Written by blogger cavanwood:
Ellen Wilkie was a presenter on Channel 4’s current affairs programme for the disabled community ‘Same Difference’, as well as an actor, singer and poet. She was thirty two when she died on the 7th August 1989. She had an extremely rare muscle wasting disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy. When she died, the doctors were surprised as they had thought that she would die over ten years before. She was once asked by a friend why she had lived so long and she replied that the love of her family and the Christian faith had helped her. With a fellow writer called Judith Gunn, She finished writing her story days before her death.
Ellen decided to use her gifts as a poet to explore her own emotions and to help people reflect on these difficulties they might face. One of her poetry collections is called “Taboo Topic”, a collection of poems about death and disability. She was very honest about the way she felt. In one of her poems, she said that “I would rather be able-bodied than famous or brave.”
Read more about her in this obituary http://lessonsfromthechair.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/ellen-wilkie.html