Author: Michelle Terrill Heath

“I feel grumpy.” I had said that morning when it was my turn, and a lot of the kids had followed my lead. In the midst of our grumpy group, I thought about the monkeys who had passed by me earlier and I announced, “We […]

I was told I would be teaching a class of twelve newcomers, who spoke no English. Alana would not arrive for a couple weeks because she was finishing her second year of college, so I was on my own to start. It was 2008, the […]

I also remember one day after Nana’s explanation of who I was, Baba lifted his hand up and gently cupped my cheek with his dry scratchy hand, and appeared to recognize me. There is never a more important time to count one’s blessings than after […]

For me, I had been partners with Andy for thirty years when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I was forty seven years old and extrinsically characterized as nice, unconventional, optimistic, spontaneous, and a little spaced out. Most of this was true. Any diagnosis of […]

One’s essential nature is what we are born with and then conditions happen and in absorbing them we make meaning out of them. The meaning we make begins to define us. It is easier to see when a small child becomes sick. In defining ourselves […]

When Andy’s and my business of making and selling welded bronze jewelry took off, we wanted to share our good fortune and had read about the concept of tithing. We discovered that receiving was a way to be generous. When Andy’s and my business of […]

Exploring our mountain forest and sledding was free. I had learned to practice yoga when I was a teenager and I taught my family, which cost no money. 1) Without purchasing power we looked to what was free in the world. 2) We learned to […]

Living on our land and in our housetruck was essentially free because we’d paid for it as we built it, not using credit. It was free but it also wasn’t finished. Getting home, securing minimum wage jobs and having no money was hard. We had […]

We used our credit cards to get home to Taos, New Mexico. When our business was thriving, we’d bought undeveloped land in a mountain forest. Andy had built a house on the back of a flatbed 1960 Ford truck and we’d parked it on the […]