The site will include individual and group accommodation, all of which will be very convivial, with shared rooms so that everyone can develop at their own pace.

Chloé will welcome and care for people in their own facilities and around a sunny table, with her wonderful warm smile and gentle manner, she'll make sure they want for nothing.

We'll be surrounded by several hectares of nature, with trees offering us shade in summer for meals together, we'll be enchanted by the songs of the birds and the laughter of the children, and water sources, springs, rivers or ponds, which will bring us their freshness and water our vegetable gardens.

We would like to welcome people to live here for varying lengths of time in exchange for their voluntary participation in the upkeep of the permaculture vegetable gardens, which will partly feed the local residents, who will also benefit from the fruits of these crops for their own dietary needs.

We will be contracting with professionals who can train those who wish to take part in this form of cultivation, which brings biodiversity back to life and leaves plenty of room for healthy food.

For those who don't have a green thumb, there are a number of possible exchanges: they can also help with the care of the animals or other technical needs of the site.

All activities carried out by volunteers will be after training and always under the supervision of an active, permanent member of the centre.

Contracts respecting a charter drawn up by the association will be signed with the volunteers taking part in this wonderful place to live.

Les Toits de l'âme needs to extend its activities to a suitable location and, thanks to you, our generous donors, people who thought their suffering was irreversible will be able to embark on a path of resilience, where their fears will give way to their strength and their sadness will give way to their joy!

Thanks to you, individuals and families will be able to rediscover a more authentic way of life and produce their own food, while contributing to the smooth running of the association and the animals it takes in. Supporting the association through your donations helps to initiate each individual to adopt a form of ethics, as well as respect for various principles.

The primary values of permaculture can be summed up in three key points:

Respect for nature in its entirety: its inhabitants in whatever form they take (animals, insects, plants, forests, etc.)

Abundance and sharing through the redistribution of production surpluses

Respect for the individual, the community and future generations.

The main aim of permaculture is to design sustainable environments and ecosystems.

Permaculture brings together a number of concepts, including ecology, pedagogy and biomimicry. Organic farming, ethics, philosophy and landscape design are also associated with permaculture.

Thank you for this piece of light that you are going to bring to life and shine, and we hope that you will help to generate other places of this type!

To make this human project a reality, we need your financial donations. There is no such thing as a "small donation" - a donation is everything!

We're looking for donors and sponsors who are sensitive to the values of Les Toits de l'âme and who want to help us develop in a way that's both necessary and beneficial to everyone!

When the time comes, your donations of materials for the creation and upkeep of the premises, furniture, crockery, etc., as well as for the animals' needs, nappies, blankets, leashes, harnesses, transport cages, etc. .... will also be needed. We'll let you know when we're further advanced in the construction of the premises. 

Elisa Roesch, project leader, my story:

I was born into a simple environment where studies and instruction were not the priority, advantage or disadvantage?

The fact is that this led me to develop extraordinary autonomy and a desire to understand and experiment with every teaching before sharing them in my coaching approach.

Today, in the light of the road I've travelled, I've realised that I certainly wouldn't have acquired all this knowledge if I hadn't started my story in an environment that turned out to be extremely abusive and traumatic...

Children were not seen as living, sensitive, thinking beings, but as commodified, used for their own deadly needs, cast into the nothingness of abuse and the coldness of non-love.

In my flesh, in my life as a woman, I have experienced the dramatic consequences, the conditioning, the deconstruction of these many forms of abuse.

I was the victim of incestuous rape from the age of 4 until the age of 15 by my father, with the complicit silence of my mother, and molestation by three of my brothers. I suffered severe abuse, beatings by my mother and a total lack of a loving environment.

As a result of this traumatic childhood, I unconsciously gravitated towards abusive, disrespectful men and experienced the hell of domestic violence, including attempted murder.

I was interviewed by a psychologist at primary school, who was the first and last person I confided in about what I was going through. This man told me, "It's very bad form to lie, wouldn't you rather be fantasising about your father"!

I didn't know the meaning of that word, but I did understand that I had to keep quiet. That psychologist had condemned me to hell for the rest of my childhood!

My body somatised, triggering a multitude of health problems that went so far as to make me lose the use of my legs and arms, leaving me crushed in my armchair.

That was the beginning of a medical wandering that lasted for years, with no help, no solutions and, on top of that, unheard-of medical violence...

From time to time, I also met sympathetic doctors and other carers, but I have to say they were totally powerless to deal with what was happening to me, so it was simpler to offer me drugs that were supposed to silence my pain and my sleepless nights - all seemed irretrievably lost!

I no longer believed in therapy, given my disastrous experiences, until one day I met a different therapist...

I'd like to pay tribute to him here. His name is Jean-Guillaume Bellier, and he continues to support me in my repair work.

At his practice and during therapeutic courses, I experimented with emotional transmutation and various techniques involving psycho-corporal care. I became aware of my experience, studied in depth all the aspects of traumatic consequences and the strength of what I could bring to people affected by the same traumas.

I have travelled this long road of reconstruction and I am infinitely grateful to him, even though I know that day after day I am the one who wins this right to life and joy. Without him, without his humanistic approach, without his involvement, the path of suffering would have been irreversible!

I'm also very grateful to my family, my husband and my daughter for their support and love.

This story is there, it's part of my identity, it's engraved and what a marvellous discovery it is to be able to transform it day after day into strength, into power, into joy and that's what carries me towards others. 

I know how important it is to heal our wounds so that we are no longer at the mercy of all those mountains of suffering that were robbing me of the possibility of life! I've also been able to shed light on the conditioning and fears that cloud our vision, the vision of others, the vision of our own power, the vision of our creative power, the vision of our marvellous inner nature!

Having lived through all these traumas and having followed this therapeutic path enables me to understand and feel in depth the processes, the blockages and the paths to healing.

It puts me in touch with people who are experiencing the same suffering and enables me to support them differently, because I've experienced it from the inside.

I discovered the hospital environment when my daughter, who had serious health problems, was born. My constant presence at her side gave me the chance to meet some wonderful health professionals and, above all, the sick children, who gave me a special bond with them. I would like to thank them and their families for the trust they have placed in me...

During this journey of coming into contact with illness, my wonderful daughter was a source of learning and sharing for me.

From there, a succession of events and encounters changed the course of my life.

My experience as a voluntary carer began in 1998 with end-of-life care for children and adults, which I provided in hospitals and at home.

I had some very intense human and spiritual experiences, which are part of my foundation. Without even knowing it, this was the start of my project "Les toits de l'Âme", which I'm presenting to you today!

I was lucky enough to be part of Denis Ledogard's team at the chaplaincy of the Hautepierre University Hospital (67), with whom I took my first steps in accompanying adults at the end of their lives in hospital.

Feeling the need to learn more, I joined the JALMALV association, where I had access to a number of in-house training courses that also enabled me to support children at the end of life with their families.

It was one of the richest and most intense experiences I've ever had.

I always say that the first 3-year-old boy I had the honour of caring for was my teacher, my wise man who taught me about the suffering, questions, fears and joys of a sick child and to whom I pay tribute here - he was the beginning of everything!

My wish today is to create a place where the wounds of the past can be shared, welcomed and healed, in a warm, family environment. Above all, this place should be accessible to everyone, regardless of income, because this is a very common obstacle for these victims, who are often in precarious financial situations that don't allow them to pay for therapeutic follow-up.

The consequences of these traumas put them in physical and psychological situations where they develop various types of illness, impacting firstly on their schooling and then on their social standing! The good news is that this is not irreversible! There is life after horror! This is the message and the way of life that I would like to propose, with the help of the professionals at Les Toits de l'Âme.