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Adimika Meadows Arthur

@madammedicaid

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Badass. Mom. Medicaid trailblazer.
I birth ideas that shift policy, move capital & uplift the unseen.
Founder |Investor |Legacy builder |Joy dealer.

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by @madammedicaid

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9 days ago

We say it so often in our community: Give people their flowers while they can still smell them.

I have always understood what it meant. But grief has a way of making old wisdom land differently.

Today is my dear friend Cynthia’s bornday, and I am still completely befuddled that she now resides in the heavenly realm. Some people are so full of life that death feels particularly impossible to reconcile with who they were. Cynthia is one of those people for me.

And the beautiful irony is that Cynthia was someone who gave people their flowers.

Not eventually.
Not when it was convenient.
Not once everyone gathered to tell stories about who you had been.
While you were here.
She celebrated people. She photographed them. She gathered them. She remembered them. She made you feel special simply because you occupied a place in her life. She had that rare gift of making people feel seen—and then making sure there was photographic evidence that we had all been here together. ❤️

There is something deeply Black to me about that kind of love. Our people have always understood the importance of bearing witness to one another—of calling somebody beautiful, beloved, brilliant, worthy; of celebrating birthdays and homegoings; of telling stories around tables; of passing photographs from hand to hand; of saying somebody’s name so they remain among us.

Maybe that is what giving flowers really means.

I see you.
I honor you.
I am grateful you were here.
And I am going to tell you while you can still hear me.

Cynthia did that.

So today, on her bornday, I find myself wanting to give flowers to a woman who spent so much of her life handing them to everybody else.

Happy heavenly bornday, Cynthia. 💐

I miss your laughter. I miss your presence. I miss the way you gathered people into your orbit and somehow made each of us feel like we belonged there.

Your flowers are still blooming in all those that you touched. And I hope somewhere beyond what I can understand, you can still see and smell them. Love you, sis.❤️💐 by @madammedicaid

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12 days ago

The sun broke through this morning.
Not timidly.
Not apologetically.

Just enough to remind me that it had been there all along.

For days, the sky had worn gray.
So had my heart.

Last Thursday, I stood at a funeral of a dear friend.

The kind that settles into your bones and quietly follows you home.

Then came more news. A family burial next week.
A dear friend’s unimaginable heartbreak.

The weight of another month arriving with its own responsibilities.
Even Seafair surrendered its Blue Angels to clouds and high winds.

For a while, it felt as though I had become a collector of difficult things.
Funny how grief does that.
It convinces us the weather will never change.

Then this morning…
The horizon blushed.
Lake Washington caught fire.

Gold.Amber.Copper.

A masterpiece painted across the water before most of the world had even awakened.

And I heard-

“Let there be light.”

..because light has always had the final word.

The sun had never stopped shining.
It had simply been hidden beyond what I could see.

Perhaps that’s what hope is.

Not the absence of sorrow…but the quiet courage to believe there is still light beyond the clouds.

Life keeps asking us to carry opposite truths.

A heart can ache…and still make room for wonder.

We can bury a friend…and still stand in awe of a sunrise.

We can hold grief in one hand…gratitude in the other…and discover they belong together.

This morning, the sun didn’t erase my sadness.

It illuminated it.

It reminded me that grief is a form of love.
That every goodbye is evidence of a hello that forever changed us.

That every sunrise is an invitation—not to forget yesterday—but to trust tomorrow.

So here’s to a new week.
A new month, August.

Fresh mercies.
Second winds.
And the audacity to keep believing.

Because that’s what we’ve always done.
We have buried our dead.
We have held one another through heartbreak.
We have prayed when words failed us.
We have laughed through tears.
We have made a way where there seemed to be none.

And every morning…
without asking whether we are ready…
the sun rises anyway.

Faithful. Steady.

Here’s to seeing the light and here’s to continuin taken in Seward Park, Seattle by @madammedicaid

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2 months ago

Some places become sacred simply because we have loved there.

Every summer for a week, I return to the cathedral of the coastal redwoods.

The light filters differently there. Time softens. Children disappear down dusty trails only to return taller by the end of the week. Laughter lingers in the trees long after the voices have gone quiet.

For one precious week, more than fifty Black families gather for Jack and Jill Family Camp.

We build community the old-fashioned way.

Around campfires.

Across picnic tables.

On hiking trails.

In shared meals and shared stories.

We remember that joy is not an extravagance.

It is an inheritance.

For me, camp has never been just a place.

It is where memory has learned to breathe.

Every year, I walk into Cabin 14, and before I set down a single bag, I hear my father.

Not in the grand moments.

In the ordinary ones.

“We gotta go back up that damn hill, again?”

His familiar grumbling about hauling boxes up the hill has become its own kind of hymn.

Love is funny that way.

It echoes loudest in the smallest things.

