After my large one woman exhibition had been shown by the Women's arts museum in Skelleftea in 1994 it traveled to venues further north, to Boden and then to Jokkmokk on the arctic circle in Saamiland/Lappland. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel with the exhibition and this was another dream come true. I was able to explore ancient Scandinavian and Saami sacred sites such as the Neolithic pectroglyphs on cliffs and rocks by the mighty rivers, standing stones in the form of ships or vaginas and labyrinths in the forests. I befriended Greta Huuva, Saami historian and feminist with great knowledge of her people's traditions, history, arts and crafts. I traveled up north with my Welsh friend Pam Thomas, who stayed with Greta and her family in Jokkmokk as well as an ecovillage/collective called Skogsnas not far from where I was born. Out of these journeys came paintings such as "Nordic Mother of the animals" and my book "The Norse Goddess" (published by Cheryl Straffon in Cornwall) about the religious mysteries of the Saami and the ancient Vanir people, a matrifocal Old European people of the northlands.

I have made a great many journeys over the years, many of them very exhausting as well as inspiring and exciting.

I have had to travel to Portugal to be with my son Toivo, his partner Annie, and my grandchildren, and to Sweden to see my brother and his family. My grandson, Tezra, was born in Portugal in 1989 and my granddaughter Jade in Wales in 1992.

In Britain I've exhibited at "The Blackie" in Liverpool in 1994 in "Women's Rites and with the Artesian Raw arts movement (2001), of which I am a matron, in Edinburgh,I gave talks at Pagan gatherings, the Rainbow 2000 spirit and dance camps and spoke at the Nature Religions Today conference in the Lake District 1996I've collaborated with Bob Stewart in his courses on the Faerie faith at the Earth Spirit centre in Somerset.My paintings have been on the cover of my friend, Serena Ronay-Dougal's, book "Where Science and Magic Meet" and on a number of other books, my articles published in anthologies etc.

In 1997 I exhibited smaller mixed media work at the Gaia Centre in Stockholm and in 1998 I took part, with paintings from the 60s. that I had done while working with the Vietnam movement, in an exhibition called "The Heart is on the Left". It was organised by 2 young male Gothenburg artists who were tired of the lack of radicalism in present day art. They traveled around the country and visited artists who did radical work in the period 1964-74. I was remembered and "God giving birth" was brought down from Skelleftea and my 60s work rescued from a friend's attic. The show included a ca. 50 artists and filled three floors of the immense arts hall in Gothenburg. My air fares were paid for and I was asked to speak on International Women's day, together with my friend Cilia Ericsson, about my life as a woman artist. I met up with many of the artists I had known well in the 60s. The exhibition traveled in Sweden and a magnificent catalogue was produced to go with it. Around this same time in 1998 we, a group of women artists from the UK (including myself and Susan Morland), Sweden and Germany - planned an exhibition that we called "Northern Current" It became an exchange show between the three countries and was shown in London, South Sweden and Lubeck in Germany.

I donated the 60s paintings to Museum Anna Nordlander, my WomanMagic paintings were already stored there, and traveled up north to repair them. It was uncanny working on paintings from the Vietnam movement era when presently USA were at it again in Afghanistan and Iraq. Depressing!

In October 1999 I traveled in the USA during 6 weeks for the launch of the updated version of my book on the New Age movement. The journey, publication of the book and transport of some of my paintings, for an exhibition in Austin Texas, were all paid for by Genevieve Vaughan, a radical feminist who inherited an oil fortune and is using her money to support women's projects and centers, indigenous women's work and spaces and women's Peace activism in USA. She has written a book on "Gift giving" and it was at her "Centre for the gift giving economy" that I had my exhibition, which later traveled to Casa de Colores near the Mexican border at Brownsville. This is a beautiful old building, in its own grounds near the Rio Grande, that Genevieve has given to Aztec-Mexican people as a cultural centre and we spent a wonderful four days at an indigenous people's gathering there.

