This one made me tear up...and cheer!-----An Inexhaustible Voice, a Soul, a Spirit

The remarkable story of a song, a singer, and triumph over unthinkable adversity - Robert F. Graboyes

• Sometimes, a mind-bending story writes itself in reverse...

 The video that sparked this essay has been viewed 80 million times over several years, so perhaps you already know all or part of the story. 

But here’s how it unfurled for me.

• Someone in my X/Twitter stream posted a video of a delicate-looking 16-year-old girl singing at a gigantic music festival and captioned the video with spare, cryptic, powerful praise. 

The caption made it impossible for me not to click on the video, and the praise proved understated...

But then Rieu’s introduction tells the eye-opening portion of the story.

“Enzo has a little sister, Emma. Unfortunately, Emma has a rare, but terrible disease. Her stomach is paralyzed. She cannot eat. All the food goes through a little tube directly into her stomach. But Emma is a brave girl. She wants to live a normal life. And Emma has a dream. She has a beautiful voice. She wants to be a singer. She did ‘The Voice Kids’ here in Holland, and immediately, she won.”

Emma’s bio says she has been on that feeding tube since she was nine months old and has endured bullying over her gastroparesis and slight stature...