Welsh singer and songwriter Charlotte Church has shared what is driving her to keep going through the stressful journey of renovating Laura Ashley's former country mansion into a nature-based health and wellbeing retreat.
In her new programme Charlotte Church's Dream Build on the Really Channel, viewers are sharing Charlotte's traumas and triumphs of the transformation of Rhydoldog House in Powys across eight episodes.
The 35-year-old singer is struggling to realise her dream of renovating and opening the country home into a wellbeing and health retreat and occasional wedding venue by a deadline of June 2022. Find out more about previous episodes of Charlotte Church's Dream Build here.
There has been a costly discovery in the garden left by the former owner - not the Ashley family, Charlotte is keen to point out - that has cost her £10,000 to fix.
There are complications trying to rush through designs with her architects to try and get plans into the local council for consideration and gain that elusive planning consent in time for the builders to get the renovation project finished on time.
The building team are having to dig up part of the garden to try and find the mysterious septic tank, with rods down drains and even cameras failing to find the final destination of the waste from the main house.
Only part of the original staircase remains, and as the building is not listed Charlotte has decided, against everyone else's advice, to remove the rest.
She wants a new staircase with a tree growing through the centre of it, a mash up between a staircase and a forest; good luck with that one Andrew the architect.
She's also worried about her dad's health and the finances are starting to dwindle so a second mortgage looks inevitable.
So why, when life is full enough with her family, her career, the Arwen Project school that she runs with husband Johnny and her home near Cardiff, is she ploughing through this experience that she admits can keep her awake at night with worry?
Charlotte explains that her life experiences have led to this and that nature has been so important to her wellbeing.
She says: "Nature soothes us, it's peaceful and helps us deal with whatever is going on in our lives." And Charlotte thinks Rhydoldog and the land that surrounds it will chelp people come and reflect and rebuild with nature.
"I don't think my interest in healing is to do necessarily with the fact that was a famous child or anything like that because, I mean, I had a ball for the majority of the time - I travelled the world and I sang with orchestras.
"And it as hard and the press stuff was really difficult when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, and being a young mother, and that was all a lot.
"But I think it's more just to do with trauma - everybody's got it - it's ten a penny you know, and for some people that trauma is really big - terrible abuse, terrible neglect - for other people it's much smaller.
"I'm on my own journey I think, on unblocking myself, you know, working through trauma, childhood, all of it - the same as everybody really, but I just feel really lucky to have started that process because so many people haven't even started the process.
"My neighbour said something - the only way out is through, and the only way through is back, sort of meaning that you have to go back into your past."
Episode three of Charlotte Church's Dream Build is on Discovery's Really channel on Tuesday, January 25 at 9pm. All episodes are vailable to stream on discovery+.
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