I read for the first time a blog called "SayWhatClub" about a woman with a hearing loss describing her "inner struggle." A struggle about who she is. This is about a late deafened woman who lost her hearing at age 19 who is now a much older woman. She explained she could never feel at ease in trying to fit into with the Deaf community and has already found her
comfort zone.
My problem was, I just did not fit in with the deaf/Deaf community. I wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t my world. I was trying hard to be a deaf person, not a hard of hearing woman when in truth, I was and am a woman with a hearing loss who lives in a hearing world. I was very comfortable in the hearing world and I’m very proud of the fact that I became extremely skilled at reading people. ASL taught me to be very aware of body language, facial expressions, the movements of the mouth and of course, the eyes tell me a great deal about a person as well as what they are saying to me about the individual.
It wasn’t until closed captioning and CART came along that I finally stopped to really think about who I am? Most recently, CART and closed captioning has given me a great deal of hope and brought me closer to accepting that I have truly found my comfort zone. I became more involved with SWC (SayWhatClub) and met many people like myself over the years. Then, I recently became involved with CCAC and realized that between these two major groups, hearing impaired individuals really do have a culture of their own.
I really do believe that "hearing impaired individuals" do have a culture of their own just and how they interact with their kind. If you ever been to a
HLAA meeting you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. They are a different breed of people who sit between deaf and hearing worlds. A world of sound, sometimes clear, other times garbled. They have their own way of interacting and communicating with each other and other people. They share their own cultural understanding of each other. A diversity all of their own.
3 comments:
It's a phase most go through, it took a while to realise we do not 'belong' to a deaf culture or a hearing one, albeit the tendency is to try to stay with the hearing side of things. We know there are late-deafened who cannot fit in anywhere, this is because they cannot accept their loss more than they cannot follow through with the ID conundrum. I feel, too many fell for the rose-coloured view and cultural gig personally hoping it would keep them with the hearing side, and with the deaf comfort zone if it failed, but I suspect cultural deaf saw through that and didn't like being used. So obviously there is a very hard core sector of late-deafened who don't feel part of anything at all, just be yourself life is too short.
Hoorah for republishing this!
Thanks from the CCAC - we warmly invite ALL to join (free membership) who are interested in our mission which is inclusion of quality captioning universally.
Join from our website, read our blog too :-), and keep in touch.
www.ccacaptioning.org
text speaks to us all
ccac is all volunteers
I suspect many hard of hearing feel that way too.
For me, there are comfort zones within each sector and there's a super comfort zone in the middle. In the middle being = Me being me. Ain't no one taking that away.
Yup Just be yourself.
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