My Selection — “Robyn’s Book” an OwnVoices Story That Changed My Life
The power of connection should never be underestimated
I was a vicarious reader, inhaling stories at a rapid rate. Stories took me places my wonky lungs couldn’t. But stories were things that happened to other people — not me. Because I never saw my life reflected in a book.
Sure, there were stories that I could relate to, but there was no one quite like me. Writers portrayed disabled or chronically ill children as objects of pity.
I was in Year Eleven when Robyn’s Book found me. It was the first time I had read a book by someone with Cystic Fibrosis, but the similarities didn’t end with the familiar bond experienced by people with Cystic Fibrosis.
Robyn was a writer, something I desperately wanted to be, and like me, she had the fortune of relatively good lung health until she was sixteen.
I wasn’t a reader who had to imagine how it felt to watch a friend die knowing you had the same disease killing you also. I was there, living those moments too.
There, for the first time on the page, my life was reflected.
On Cystic Fibrosis by Robyn Miller
I like to pretend
that it doesn’t exist
that it’s only a term
in a medical book
or a word to…