I had met Genevieve at the Goddess conference in Glastonbury and she had bought my painting "Sekhmet, lion headed Goddess of fire and sun" for her Sekhmet temple in the Nevada desert. On my journey in 1999 I was able to visit the beautiful little temple which is open to the elements, sculptures in there by the late Marsha Gomez, a wonderful indigenous artist. She created the sculpture of "La Madre del Mundo'' who sits by the Rio Grande to protect those who flee across the borders from Mexico, and also by the nuclear test site on Shoshone land in the Nevada desert. I journeyed to many places during that tour in California, New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin and finally to Mexico itself. Everywhere I did innumerable talks and slideshows. I found it all incredibly exhausting and developed bronchitis on the way and was coughing and sometimes almost delirious and feverish. What I found however, as I traveled, was that Our Lady of Guadalupe loomed larger and larger in my mind and dreams. I had extraordinary visions of Her and felt compelled to visit her cathedral and shrines at Tepeyac on the outskirts of Mexico city. This is where a poor Aztec shepherd had seen the visions of Her hundreds of years ago. She is an indigenous dark woman and what She said to him was, "I am the Mother of your people". At Tepeyac, with its rock, and waterfalls, had been  the ancient shrine of thepre-Aztec Goddess Tonanzin. Every time I entered the cathedral of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe I burst into tears and felt incredibly emotional. It was Georgeann Johnson, and the group of American women around her, living in San Miguel Allende who brought me to Mexico as they wanted me to do a slideshow and speak of my work. In spite of the illness and traumas of the long journey it became like a shamanic experience of death and rebirth and all was well after all. Nuestra Senora lives in me now. I had thought that I was going to Mexico city to see Frieda Kahlo's museum and Diego Rivera's great murals, but this was not to be.

In 2002 I took part with Susan Morland and Margarita Dobrovolskaya Izotova in an exhibition, at the Museum Gallery of the University in St Petersburg and we called it "Windows to Other worlds". It opened on Samhain/Halloween itself. This was the second time that I visited Russia. I had traveled there in September 2000 with Feja Lesniewska to take part in an important 5 days international conference near Moscow on how to protect the primeval boreal Taiga forest of Siberia and the indigenous people, related to Saami, who live there.

I grew up in the north of Sweden with that same forest and love it passionately, this is my reason for taking part in the conference organised by Russian environmentalists and the Taiga Rescue Network based in Jokkmokk in Sweden.

Feja and I stayed with her friends, the incredibly loving and generous artist couple, Margarita and Sasha Dobrovolsky, in St Petersburg. I fell in love with Margarita's beautiful and luminous large fibre and textile hangings, looking like contemporary icons. We discussed the possibility of exhibiting together and to our amazement it actually happened. In the meantime Sasha died from a heart-attack in his sleep and we were all devastated. Our "Windows to Other Worlds" exhibition will be shown 31st March - 22nd April 2004 at the Create Centre Gallery in Bristol where I exhibited in 2001, with paintings of the forest and of Nordic motifs, to complement an event we put on there as BREN (British Russian Environmental Network). The exhibition will also be shown 14th August -12th September 2004 at New Hall, the Women's College at Cambridge. Both Susan and I are included, with donated work in the "Women's art at New Hall" permanent collection.

As I am writing this I am not able to walk without support as I now have secondary cancer that has damaged my spine, gone into the bones. My traveling days are probably over since air travel damages an already weakened spine, which I found to my cost when I flew to Portugal in June 2003 to stay with my son and family.

I want to add that I was painting "Rites of Passage" in 1994, during the very time that Marija Gimbutas was dying from her cancer. I was using images from her books as well as The Avebury Stones. That painting belongs now to the Marija Gimbutas archive, in Joan Marler's home in California, and it was also on the cover of an anthology celebrating Marija's life and work as a groundbreaking and visionary feminist archaeologist, called "Meeting the Ancestors". Perhaps we will meet again soon Marija.

I was taking part in the 2003 Glastonbury Goddess Conference, 31st July to 4th August (organised as always by Tyna Redpath and Kathy Jones) dedicated to the "Nine Morgans", being wheeled around in a wheelchair, when my legs completely gave way. It was terrifying! I was exhibiting many " recent paintings in the Assembly rooms and managed to give a 3 hour slideshow/talk about "African origins and Tanit" of the Berber/Phoenicians of Carthage. A whole hour involving all the hundreds of women there and led by Kathy Jones was devoted to giving me healing which was powerful and amazing and left me feeling high in spirit in spite of my illness. After that I spent 2 months in the BRI Oncology ward.(I am now living in a residential home waiting to be rehoused)

Many women in the USA and in Britain have been sending me healing and blessings and our AMA MAWU group of women has, as always, been a great and loving support. Vicki Noble and Leslene della Madre came to Bristol from the USA to give me healing while I was in the hospital and Jane Lowe and Kathy Estell, also from California, are attempting to make a video film about my life and art. I want to thank all the wonderful women, and some men, who have given me so much love, healing and sustenance, not least Maggie Parks, Sheila Broun, Nancy Rollason and Marie France Riboulet .

Thank you and Blessed Be.
Monica Sjöö
Nearly Samhain, October 2003

Monica added the following in Feb 2004:

I have now had a major retrospective exhibition 28 jan-25 feb, 2004 at the beautiful Hotbath gallery in Bath. I called it ''Through Space and Time the ancient Sisterhoods spoke to me''.
Maggie Parks, Sheila Broun, Jill Smith, Cheryl Straffon were all involved in making it happen and we all did workshops and slideshows during the exhibition.