This year, another voice was missing.

Ajani was halfway around the world in Japan, beginning a chapter of his own, while I stood beneath the same ancient trees that watched him grow.

One generation remembered.
One generation becoming.

Somewhere between them…

me and Sekai.

Held by memories behind me and hope stretching far beyond what I can see.

The redwoods have taught me something my father always knew.

The strongest things do not grow alone.

Their roots intertwine beneath the surface, quietly holding one another through storms no one else can see.

Perhaps that is why I return.

Not simply for camp.

But to remember that I belong to something older than myself.

A tradition.

A community.

A family.

A lineage of Black joy that continues to choose gathering over isolation, laughter over weariness, and love over everything else.

When the week ends, we pack the cars, sweep out the cabins, hug a little longer than we mean to, and promise, “See you next year.”

We always do.

Because some places never stop calling us home.

And some voices…

never stop greeting us when we arrive. 🌲✨ taken in Mendocino Woodlands Camp Association by @madammedicaid

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3 months ago

MY GEOGRAPHY OF GRAY

Gray has always been misunderstood.
People think it is the absence of color.
It isn’t.

Gray is where color goes to become wisdom.
Pearl.
Silver.
Pewter.
Slate.
Graphite.
Smoke.
Ash.
Mist.
Fog.
Mercury.
Steel.
Granite.
Driftwood.
Storm.

The fading light of a full moon resting on quiet water.
Each shade carrying its own history.
Its own weather.
Its own way of surviving.

Gray is the ocean before dawn.
The hour when water and sky surrender their boundaries.
When the horizon dissolves and the world refuses to tell you where one ends and the other begins.
The surface appears still.
Yet beneath it, unseen currents are already finding their way.

Gray is the color of unanswered questions.
Of relationships without definitions.
Of text messages left unread.
Of promises spoken with sincerity that never become action.
Of maybe.
Gray is the space between…
“I love you.”
and
“I chose you.”

Gray is waiting for the phone to ring.
Watching it remain still.
Wondering whether someone is overwhelmed…
…or whether they have quietly chosen another direction.

Gray is seductive.
It invites us to become authors.
We write stories where only silence exists.
We mistake longing for reciprocity.
Potential for promise.
Hope for evidence.
Years can quietly disappear…
inside a single maybe.

But water has never lived that way.
It never argues with gravity.
It does not cling to the shore that cannot hold it.
It bends.
It deepens.
It carves.
It keeps moving.
Not because it has given up—
because it trusts there is another way forward.

I’ve spent much of my life believing love was measured by intention.
Gray has taught me that love is measured by presence.
By who remembers.
Who reaches.
Who notices your silence.
Who crosses the distance.
Who quietly takes the extra step.
Who keeps choosing you long after convenience has left the room.

Perhaps gray was never the absence of light.
Perhaps it was where illusion surrendered to truth.
Where expectation yielded to acceptance.
Where I stopped asking people to become who I needed them to be…
…and finally made room for those who already were.

Gray never asked me to wait.
It quietly taught me how to beco taken in Seward Park, Seattle by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

There are people who take pictures. And then there was Cynthia @croypiedmont

I’ve spent the last few days scrolling through thousands of photographs on my phone.

Blurry ones.
Eyes closed.
Half-finished laughs.
A random Tuesday that somehow became unforgettable.

And there she is.

Again. And again. And again.

Never asking for another take.
Never waiting until everyone looked perfect.
Always in the middle of life.

It finally dawned on me why.
Cynthia wasn’t trying to preserve perfection.
She was preserving life.

She understood something most of us don’t realize until it’s too late:

The photograph is never about the picture.
It’s about the people.
Proof that, for one fleeting moment, our lives found one another.

That we laughed, loved, we were.

When you were with Cynthia, you never wondered if you mattered.

She had already answered that question.
She noticed people.
Remembered their stories.
Celebrated their victories.
Carried their burdens.
And somehow made every person feel like family.

When she lost her mother around the same time I lost my father, we discovered that grief didn’t always need words. Presence became our language.

Now, I think of her three children. Not because they heard her lessons, but watched them. She chose joy, connection, generosity and courage everyday.

What an inheritance!

Since Cynthia’s passing, I’ve realized she left all of us heirlooms.

Answer the phone.
Take the picture.
Buy the purse.
Take the trip.
Tell people you love them.
Become part of someone’s village.

Don’t wait.

Because one day, someone will scroll through thousands of photographs looking for you.
And they won’t care whether your hair was perfect.
They’ll simply be grateful you stepped into the frame.

We say people come into our lives for a reason or a season. I’ve never believed that was enough.

Every once in a while, someone changes the architecture of your heart.

I have a word for souls like that.

A geason.

Rare. Irreplaceable. Eternal.

