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For as long as Marlaina can remember, her knee-jerk impulse has been to create through every medium that called her. Today, her everyday life as a professional writer, painter, and composer often intersects with what 12th-century abbess Hildegard Von Bingen called viriditas, "the greening power" or divine, creative life force of nature.

Coming from a long line of visionary souls, Marlaina was raised by parents 

who exposed her to many philosophies and health modalities

while fostering her innate mediumistic abilities.

Through each of her disciplines, her singular focus is

to be a living bridge between inner and outer reality,

the tangible and the unseen.

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In 2016, after 25 years of battling myalgic encephalomyelitis

with only one brief and partial remission, she experienced a life-altering, lasting 

physical and emotional healing based upon mind-body connections and resonance.​
She chooses the road less traveled, opts out of smartphone mania,

and continues to create organically despite AI decimation of the arts.
Her everyday joys in her corner of rural Pennsylvania

include creating gourmet meals in a sunny kitchen,

brewing teas from her medicinal plant pantry of 100 herbs,

 and walking wildlife sanctuaries year-round 

with her beloved husband of 16 years,  Jos. C. Donato-  

an outdoorsman and the author of historical fiction.​​

Marlaina's lifelong inspiration and mentor was her mother Winifred ,
a multitalented singer-songwriter, poet, mystic, and Renaissance woman
who independently studied nutrition and managed health food stores
in New York City in the 1950s. 

From this early foundation, Marlaina continues to live by the premise

that the fusion of healing, art, and spirit is an immutable force.

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Listen to Marlaina's powerful title track of spoken word poetry and music,

the backbone of her Kósmos art exhibit: