After a nearly fatal run-in with a car at age 11 that left her paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on her own, Brooke Ellison went on to graduate from Harvard, write a memoir, earn master’s and doctoral degrees, and teach policy and ethics as a tenured professor—all the while navigating the world as a woman with ventilator-dependent quadriplegia. It would be easy to admire Brooke from afar—and keep our distance. Many of us are uncomfortable around people we consider “unfortunate.” We tend to simultaneously avoid and heroize the disabled, thankful that we don’t have to deal with the day-to-day “mechanics.” Like breathing. Or using the bathroom, or going on a date. Brooke will share her perspectives about disability. In her newest book, “Look Both Ways,” Brooke refuses to let us look away. She tears off the cloak of invisibility around disability not only to champion the rights of the blind or the mobility-impaired but to make a far more earth-shattering claim: what she’s experienced—having to relearn how to live—differs from what every human being endures only in a matter of degree. We are more alike than we are willing to see. Brooke’s transformation is “an amplified version of the kinds of adjustments we all need to make when we have undergone an unexpected and, often, undesired change in our lives.”