Thank you, Cynthia, for reminding us that the most beautiful life is not the one that looks perfect. It’s the one where you keep stepping into the picture.

I will miss you beyond words💔 taken in Oakland, California by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

Somber Seward

Some mornings, the magic of Seward refuses to reveal herself.

The mountains disappear.
Water and sky become indistinguishable, as the earth itself has decided to keep a few mysteries.

And yet…

The birds sing.
The flowers bloom with impossible confidence.
Tiny ducklings paddle alongside watchful Canada geese, utterly unaware of the weight the world can carry.

This morning feels like beauty has never required certainty.

The fog settled over the lake just as grief settled over my heart.
My oldest heartbeat woke to a new day in Osaka.🇯🇵
My beautiful friend, awakened to eternity.🙏🏾

One beginning.
One homecoming or homegoing.

And I remain here, somewhere between departure and arrival, joy and sorrow, learning that the heart was never designed to carry only one emotion at a time.

Perhaps that is the quiet miracle of being alive. We celebrate with one hand while we grieve with the other.

We send our children into the world while saying goodbye to the friends who helped us understand it. We stand in the mist, unable to see the mountains, trusting they have not moved.

Maybe that is faith.
Maybe that is love.
Not the absence of clouds, but the quiet confidence that what matters most remains, even when hidden from view.

This morning I thought about moments. How they arrive unnoticed—they quietly become memories.
How often we fail to realize we are standing inside a chapter we will one day ache to revisit.
Life, I am learning, is not simply a collection of extraordinary events but a gathering of a constellation of souls.

The ones who answer the phone.
Who pull up a chair.
Who remember your story.
Who insist on taking one more photograph because they somehow understand that ordinary afternoons become sacred in hindsight.

The ones who become part of your landscape.
Always there.
Even when the clouds make you forget.

So today, I will trust what I can’t see.
I will celebrate a son finding his wings across an ocean.
I will mourn a friend whose light refuses to dim simply because her body is no longer.

And perhaps the purpose of life is not to avoid the fog…but to become someone’s trust, even in the invisible clouds.🌫️

#madammedicaid taken in Seward Park by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

Well, I dropped off one son and picked up another.
Only God could have written the ending.

On our flight home from LAX, about twenty minutes before landing, the cabin was quiet. I found myself looking out the window in silent contemplation.

And there she was again.

My St. Helens.
Majestic.
Regal.
Steady.

Standing exactly where she has always stood.

It felt as though she was reminding me that some things endure. That even when life changes in an instant, there are anchors that remain.

Just a day earlier, I had looked to those mountains with a mother’s prayer, asking them to somehow watch over my oldest heartbeat as he was going to journey across the Pacific.

Now they seemed to be whispering something back.

“He will be okay.”

Perhaps that is what parenthood becomes.
Not letting go.
But learning to stand steady.
To be the mountain.

To remain constant even when your heart is thousands of miles away. To be grounded when you’re worried sick, joyful beyond measure, and quietly anxious—all at once.

Ajani is becoming.

This adventure will stretch him, challenge him, humble him, and undoubtedly change him in ways neither of us can yet imagine. And what a privilege it is to witness the unfolding of the person he is meant to become.

You spend your life making peace with the forces you cannot control.

And when your children leave your arms and step into the world, you begin entrusting them to things much older than yourself—
to oceans,
to mountains,
to strangers,
to grace.

And perhaps, if we’re lucky, we become a little like the mountains ourselves.

Present.
Steadfast.

Waiting with open arms for the day they come home.
#madammedicaid taken in Mount St. Helens by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

I don’t spend much time thinking about natural disasters. I suspect most of us don’t—at least not until they arrive at our doorstep.

Some people prepare for them as a way of life. My family’s roots are in New Orleans, where hurricane season is familiar. Preparation isn’t panic; it’s tradition.

A few days ago, earthquakes rippled across the world. Oddly enough, earthquakes have never frightened me. I grew up in Seattle. They were simply part of the landscape. The earth would remind us, every so often, that it was alive beneath our feet. Other disasters carry different worries-
Flash floods.
Tornadoes.
Tsunamis.
Typhoons.
Wildfires.
Landslides.
Avalanches.
Some places learn to coexist with the forces that shape them. When I was a little girl, Mount St. Helens erupted.

I remember the ash.

It settled everywhere—on rooftops, on cars, on sidewalks—turning the familiar into something almost otherworldly. The sky carried a strange haze for days, and fear settled over the region.

I remember my father brushing the gray dust from his big green Oldsmobile. He laughed as he told me that when he was growing up, he never really thought of Mount Rainier or Mount St. Helens as volcanoes. To him, they were simply mountains—majestic, constant, almost eternal. He always loved them.

Yesterday, they became something else for me.

I flew back to Seattle for a brief stop. Today I am sending my oldest heartbeat across the Pacific to Japan—a country that had just experienced a 7.3 earthquake and now watches the approach of two typhoons.

