Writing with Heart

It was a regular night at the Hill house. Five year old, Caitlyn Hill ’21 had just gotten into the bath. The smell of her mother making collard greens, mashed potatoes and chicken wafted in, making her feel warm and drowsy. Her father had come into help Hill, when he noticed her face was completely drooping. Then the rest was a blur. Both of her parents came rushing in and pulled her out of the bath. She was then hurried to the emergency room. Hill had just had her first stroke.

“Even by then, I was kinda used to the hospital scene because I was spending time there and always having check ups and stuff,” Hill said. “I didn’t know it was any different.”

In the past nine years, Hill has had eight surgeries, a bone marrow transplant and a blood transfusion due to her condition known as Sickle Cell Anemia. Dealing with this illness has brought new perspectives and passion into her writing and brought her closer to her friends.
While in the bone marrow unit for six weeks, writing kept Hill busy and distracted. Once the transplant was over, writing still stuck with her.

“I knew I wanted to become a writer as soon as I realized it was something I could do,” Hill said.

Nina Meng ‘21 and Caroline Chandler ‘21, are two of Hill’s best friends, and are very supportive of her passion and ambitions for writing.

“She has the ability to understand people because she’s been through a lot,” Meng said.

Chandler has known Hill since kindergarten and they grew up together. When Chandler understood why Hill was in the hospital she was devastated.

“All I wanted to do on my tenth birthday was to go visit her at the Ronald McDonald House, in Saint Louis … So I got to do down and visit her and it was such a great experience.”

Hill’s dad is one of her biggest inspirations and the one who really sparked the fire in her passion for writing and helped her to pursue writing. “He helped give me that push so that I could actually realize that I really liked writing and storytelling,” Hill says as she grins.

When Hill was really little, her dad made up bedtime stories to tell her. “And I loved that,” Hill said. “He would tell me funny stories about penguins and just everything. So eventually when I got older, I started adding on to the stories and help create them myself.” And eventually adding on to his stories, turned into writing and creating her own narrative. When most kids were playing outside, Hill found herself writing.

“My dad had this old computer, it was like a PC. I didn’t have internet connection or anything. But at that time it didn’t matter to me, because it had [Microsoft] Word,” Hill said. “So I would get down there and I would just type, with my two index fingers and just type and type this six page story about some girls who were sucked into an easter egg and ended up going into this whole different world. And that’s when I realized, that I really liked writing.”

As for her plans for the future, Hills ambitions are to be an established author with a few well known books, and to just have people recognize her for her work. But until then, Hill plans on competing in the Scholastic Writers Award, a prestigious contest for writers, this year. And to just find more time to do what she loves, writing.