My name is Maria Birdseye and I was

diagnosed with Parkinson’s four years ago

And I’ve been reading a lot about

what you can do to

delay the progress of the disease hopefully.

So I do a lot of exercise and

one of the symptoms that can progress

is that your voice gets softer

and it’s very hard to hear you yet

I wanted to participate in and find out if

there was a way to strengthen my vocal cords

now and very definitely that’s the case.

But it’s hard to make yourself be loud

if you’re not a loud person and

reading a poem is something that

I’m comfortable with and so that’s

probably why I chose to do that today.

I’m a retired school teacher,

taught middle school for thirty years

and am very happily retired though

Parkinson’s was not in my plans.

But there it is.

This poem was read to me in a yoga class

and it struck a chord with me because

the poet is trying to get you to challenge

your situation in life. It makes you think

it changes your perspective and its one

of the best things that a poem can do.

The written word, whether it’s a poem or

a play or a book or a short story,

it captures another person’s life for you

to share and in that respect I think

literature is wonderful.

But when you think about it, anybody who

is willing to share how they feel

enriches us. It can’t be easy always

to share private thoughts.