For the first time, the tectonic plates beneath someone else’s feet feel personal.

And as Mount Rainier came into view from the airplane window, I found myself whispering a prayer.

Not just to God.

But somehow, to the mountains themselves. To those ancient sentinels my father loved so deeply.

I asked them to lend their quiet strength to another chain of mountains across another ocean. To steady the earth beneath my son’s feet. To remind him, even thousands of miles from home, that he is held by the prayers of those who love him, including Mother Nature.

I hope all of them co-conspire to bring my child safely home. #madammedicaid taken in Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

Solstice Onward
Sunday was the Summer Solstice — and this year, it collided with Father’s Day.
I was in Seattle — familiar paths, grieving my father, elegizing my uncle, navigating transitions I did not choose and uncertainties I cannot yet name. I carried an ache from situations I cannot control — and am not sure I should stand for. The heart is a tricky muscle.
The day did not ask permission to be overwhelming. It simply was.
Too much longing. Too much gratitude. Too much memory pressing against my chest like a hand that would not let go.
I have always been fascinated by sunrises — not simply because they are beautiful, but because they insist on possibility. They rise without consulting. Golden and unhurried, as if they know something we have forgotten.
There is something sacred about the sunrise that follows the longest day.
Because from that moment forward, the light begins its slow retreat.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just a minute here, minute there.
The longest day is not simply a celebration of light. It is a meditation on its impermanence.
And so I find myself paying closer attention to the light within me — My joy. My talents. My tenacity. The parts of me that have survived every season I was certain would break me.
And the luminescence around me. The friends who answer the phone without being asked twice. The people who open their homes. The conversations that touch something real.
Because light does not sustain itself. It must be chosen. Tended. Protected. Shared.
A garden neglected slowly remembers how to be wild. A dream ignored doesn’t die — it just stops speaking.
What will you nourish?
Winter is already hiding inside summer — the way sorrow conceals itself within joy, the way love inhabits grief, patient, waiting to be named.
I do not feel called to lament the fading light.
I feel called to gather it. To stand in it. To carry it where it is needed.
The sun rose while I was flying — golden, patient, unconcerned. Faithful to its nature. Perhaps the purpose of this life is not to hold the light forever.

Perhaps it is simply to become luminous while we still have the chance.

#madammedicaid #postsolsticereflection🌅 taken in Detroit, Michigan by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

Father’s Day may indeed be the first day this year that running at Seward Park feels different.

The trail is unchanged. My heart seems contradistinctive.

The water still glimmers through the trees.
The birds still stand watch along the shoreline.
The asphalt hills remain as unforgiving as ever.

And yet everything feels altered.
Perhaps grief is not an emotion at all.
Perhaps it is a haunting.
A visitation.
A scent, a sound, a familiar stretch of pavement that suddenly collapses time and delivers you back to another life.
Love returning to the places where it once lived. Like someone secretly turned up gravity and my balance is just off.

This morning, memories arrived like tidewater.
A charcoal grill being lit well before church.
The sharp scent of barbecue sauce and smoked meats hanging in the summer air.
Timed hill runs and relentless sprints around the corner.
Cooling-down walks after arguments.
Jane Fonda calisthenics stretching on the tennis courts.
Bike rides.
Trips to the corner store.
Safeway runs for bags of ice destined for aching muscles and ice baths.

A thousand ordinary moments.
The kind that never announce themselves as sacred while they are happening.

And that is the cruel trick of memory.
You do not realize you are living inside the good old days until they are gone.

Today, every tree seems to know a story.
Every flower carries a memory.
Every bend in the trail holds the outline of a man I loved.

As fathers push strollers, prepare to toss footballs, and walk hand-in-hand with their children, my heart aches with a longing that feels both unbearable and beautiful.

Because what I miss is not simply my father.
I miss being his daughter. I was blessed.

I miss the certainty of his presence.
The steady rhythm of his footsteps beside mine. The quiet assumption that there would always be another run, another barbecue, another summer afternoon.

The lake sparkles.
Children laugh somewhere in the distance.
And for a moment, grief and gratitude become indistinguishable.

Because love, it seems, never really leaves.

It simply echoes through the places where it was once held. It echoes through the places where it once lived.🌊

#madammedica taken in Seward Park by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago

Sometimes it’s just a girl and her lake.

No agenda.
No performance.
No expectations.

Just water holding stories,
clouds whispering secrets,
and a heart finally remembering
that it doesn’t have to carry everything.

The lake never asks me to explain myself.
It simply receives—
the gratitude,
the grief,
the dreams,
the becoming.

And somehow, every time,
I leave a little lighter
than when I arrived.

Sometimes that’s enough. 💙 taken in Seward Park by @madammedicaid

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4 months ago