I wrote the book I needed
and couldn’t find.

My name is Judy Adams. I am a stroke survivor and a self-published author, and I live in Virginia.

I wrote one book before my stroke and two after it. The first is Back to Me: A Woman’s Triumph Over Stroke and Loss — about faith, about the support of family and friends, and about finding the inner strength to keep going. Then came the stroke, and I had to learn to walk again.

When I was in the middle of recovery and grief at the same time, I went looking for a book that spoke plainly to a woman in my position. Not a clinical guide. Not an inspirational pamphlet. An honest account from someone who had been in that bed and was willing to say the hard parts out loud. I could not find one, so I wrote it.

I ordered a ride. It didn’t come. I ordered a second one. It didn’t come either. So I walked. One mile. To the nearest polling place. And I cast my vote.

That is the second book — One Mile of Faith: How a Stroke Survivor Walked Into History — and the title is not a metaphor. That walk changed me. When I got home I created Faith Collection, to give hope to anyone facing a challenge of their own.

Since then I have gone back to college after thirty years away. I am not there because it is easy. I am there because I already know what I can do when the ride doesn’t come.

The work now

I publish the books myself and I sell them myself, mostly face to face — at events, at markets, and in conversations that start when somebody tells me their mother or their husband had a stroke and they don’t know what comes next. That reaches about 600 people a year. It is slower than a publisher’s reach, and it means I am in the room with my readers.

Alongside the writing I do disability and caregiving advocacy, and faith-based community work. Most of it grew straight out of those tables. People tell me things there they would never put in an email, and those conversations are the real work — the books are what get them started.

I also run the collection itself: faith-based goods I design and make by hand. The making is part of how I recovered — small work, done at whatever pace my body allowed on a given day.