ByMichelle Adam
There are times when no amount of wanting, willing, or determination will bring us to that place we wish to go. The past lives in every cell of our body—whether from this lifetime or another—until we are able to hear, feel, be with what is trying to speak its voice through us so that we may,…
ByMichelle Adam
Living in the hills of Oakland, California, was too much heaven for my hips after months of painfully traveling up and down five flights of stairs to survive. Looking out through immense windows of my idyllic home perched above the Bay and, in the distance, the San Francisco Bridge, was breathtaking, but I couldn’t live…
ByMichelle Adam
It’s not a dream or my imagination. It’s a vision as far as I can tell. I see a woman in pure white, with a baby burning in her belly. I get scared. But this lady tells me not to fear, and invites me to take the baby into my arms despite the burning, dark…
ByMichelle Adam
I’m sitting on my bed in the living room of my home in the hills of Oakland, California . I’m not alone. A friend, who is a professional massage therapist, is on my bed as well, giving a massage to Archie, the man I met on the plane ride months ago—the one who inspired me to…
ByMichelle Adam
There are times when you are down and out, and have nowhere to go, and then your mother shows up. This is one of those times. I’m still in the hills of Oakland, California, writing the beginning pieces of what is later to become my novel, and then my mother visits. I’ve been in pain…
ByMichelle Adam
“I was born in the back of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of these things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory…” Isabel Allende’s words, her soul’s magical expression from her novel Eva…
ByMichelle Adam
Debilitated from having pushed myself dancing in California, I travel, armed with crutches, to New York State, to our annual family reunion at my uncle’s house. I haven’t seen family for more than a year, and never in this condition I’m in. Everything I do at my uncle’s house and on his pond is an effort. At…
ByMichelle Adam
I can’t keep track of time as one day bleeds into another in my home in the hills of Oakland, California. My bed is still in the middle of the living room, but if it weren’t for my friend Geri coming over almost every night and massaging my legs and calves, I wouldn’t be able…
ByMichelle Adam
I am sitting in my bed in the living room of my home in California’s Oakland hills. I have nowhere to go now, no matter what I want to do. I am no longer working and I’ve applied for temporary disability. It’s a strange feeling to be in such a beautiful place with a gorgeous…
ByMichelle Adam
Life has never been the same since my ballet class in San Francisco. I’ve been in perpetual pain, despite the help I received from the chiropractor. When I walk, my hips swell up, becoming inflamed and making it too painful to dance, let alone move around. My injury that began as a groin pull when…
ByMichelle Adam
I am sharing dinner with my friend Jane and her girlfriend on the patio of my new home in Oakland, California. With good wine, food, and a view that looks out over the entire San Francisco Bay, it’s hard to imagine a better place to be. We are living in paradise, I think. The water…
ByMichelle Adam
I look up, from my car, at this beautiful house towering over me in the hills of Oakland, California. I’ve just completed 16 hours of driving, with a night’s sleep in between, and before me are three tall sets of stairs to merely enter the house. Once inside, I discover another two full sets of stairs…