Michelle Adam is an experienced writer, teacher, and healer. She recently published her novel, Child of Duende, after twenty-plus years as a magazine and newspaper writer. Her articles have appeared in The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine; Hibernia Magazine, an Irish magazine; Vista Magazine, a Hispanic insert of major national newspapers; and multiple other publications.
Michelle has also been a photographer and artist; has taught middle school students Spanish for the past dozen years; and has worked as a healer and shaman. Michelle has created healing and teaching circles of song and sound, assisting others in awakening the spirit of the earth, “duende,” within them, and creating a space for the celebration of life.
ByMichelle Adam
The Soul knows the Way. She always does. So Stop and Listen. Today is 20 years after 9/11. It’s 20 years since the United States was paralyzed, even if for just a few moments, by terrorists that took down our greatest symbol or “reaching for the stars”. Terrorists terrorized and stopped us in our tracks…
ByMichelle Adam
Present reflections tied to May 2001 journal entries about my healing journey – The crows flocked to the bare tree branches of winter, and then, within seconds, flew off to become black wings against the clear blue skies of New Mexico. They came as quickly as they left, together, in a rhythm that reminded me…
ByMichelle Adam
Where does FEAR and TIGHTNESS come from? Why is it that back in 2001, I had so much tightness in my body that I could barely move without great pain? What had paralyzed my legs and the rest of me far beyond the groin-pull injury I had begun with? As I lay on the floor in…
ByMichelle Adam
I received a text, followed by the local news last Thursday evening: our New Mexico schools would close for three weeks. As a teacher, I was relieved. After all, the schools, especially at this time of the year, had already become a cesspool of germs, and with the Corona Virus it was just one too…
ByMichelle Adam
Today, I remembered it as if it were yesterday. I was in my father’s apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I sat on the bed in one room, in massive pain from the night before when I had pulled my arm backwards to pick something off the floor I had pushed off the night table by…
ByMichelle Adam
“I have a dream” are the most memorable words associated with Martin Luther King Jr., the man celebrated for having had the courage to act on his dreams, no matter how unfathomable at the time. Back then, in the 1960s, he was denounced as an extremist, as so many of us are when our dreams…
ByMichelle Adam
I want to talk about Death. Yes, Death. That one we whisper ever so quietly because she has become a four-letter word in a world that resists surrender. That resists letting go. That resists dying what no longer serves us in order to maintain the pain of living that we’ve become far too accustomed to….
ByMichelle Adam
The sun paints the sky in bright pink, orange, and grey-blue streaks as it sets here in New Mexico. Our Sandia mountains reflect the evening like the inside of a watermelon. And on the weekends, after a week of finding play and joy in my work, my shared home, Casa de Duende, becomes a place…
ByMichelle Adam
What is power? How do feelings of powerless impact our connection to each other and the earth? As a child we don’t know what power or being in our power means. We come into the world needing food, water, love…all the basics…and we rely on those who raise us to provide these necessities so we can grow…
ByMichelle Adam
“For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for a second, and not move our arms so much,” wrote the Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda in his poem “A Callarse” more than fifty years ago, when life moved much slower than it does today. He added, “Perhaps a…
ByMichelle Adam
I returned almost a month ago from Spain, from a book tour with my novel in Spanish, Niña Duende: Un Viaje del Espíritu, presented in four cities (Madrid, Murcia, Málaga, and Granada) and six venues. My journey to Spain was a homecoming, a return to the land that had shown me my soul. And this…
ByMichelle Adam
“Love is receiving the grace of God in whatever form it shows up and not being afraid to do so,” I wrote in my journal of early 2001 as I continued to heal from an injury that had become chronic. I had been in New Hampshire back then, dog sitting for friends so I could…
