Mar 242006
Hero Joy Nightingale is a young woman living in the UK who has “locked-in” syndrome, a congenital disability that makes it nearly impossible for her to speak or move. Hero is also a writer of immense talent. Her essays are full of dry humor and poignant observations of her own life and its daily struggles. She has a keen sense of how others perceive her and she is blunt in expressing her own fears and frustrations. She used to edit a webzine entitled From the Window, which included guest essays from Kofi Annan and Stephen Hawking. She made mention of plans to attend Oxford in 2003, but she seems to have fallen off the Web since then. If anyone knows what happened to her, I’d love to know.
Hero is a sporadically in-touch friend of mine, from a young disabled people’s group many years ago.
She will, I think, be turning 20 this year and has not yet gone to Oxford, although she’s still pursuing the possibility.
I’ll drop her an email and prod her in the general direction of this post…