Adelaine Nohara is a thirty-two-year-old Canadian woman residing with her parents in Fonthill, Ontario. Her Catholic Faith is her life, her passion and her deepest happiness. Adelaine earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Humanities and Catholic Culture from Franciscan University of Steubenville, graduating in 2012. During her final year of study, her life took an unexpected turn with the onset of a severe neurological illness, halting her plans of entering religious life.

After eighteen months and just as many doctors, Adelaine was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease and its coinfections – one of the worst cases her doctors had seen. Unfortunately, by the time she began treatment, her illness was too advanced to treat successfully. By 2014, the damage left her completely housebound, unable to speak or be spoken to, read or write, tolerate sound or visual input, or do practically anything without triggering terrible seizures. The young bursting-with-life woman once known as “the energizer bunny” could do little more in a day than get dressed and brush her teeth. Her life became a hidden life of prayer and redemptive suffering, lived behind closed doors to shield her shattered nervous system from stimuli. The only person she could speak to and spend time with was her Saviour in Holy Communion. She has often called the Eucharist her “life support”, the sweet medicine of the soul that has upheld her heart in hope.

In 2020, Adelaine began to show small cognitive improvements and recover a measure of physical strength. She started doing crafts in tiny increments. Come December, she was slowly regaining the ability to draw, and she was thrilled to receive 150 artist quality coloured pencils for her 30th birthday! Artwork has become Adelaine’s new occupation. Although she has no artistic training, the Lord is endowing her with a giftedness for it. She pours her heart and much love into her creations.

In mid-2021, Adelaine spoke her first words in years, overjoyed to be capable of forming them!  Since then, through dedicated neural retraining, Adelaine has gradually regained the ability to speak, read and write, enabling her to write reflections with her artwork and start her small business, Eyes of the Heart Studio.  She continues to struggle physically and cognitively, but is so grateful to be capable again of communication.  Her pictures are meditations that flow out of her personal life of prayer, rich in Christian symbolism. Her heart is burning to announce the Gospel with her lips, but as her illness has rendered her incapable of active ministry, she is now joyfully proclaiming Christ visually, through the power of beauty.

Adelaine is now a candidate for the vocation of consecrated virginity in the world, for the Diocese of St. Catharines.  While she hopes for full healing in God’s time, she is at peace with His Will for her life in the present moment. She has learned to abandon herself to the designs of Divine Mercy, and trust in that Mercy to sustain her from day to day.  She humbly asks others to please pray that the Holy Spirit continues to give her strength in her affliction, and completes her healing.  Adelaine also welcomes the prayer intentions of others.