ByMichelle Adam
The memories came flooding back to me today…holding my father’s hand, still warm with a gentle pulse, as I lay my head down at his side on the hospital bed inside the living room. He was finally sleeping after the on-and-off pain he endured due to the melanoma that spread blisters up his legs and…
ByMichelle Adam
The gourd sits on my table. A gold-carved design caresses its top. Equally ornate metal straws sit inside. The gourd was once my father’s, used for drinking Yerba Mate, a tea Argentinians drink as a national past-time and obsession. My father’s bombilla remains with me although he left almost two years ago. It reminds me…
ByMichelle Adam
At some point in our lives—if we are fortunate enough—we wake up to discover the lie we have been living. What lie?: the lie of being unworthy; the lie that we have nothing to give; the lie that we are an emaciated child, empty, and desperate for the world outside of us to define us…
ByMichelle Adam
Have you ever traveled deep into your pain, only to discover it wasn’t yours?…only to discover it was love, an immense love you carried for another so fully that you were carrying their pain inside you? Back in New England, in the winter of 2001, I embarked on a shamanic journey—a lucid dreaming into my…
ByMichelle Adam
The fire burned full and dark that night on the beach when my friend and I watched a car go up in flames under winter’s full moon. Unknowingly, we watched a man take his life, and weeks later, under the full moon, I gathered with shamans to help his lost soul cross to the other side….
ByMichelle Adam
Tonight the wind danced to chimes on the vine-covered tree outside my house, and a horse released wild cries as its front legs kicked defiantly into the air. I walked outside to record the sounds of what I later called “wind horse.” Tonight, after a month of absence, I also returned to the stories of…
ByMichelle Adam
What are the chances of opening to a page in my journal of 18 years ago, and coming across a passage about Trump? Well, it seems the chances are good. In December of 2000, I had copied the following information from a book about Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine: “The Tarot card Trump No.15…
ByMichelle Adam
The water came on Valentine’s night, in small droplets as it does here in New Mexico’s desert after long periods of drought. But then, bit by bit, these drops became real rain, unabashed, filling the air with long-awaited moisture that seeped down into the thirsty earth. That night I stepped outside of my boyfriend’s house…
ByMichelle Adam
The mist cleared beyond our retreat center at the top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, as we prepared to embark on the teachings of the medicine wheel of the North. We would learn the way of wisdom, of the ancestors, of the apus, the mountains that teach us that which we can’t see inside the…
ByMichelle Adam
Despite the growing cold of winter’s approach, I walked daily in the woods along the ocean at Odiorne Point, New Hampshire. I had moved closer to the ocean after my summer of healing on an inland farm, yet continued practicing walking meditations. My walks were inspired by lessons I had learned during my shamanic classes, especially…
ByMichelle Adam
Three months had come and gone on the New England farm during the summer of 2000. The long days and nights of healing, walking, meditating, gardening, dreaming, and connecting with God had come to an end as had Monday poetry gatherings, swimming pool extravaganzas, and shared time and feasts with Jean’s family and friends on the…
ByMichelle Adam
I used to walk along the forest path that lay across from the New England farmhouse where I lived in my early 30’s during my summer of 2000. Almost every day—when I wasn’t in too much pain from energy sessions intended to heal my hips—I walked the woods, learning to open my heart to life….