A-Team: The Miraculous Mira

I lie on my back and watch Mira work on my arm – her eyes half-closed as she listens to my body with her fingertips, searching out my cold places, my twisted tendons. She coaxes my spastic muscles into their proper place … snap! She is sculpting me. She is an artist … a healer … a life coach. For me to call her masseuse would be to ignore her decades as a physical therapist and what seems to be her personal connection with God.

Mira came to me as a gift from my brother who had done some free legal work for her. When she first arrived at my door, I was expecting a massage. Yes, she soothed my traumatized body, but she also addressed my spirit. She added me to a list of patients on whom she meditates nightly; and at each of our appointments she offers her visions to me as messages of hope. "I know, it sounds ooga-booga,” she says in her thick Croatian accent.

Whatever it is, my appointments with Mira are the best part of my week. I always feel more hopeful afterward and have noticed marked improvements in my body wherever she focuses. Mira takes on only select patients – a baby with leukemia, a new amputee, an elderly man so deprived of touch he cries in her hands. I think she is one of the most generous, loving people I have ever met. She actually gave one of her kidneys to a friend: "Whats I need two for," she asks and rolls her eyes skyward. “Thanks God.”