Hearing Friends

Time to let go. Get those frustrations out into the fresh air where we can share them. 

When I first started this journal, I hoped that those of us with hearing loss could post here our anxieties, our problems, our solutions and our hopes to find out how much we share. It hasn’t worked out like that.

Although there has been an encouraging number of visitors, no-one has contributed any thoughts. And this seems so very much in character with deaf and hard of hearing folk – we don’t find it easy to talk about our problems.

Are we being bravely determined to get on with life without complaining? Or do we consider it’s completely private – a part of us that we don’t want anyone to take too much interest in, and don’t want to share? Or do we just think it’s impossible to express in words how we feel about our lack of hearing and the way it affects our contacts with other people?

I personally think that the last answer is a big part of the reason we hold back. How do we describe the partial loss of sounds? We don’t believe anyone else can possibly understand what happens in our sound-deadened world. And all too often the way they behave only confirms this. They really have no idea, and we give up hoping that we can make some kind of break-through that will help them. In any case, for us it’s all very personal.

Something so absolutely intimate cannot easily be shared except with a very few exceptionally close and trusted friends or possibly (but not always) members of our family. And even they, we feel, don’t want to be constantly reminded. So we say as little as possible and the more we keep our feelings to ourselves the more introverted and solitary we grow to feel about everything to do with our ears.

We think ‘they’ don’t understand. But do we really understand what hearing loss does to us?

Can’t hear. What else is there to understand? Well, as we all know, it’s not that simple by a long way.

Can there be anything good to say about deafness? If there is, isn’t it time for us to share it, get it out in the open?  For example, I find that although there may be limits to what I can hear, whatever gets through I value more. Because I am not ‘blinded’/distracted/mesmerized by words people use, I can see who they really are, know them better, love them – or not.

What do you think? How can you make us feel better about our hearing loss by sharing how you feel about yours? It’s not all doom and gloom – not by a very long way.

C’mon! Why don’t you give it a try? Surprise yourself, and us. Anything you can think of, no matter how small, will make a difference to all of us.

Over to you!!!

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