Kathleen Humberstone
By Denise Humberstone (UK, mum of 3, blogger at troynize.com)
This young woman has packed more into her twenty-two years than most of us do in a lifetime! A successful model who also recently took up acting, Kathleen gave a speech at the United Nations at seventeen. She certainly lives up to two of her nicknames: Chatterbox and Fashion Diva!
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tions. So I asked her what she would like to say and tried he odds of Kathleen being conceived were all my best to put it in writing using most of her words. She against her. It took a French woman (who had smashed it on the day and again a few months later in lived all over the world) and a British man (who Spain! grew up in South Africa) to meet at their then work When Kathleen was nearly eighteen, she expressed place (automotive industry-related) in Kuwait! They fell in a strong desire to become a model, which didn’t come as a love and… Kathleen was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, of surprise given her natural love of the camera and propencourse! sity for daily catwalks in the kitchen! And as always, she Her sister followed suit three years later, which is expected me to facilitate this. I tried. And failed. Even just when the family moved to Dubai. Her brother completed five years ago, representation of people the family the following year. Fate with a disability in the media was still then sent us to India, although everyquite rare, never mind a visible learning thing was packed and sorted for Italy! disability! The online registration process The three-year planned stay there of mainstream agencies made it imposabruptly shrank into three months, sible for people like Kathleen even to be and the family was called to China this considered. time. For three years… which turned Until I stumbled upon Zebedee into just one (don’t ask!). And that is online, an agency specialising in disabiliwhen the family landed in the UK, yet ty and differences representation. They’d another completely different country, only just recently set up shop. I applied climate, and culture. Amazingly, we for Kathleen, and she was signed up have stayed put since! shortly after. We’ve never looked back! Not that moving would be a problem for Kathleen. She’s always been the one who adapted the fastest out of all of us, to a new home, a new language, a new school, new people, new weather… I can’t believe I shed otography Ange Harper Ph so many tears and stayed awake so many nights, worrying about how she would cope each time we had to move. The truth is, she has just always taken everything in her stride as long as she had her main pillars in the picture: her immediate family. It became very clear from the start that Kathleen is what is called “a communicator”: eager to please with an unquenchable thirst to learn, aptitude to absorb and ready to try just about anything! Although extremely vocal but non-verbal until about four, she was able to communicate using approximately a hundred signs that I had taught her from when she was eighteen months and even came up with a couple of her own (for seatbelt and handbag!). Those signs turned out to be a great bridge between English and French and proved even more useful when she started to read as although she recognised the written words and couldn’t yet say them, she could sign them! She sadly, but naturally, dropped the signs as her spoken language progressed. We are now learning Makaton for Kathleen’s benefit as it is likely that given her hearing impairment, Kathleen will eventually need it at some point in her life. Better be proactive! At the age of seventeen, Kathleen somehow Ang got the amazing opportunity to be a guest speaker eH arp at the United Nations. It was around the time Kather P hot leen was brutally exposed to Non-Invasive Prenaogr aph y tal Testing (NIPT) while listening to the radio and when I had to bring her up to speed – an extremely delicate topic to navigate, as you can well imagine. Kathleen was allowed five minutes at the United Na34
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