When Cydney Mariel Galbraith walked into a head-trauma ward carrying a harp, the room was filled with wounded Israeli soldiers in the early stages of long recoveries, many with family members seated close by. She and others with her had brought bags of small personal items — things like skin cream — but it was the sound of music that transformed the atmosphere. The moment she began to play, she said, the soldiers “just lit up.”
“‘Oh, play me another song, play me another song,’” they called out to her.
For Galbraith — a former competitive cyclist who has since become an artist, textile designer, musician, and student of food, flowers, and gardens — that hospital visit crystallized the reason she felt drawn back to Israel: simply to be there. “To say to you, ‘I came for you,’” she explained.
When asked which of her many pursuits means the most to her, she answered without hesitation: “Definitely, I will have to say Jerusalem is my highest joy.”
Originally from Canada, Galbraith has made multiple trips to Israel over the years. Her most recent visit, made with Curt Landry Ministries, became something she could not walk away from. She chose to stay for an extended time, driven by what she described as a spiritual urgency to understand the country at a deeper level.
“I had a word from above, and it was ‘Just show up,’” she said. “When I got my feet back on this ground, I thought, ‘What’s the big hurry to get home?’”
A committed Christian, Galbraith said her bond with Israel is grounded in faith and in her support for the Jewish people. “I know that Hashem’s heart is here for the Jewish people,” she said, describing her time there as a chance to truly learn. She said that learning extends to Israel’s culture, its diversity, and the visual richness she encounters — as well as what she sees as a pressing need to confront antisemitism back home.
“We see so much shaking in the world today,” she said. “We see the rising of antisemitism, especially in our nation.”
Her goal, she added, is to move beyond surface impressions and connect with Israel through its people. “It has been a burden in my heart to come and learn myself — learn about the culture, learn deeper in the realms of the people here, the beautiful color, the diversity.”
Regarding her hospital visits, Galbraith said she had been welcomed into humanitarian-aid efforts supporting Israelis during the war and its aftermath. She believes much of the Western world fails to grasp the full weight of what Israeli society has experienced. “Our Western part of the world has no understanding what Israel has been through,” she said.
Inside the wards, she encountered soldiers in rehabilitation — some dealing with severe, life-changing physical injuries. Yet despite the gravity of what surrounded her, she sensed something unexpected. “There was hope in that hospital,” she said.
Playing the harp became her way of offering presence rather than words. “That was probably one of my biggest joys,” she said of performing for the soldiers, “and recognizing I have so much to give. We have so much to give.”
Her sense of spiritual calling also shaped a visit to the Temple Mount alongside Rabbi Yehuda Glick. During an early-morning tour, she said she found herself singing internally — because, as she described it, non-Jewish visitors are not permitted to sing or dance at the site.
“I was singing in my spirit,” she said.
While there, an NBC reporter approached her with questions about the site and the land. Caught off guard, she responded from the convictions that have guided her travels and her art.
“The Lord has promised that it will be restored,” she said. “We don’t know what Hashem is going to do, but He did promise us that it will be a house of prayer for all nations.”
When asked about statements she had made regarding Muslims and the future of the site, she was clear that her vision was not about exclusion. “It’s not about moving anyone out,” she said. “It’s about reclaiming the promise and the covenant promise that God has made to the Jewish people here.” She returned again to the phrase she considers central: “It is a house of prayer for all nations.”
Long before she became known for silk scarves, paintings, and musical performances, Galbraith spent a decade representing Canada in road cycling and mountain biking competitions across the country and internationally. She describes her younger self as intensely driven.
“I was an overachiever, a striver and a go, go, go getter — very determined, very goal driven,” she said. But beneath all that momentum, something felt hollow. “Deep down inside of my heart, I knew that wasn’t who I was. I knew there was more.”
At 24, she hit what she calls rock bottom and made the decision to stop racing the way she had been. “I just basically said, ‘I don’t want to be racing like this anymore,’” she recalled.
That turning point redirected her toward music and visual art. “When you’re at the end of yourself, you’re at the beginning of God,” she said. A creative identity emerged that gave her both a voice and a path toward healing.
That path eventually led her to create Happy Holy City, the first scarf she made for Jerusalem, roughly a decade ago. The piece is far more than a fashion item — it blends color, imagery, poetry, and song. Each scarf she creates includes original writing. “On every one of my scarves, I write a poem, I write a song,” she said.
Happy Holy City reflects her vision of joy in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, and the restoration of the Tabernacle of David. “We will dance, and we will sing,” she said, “and we will see the restoration.”
Her creative process is as layered as the work itself. She stretches silk across a frame, paints it, adds writing, then steps away and returns to it again and again — sometimes over the course of several weeks. “Every time I walk by it, I’ll paint something on it,” she said. Once the original is finished, she photographs it and produces small runs using textile-printing machines. The design incorporates imagery connecting her Canadian background and her devotion to Israel, including both countries’ flags. “It’s full of color and promise,” she said.
The original Happy Holy City painting now hangs in Nahariya — a fact that carries deep personal meaning for its creator.
Around 2018 or 2019, Galbraith had saved enough money to bring her parents to Israel for the first time. She had paintings and scarves ready for the trip and was eager to show them Jerusalem. Then, the day before their flight, a dog ran into her during a walk with her father. The collision shattered the left side of her body and required immediate surgery. “I was still determined, ‘I’m going to Israel. I’ve got everything ready,’” she recalled. But travel was impossible. She sent her parents ahead without her — and asked them to bring the painting and scarves to Jerusalem.
Living in Calgary, Alberta at the time, she struggled to make sense of the disruption. “I thought I would never walk again,” she said.
Her recovery, she said, went beyond the physical. “It wasn’t just a physical healing that I received,” Galbraith said. “It was an emotional healing to trust that I will come back to Jerusalem.”
She did return — four or five more times by her count. The artwork she once had to send ahead now hangs in Israel. “I will keep coming until I get to live here,” she said.
Galbraith is currently working toward producing some of her scarf designs within Israel, while continuing to sell them primarily through her website, lovespurelight.com.
But the scarves are only one thread in a larger story — one that includes the athlete who learned to stop pushing so hard, the artist who stitches poems and prayers into silk, the traveler who comes to listen and learn, and the harpist whose music brings light into hospital wards.
As her interview wrapped up, she was invited to perform one of the songs she had played for wounded soldiers — a piece rooted in the biblical priestly blessing. It was a fitting close to a story that began with an artist arriving not with answers, but with music and a willingness to stay.
For Galbraith, that may be the whole point. “Just show up,” she said.
