"I am blind, but I see; I am deaf, but I hear. ”
Helen Adams Keller, a well-known American writer and activist, was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in the southeastern United States. She was born as a healthy child, but at the age of a year and a half she suffered from meningitis. She barely survived, and the result of the disease was permanent loss of sight and hearing.
She was an above-average intelligent child and her parents sent her to a school for the blind, the Perkins Institute. There, Helen met Anne Mansfield Sullivan, a woman who also had vision problems as a child and who attended the same school for the blind. Helen came to school as an irritable and unrestrained girl prone to outbursts of anger. Anne and Helen soon found a ‘common language’. They communicated with the help of hands (fingers) and a rudimentary vocabulary of basic Braille, along with some other specific Anna methods.
An extremely patient teacher managed to reach Helen who became an extremely hardworking student and the results were not lacking…
Helen worked hard and studied, pushed boundaries pom
As a 14-year-old, Helen moved with Anne Sullivan to New York where she started a special school for deaf children and continued to work and study. She then returns to Massachusetts and then heads to Cambridge Girls ’School. Her education was paid for by Mark Twain, a man who admired her intelligence, perseverance and struggle.
"I stumble, I fall, I get up"
I continue with great difficulty, but I am moving forward…
I’m getting more and more eager and climbing more and more.
I see an ever-widening horizon.
Every fight is a victory. ”
These are the words Helen used to describe her life while studying at Radcliff College, where she studied history and English literature from 1900 to 1904. It was at this time that her first works were written.
Helen is the first deaf person to graduate with the highest grades. After that, she defended her doctorate in philosophy. She worked as a social worker, tirelessly fighting against inequality, for civil rights, for the rights of people with disabilities, for peace, for women's rights. She worked diligently for the American Organization for the Blind, traveling the country and around the world fervently advocating her beliefs.
She has won numerous awards and honorary titles and, most importantly, has inspired thousands of people with disabilities to push the boundaries and live life to the fullest with their limitations despite.
In fact, she didn’t even live as if she had limitations. She studied, graduated and received her doctorate, learned to speak her handicap despite, spoke French and German in addition to English, wrote seven books, actively participated in the fight against inequality, in the fight for peace, traveled, lectured, wrote pisa
The autobiographical book "History of My Life", her autobiographical book, became a world bestseller.
She died on June 1, 1968, at the age of 88.
Some of her most famous statements:
"Character can not be developed through ease and peace. Only through temptations and suffering can the soul be strengthened, the vision clarified, ambition inspired and success achieved. My friends wrote the story of my life. In countless ways, they turned my flaws into great advantages and allowed me to walk calmly and happily under the shadow of my lack. "
"The best and most beautiful cannot be seen or even touched. It must be felt with the heart. "
"I cried because I didn't have shoes, until I saw a man who didn't have a leg."
"Happiness is not what we see and touch, nor what others do for us, but what we think we can feel and do for another, and then for ourselves."
"Loneliness and regret are our worst enemies and if we surrender to them, we will never do anything wise in this world."
