The publication earlier this year of Kim MacIntosh’s book “Full Circle – Overcoming Disability through Faith” is just the latest in an impressive list of life goals achieved by the Summer Foundation storyteller.
The book is Kim’s story from her birth in the Newcastle suburb of Belmont on the NSW coast through the challenges of growing up with disability, living in a nursing home in a shared room to finally gaining her independence.
As the title of her book suggests, her life has now come full circle – she is living back in Belmont, the suburb where she was born. Kim lives independently in one of the 10 apartments in Summer Housing’s Hunter Housing Project.
While she was living in the nursing home she began studying for her HSC. “I was doing this in bed most of the time during the day if my roommate was out of the room,” Kim says in the book.
“You could say I was doing my HSC under duress. It wasn’t easy. I was doing it via correspondence from a TAFE in western Sydney.”
Kim graduated in 2016 and is now working towards her Bachelor of Behavioural Studies through Open Universities Australia.
Kim said she loves her new life. “I am able to live the kind of life I have always wanted. I have learnt so much while living in my new apartment including cooking meals, doing laundry, the dishes amongst other things.
“I just love the freedom I have to do the things I want to do and when I want to do it. I have control for the first time in my life.”
Kim’s e-book is available on Kindle and Google play books.