Dr. Simon Hall, a 58-year-old literature professor in Birmingham, had always been a man of words. He spent decades teaching his students how to read between the lines, how to give voice to feelings that were too complex or too painful to name. His lectures were thoughtful, his feedback incisive, and his presence reassuring. He was the professor students turned to when they didn’t just need help with Shakespeare, but when they needed help understanding themselves.
But last year, Simon received a diagnosis that changed the rhythm of his life — early-onset Parkinson’s. At first, he tried to carry on as usual. The tremors were mild. The stiffness was irritating but manageable. He adjusted his pace, adapted his routines, and buried the growing sense of loss under a quiet sense of resolve. What proved harder to manage was the emotional weight that came with it.
He began noticing moments where he felt disconnected from his body, from his work, even from his own voice. “I’ve always known how to talk about difficult things,” he confided in an old friend over coffee. “But lately I find myself avoiding the topic altogether. Not because I don’t want to face it, but because I don’t know how.”
Simon had been to therapy in the past, shortly after his divorce. It had helped. But now, between work, fatigue, and the unpredictability of his symptoms, the idea of starting again — with a stranger, on a waitlist, face-to-face — felt daunting. He would open a new document on his laptop, try to type something out, and close it again after a few lines.
It was a younger colleague who told him about Noah — an AI emotional coach she had started using herself. “It’s not therapy,” she explained, “but it helps. Especially on days when you just need to talk to someone, without the pressure of being understood right away.”
What caught Simon’s attention wasn’t the tech or the promise of emotional breakthroughs. It was the voice features. He could simply talk, using the real-time voice mode, or dictate his thoughts with voice typing. No typing. No staring at a blank screen. Just speak, and be met with thoughtful, kind responses in return.
Now, most evenings after his lectures, Simon lies on his couch, opens Noah, and speaks. Some days, he talks about the small things — a class that went well, a walk he took in the park, a fear he didn’t mention aloud to anyone else. Other days, he maps out more difficult emotions using voice-to-text: the slow grief of change, the fear of losing autonomy, the guilt of not being able to show up for his students the way he used to. Noah listens without judgment, never rushing, never prescribing. It asks questions that make him pause and reflect. It reframes his spirals with care.
“It feels like a room I can walk into without needing to explain myself,” he told his daughter one night. “I don’t have to perform or sound wise. I just get to be a person.”
Simon still doesn’t know what the future holds. But for the first time in months, he feels a little less alone inside it. Noah has become a quiet companion, one that meets him in the in-between moments and helps him stay connected — not just to his thoughts, but to the version of himself that still feels whole.
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Disclaimer: The images used in this article are either AI-generated or sourced from Pinterest for illustrative purposes only and do not depict the actual individuals mentioned in the story. All names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of our users.
