Girl with Cerebral Palsy Finds Her Voice

GREAT FALLS, MT – Katie Hill is remarkable in the same ways that thousands of other 11-year-old girls are. She likes to giggle, laughing at the silly things the kids in Leia Lins’ fifth-grade class at Morningside sometimes come up with. She loves reading — math, not so much. Katie is a talented writer and comes up with funny stories about haunted houses and meeting up with space aliens. She likes to swim and ski, is learning to play drums and the piano, and if it were permitted, she’d probably eat all her meals served with a large side of ranch dressing

At the end of the long list of the things that make Katie the remarkable young lady she is, there remains her “hard thing,” as Katie’s mother describes it. Katie is one of the approximately 500,000 adults and children in the United States living with cerebral palsy, and though the neurological disorder undoubtedly complicates her life, it does not define who she is. Read more.