Results by "Judith Gwinn Adrian" in All categories

The inspired 1960s phantasmagoria called Nancy’s name. She smiled and joined. Why not? She was part of the summers of love, and the winters, dancing the light fantastic. Unique to Nancy’s story, however, is that she took this youthful swashbuckler chutzpah and used it to confront her dermatomyositis, the rare crippling autoimmune disease that attacked her skeletal muscles, her being, and her physical beauty. Evil trio.

Through her fiercely independent, yet childlike eyes, Tera allows us to enter the recesses of her guarded world. Her Aussie sister, Beth, walks with us, compassionately guiding and explaining. Tera’s life? A world of secrets. A place of shame. A lifetime of expanding mental illness. Tera moves from collector to hoarder, progressively tipped by the compulsion into a perilous world of rats and disease. As Tera repeatedly expressed through words, actions and even rage, she did not live like other people. And yet, living an ordinary life of home and family was her greatest desire.