Next Foot Forward

Whatever the world threw at me, I clung to the beauty and majesty of nature.

In Next Foot Forward, Adelina Basile offers a memoir unlike any other-a lyrical testament to survival, resilience, and the healing power of wild places. Written with the cadence of poetry and the raw honesty of lived experience, this book invites readers into a century-old shack by the sea, where rainforest, lagoon, and ocean become companions in remaking a life fractured by trauma.

Autism, exile, and hardship shape the contours of Lina's journey, but they do not define its limits. Instead, she turns to ink painting, storytelling, and kinship with animals as her compass. Each fragment of memory is braided with metaphor and myth, forming a palimpsest of astonishment and reverence. Through silence and rhythm, she discovers that art can be both rebellion and redemption.

This memoir speaks directly to trauma survivors who have searched for light in the shadows, to nature lovers who find solace in the cycles of tide and forest, and to readers of nonfiction who believe that truth can be as luminous as poetry. Lina's voice is intimate yet expansive, carrying the reader across landscapes of pain and wonder with equal grace.

Next Foot Forward is not polished for prestige-it is scarred, lived, and perfect in its imperfection. It resists commodification, embracing humour, myth, and metaphor as acts of defiance. At its heart lies a simple promise: that beauty endures, even when the world does not.

For those who have stood at the edge of themselves and wondered how to begin again, this book offers a rhythm, a rebellion, and a reminder: every footprint is a beginning.

Step into these pages, and you will find not just a memoir, but a living plait of resilience and kinship-a story that insists survival can be luminous, and that nature, in all its majesty, is both witness and guide.