When Tina Harris of Brighton Heights awoke in the hospital hours after having a stroke, her voice was gone.

She heard doctors discussing the unlikely chance of her making it through the night. Harris wanted to tell them that she wasn’t going anywhere; she was going to fight. But try as she might, the words did not come.

The stroke, in 2013, had triggered aphasia and robbed Harris of her ability to communicate. Nearly two million people in the U.S. have aphasia, a condition that is defined by an “impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write,” according to the National Aphasia Association.

For seven days, Harris was locked inside her head. Silent. Alone.

She began to sing her favorite church hymns in her mind to stave off he

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