In 1568 she founded her own reformed Carmelite monastery at Durelo. She founded more with the help of her close friend Saint John of the Cross. In the end seventeen new convents were set up, all of them disciplined, poor and enclosed communities where the priority of the sisters was prayer.
 Saint Teresa wrote a treatise, The Way of Perfection, for her nuns. She could be warm and affectionate. 'For the love of God get well,' she wrote to a sick prioress, 'eat enough and do not be alone or think too much.' She was humorous. (Being a small personal, she described herself as 'half a friar'.) She once wrote to an ally that, 'God treats his friends terribly, though, he does them no wrong in this, since he treated his Son in the same way.' Although her discipline was stern, she loved cheerfulness, once crying, 'God deliver me from sullen saints!' She traveled widely, striving against much opposition to reform the whole Carmelite order. She wrote an autobiography, countless letters and a second spiritual masterpiece, The Interior Castle.
From A Calendar of Saints,
The Lives of the Principal Saints of the Christian Year
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