Can you imagine knowing what you want to say… but not being able to get the words out?
Music had been Roberta’s life. She’d run a signing school for over twenty years, her days filled with lessons, performances and song. She played multiple instruments. She couldn’t imagine life any other way.
But stroke stole something precious from Roberta – her voice.
Stroke left Roberta with severe aphasia. Her mind was sharp, her thoughts clear. She knew what she wanted to say… but the words just wouldn’t come.
“I was devastated. I knew my family was scared,’” Roberta recalls. “I wanted to say, ‘I’m okay’ But I couldn’t even say my own name.”
That kind of isolation is unimaginable – being surrounded by the people you love most in the world, with so much to say to them, but being unable to say a single word.
Aphasia affects 1 in 3 survivors of stroke who are desperate to find their voice again.