Kimberly Dixon has been nonverbal since she was a toddler. Although she had difficulty walking and controlling her limbs, when she was 6 years old her parents Marilyn and Jim Dixon were impressed by a television news story on ABC’s 20/20 about other nonverbal children and they bought her what they had seen on the program-- an electronic alphabet board. Immediately she began typing out sentences and then poems and stories.

Marilyn had faithfully read to Kimberly and had taught her the alphabet, even though Kimberly couldn’t communicate back that she was in fact learning. But once she was given her first alphabet board, allowing Kimberly to touch each letter and spell words and sentences, which the board then read back out loud, Kimberley’s mind was freed from its silent prison.

In 2014, Kimberly published a collection of her poems and paintings, UNDER THE SILENCE IS ME: How it Feels to be Nonverbal

One of her poems includes these lines: “Wishing I could tell how I feel/ With a voice that is real./ I can type thoughts I have inside,/ But it seems hard to really confide.”

More information about Kimberly and her poetry is at http://freepoet85.weebly.com