How Being Deaf Is Like Learning A New Language
First published on my personal Facebook on December 18 2014.
[Description: A polaroid photo taken two weeks or so after losing my hearing. I am wearing a pink blazer, resting my head on my arm and smiling. My eyes say, I can’t really hear you and I want this interaction to end soon. But I need to be polite because this person is trying to be friendly with me. ]
Preface
Recently there’s been a big rollback of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (#DEI) programs in the United States after Trump was re-elected. He used his powers as President to shut down DEI programs in the Government and he canceled policies that encouraged diversity and inclusion programs outside the Government. This led many private businesses to stop their DEI hiring practices and programs.
I’m not American but my heart still aches for those negatively impacted by these changes. I started reflecting more about when I lost my hearing. Last October marked 10 years of being deaf. The news out of the US reminds me of those early years when I faced a new kind of discrimination and struggle because I had become a person with a disability.
If we can find a shred of common ground with others we can build empathy and understanding from there. A couple of months after losing my hearing, I wrote the following blog. While you may not know what it’s like to be deaf in both ears, to wear a hearing aid, to speech read, you might know what it’s like to travel and communicate in a foreign language. From that perspective, you can understand what being deaf feels like, it’s a start.
How Being Deaf Is Like Learning A New Language
Sometime around October 15th, 2014, I experienced a sudden severe hearing loss; this week will make it 2 months. Since childhood, I have been deaf in my right ear, two months ago, I became deaf in my left ear. To understand how much hearing I currently have in comparison to you (assuming you have perfectly healthy hearing), let’s say you possess 50% of your hearing in your right ear and 50% of your hearing in your left ear, for a total of 100% perfectly healthy hearing. Now in comparison, I have 20% hearing in my left ear and that is all.
When this initially happened, I woke up one morning and there was a ringing - a type of humming in my ear - I compared it to the sound the old freezers made in my Grandma Marion’s basement. I have experienced this before, and the medical term is called Tinnitus. I also knew that Tinnitus has to run its course, there is no cure for Tinnitus and it is quite common in deaf people. I decided to let it run its course. I had not realized at the time that the Tinnitus was masking my sudden hearing loss and simply thought it was a severe case of Tinnitus.
I went about my life for the next 6 weeks being very impaired and I noticed that being more deaf reminded me of backpacking in countries where I was learning a language. The similarities in hearing impairment and foreign language comprehension gave me new insights into how my own country may be perceived by travelers.
I became familiar with that old feeling of forgetting my pride and in this case, just telling people I was deaf, I have professed being deaf more in the last two months than I have my whole life before that. I was trying so hard to look normal when I only had one good ear, that now; I realize it’s just as easy to say I’m deaf. I have told cashiers, salespeople, teachers, and classmates. The part of letting go of my pride reminds me of when I was in Guatemala with an American I was backpacking with, we had just landed in Antigua, and we were walking around the town with our fully loaded backpacks when some locals started calling us “Burro’s” or Donkey’s and making donkey noises. We understood them, and we had to laugh because we could see that we did resemble donkeys which are often known for packing big bags. That’s when we realized that any pride to appear normal had been long gone and we shared stories of other shameful or embarrassing travel stories (and trust me there are many).
After I confess being deaf, most people try to accommodate, they speak louder, which is what most people do when you’re learning a new language. Speaking louder can be helpful and in my current deafness more so, but what makes a real difference in both cases, is speaking slower. Sometimes when someone is speaking louder but still fast, even in English, I can’t follow along. Speaking slower creates more clarity and more definition in sounds, I can hear the difference in a “B” or “P.” Likewise in a new language hearing the difference in a B sound or a P sound is important and the added advantage of hearing when one word starts and ends.
Sometimes people start using their hands when they talk to me, trying to make gestures that in some way reflect what they are saying. This is also helpful, especially if they’re very good at Charades. This is also very common while traveling and reminds me of my first summer in Mexico. I spent my summer after high school graduation in Mexico, living with my Abuelos (grandparents) and they did not speak English, and I spoke limited Spanish. We had a lot of Charade-esque conversations and fights. Somehow, we managed to get our messages across, and sometimes it just meant my Abuelos threw their hands up in defeat and watched me do whatever weird Canadian thing I was going to do, like eat and enjoy my vegetables (it’s just not Mexican!).
Lastly, the surprising similarity and difference, is blending in with the local culture. When I travel, I love blending in, getting my tan on and looking like a local, it means I am less targeted for scams and locals are friendlier with me. The similarity, is I blend in with our world of fully hearing people, so when I don’t hear people who want to ask me to donate to their cause and I keep walking, they give me dirty looks, or when I don’t hear the cashier ask me something while I am bagging my groceries, she gives me a dirty look. Or sometimes when I have told someone I am deaf, I get confused looks because I don’t sound Deaf. I got to the point where I wanted to wear a button that said “I am deaf!” because being aware of the looks and some of the judgement when I wasn’t purposefully trying to be rude was getting really annoying.
It was around this time, that I decided to get a Tinnitus Hearing Aid (remember I thought I only had Tinnitus at this point) and it is at this appoiment that I had my hearing checked and the Audiologist explained that I had severe hearing loss not severe Tinnitus. I wear a hearing aid now, and life is adjusting and missed sounds are heard again. I no longer feel like a traveler in my own country, but for those brief six weeks, I felt like a backpacker again.
Reflection
After reading the blog piece from 10 years ago and written at the start of my disability journey, I realize now that I was encountering themes that would continue and will continue for the rest of my life. It was still all so new that I believed wearing a hearing aid would magically fix everything, that hearing aids were the equivalent as reading glasses for people who need them. That putting them on would restore everything to factory settings. That’s not the case.
I still need to read lips. People still speak loudly instead of slowly. I’ve since learned that being deaf is more about not “understanding” versus “hearing” because we associate so much of hearing with sound volume. The volume can be just right and I’m still not going to understand you. There’s quite a bit more to sound entering your ear and being understood by your brain. I discovered this graphic novel called “El Deafo” by Cece Bell and it made me cry because I felt seen and everything I experienced in my first year of severe hearing loss was normal. Below is a snippet from her book about speech reading.
People still like to use their hands but the charades has somehow turned into made up sign language 😂. However, I will add if you point at useful things that give context or use body language to give context, that will help with understanding. If you’re just moving your hands because you think you’re on the spot sign language is going to help, it’s not, it’s only going to serve as a distraction. If you’re a natural hand mover like the Italians than, I understand, and we’ll call it a diversity clash.
In reading the blog again after so long, I noticed that I was dealing with what it’s like to have an invisible disability. It became less fun to always announce that I’m deaf, or in some cases even needing to show people my hearing aids because they didn’t believe me.
Forgetting my pride also became less fun, short term follies are fine but always being embarrassed becomes tough, unnecessarily rough. That’s where accessibility and inclusion practices and programs become so important. They give people like me more autonomy, they give us our pride and confidence. They give us equal space to do all the amazing things we can do without or with less burdens.
Don’t let Trump and curmudgeons like him win. Be the type of person who creates inclusive spaces for diverse people at your workplace, home, and community.