Press Release: Memoir Shares Story of Free-Spirited Couple Married 47 Years and How Parkinson’s Disease Has Affected the Past 18

True love story shares how couples’ lifestyle defined their approach to dealing with the disease

ARROYO SECO, NM – Author Michelle Terrill Heath and her husband, Andy, earned their living as traveling artists, creating welded bronze jewelry and selling their art at juried shows in many states for over 30 years. They raised and home-schooled two children in the hand-built tiny home they crafted together in a mountain forest near Taos, NM, happily living the rustic adventure without running water, plumbing or electricity for over 24 years. However, in 2005, Andy was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease. 

In “Your Wildest Dreams,” Terrill Heath explores their family’s journey with Parkinson’s, from diagnosis to present-day success living with the disease. She writes about risks they took and the failures encountered. Since they didn’t have any health insurance, the family attempted to successfully use both alternative and conventional medicine for disease treatment. Since it is also a love story, Terrill Heath documents her life with Andy from their first meeting through the present, and all the exploits they experienced together, such as living in a housetruck while traveling around America, building a 125-foot suspension bridge at an orphanage in India and sailing a 37-foot trimaran sailboat across the Gulf of Mexico through a major storm.

Terrill Heath shares that, when faced with Parkinson’s, challenges from her family’s past experiences buoyed them up. When their art business began to fail or when the fidelity of their marriage was tested, more approaches emerged. The lessons they learned translated directly when faced with the reality of living with an incurable disease. She encourages the use of a combination of both alternative and conventional medicine and suggests that healing is achieved by living well in the present, not going back to living the same way as pre-diagnosis.