Blog.1/ Why did this have to happen?
You know when you get into a taxi and you end up chatting with the taxi driver?
Before you know it, you feel they know everything about you, from tonight’s dinner plans to your entire career journey.
Well, a few years ago I found myself in this situation you are imagining. I had jumped in a black cab for a conference as it was pouring with rain. We got talking and it was a hearty discussion. Then, as we waited at traffic lights, he said to me; “You’re such an articulate lady - what happened?”
What happened? I thought, what do you mean “what happened”? He must have noticed my puzzled face in the mirror, because he went on to say “Your speech - there is something different about it”. I felt winded.
Blog.1/
Why did this have to happen?
I have a lifelong moderate to severe hearing loss in both ears.
I can’t hear high pitch sounds well - so that’s most of the consonants in our alphabet (take ‘s’ ‘f’ ‘x’ for example). I hear the low pitch vowel sounds, and then everything else I piece together like a puzzle at extreme speed - lip movements, facial expressions, context, good guess-work. I speak with a lisp which sadly I will struggle to ever correct because I can’t hear ‘s’! I wear very discrete hearing aids and am a master of lipreading, so many people say they don’t notice anything. But here, after 25 years, I felt I’d been ‘found out’ and it really hurt, and I can’t do much about it. Why did this have to happen?
“Why did this have to happen?”
These are, coincidentally, exactly the words I heard from a business owner this week while discussing the COVID-19 crisis. They have fought, like many of us, frustration, powerlessness and impatience. Yet at the end of it all, there is no choice but to use our personal resources, creativity and intuition to do the best we can, and just dig deep.
And that is what I do. I, like the rest of us, have been dealt a hand I don’t like much, but I have no choice but to embrace it, be myself and take the opportunities that would never have come otherwise. As the taxi driver showed, there is no running from reality.
So when someone asked me yesterday;
“Is COVID-19 simply going to make disabled people even more marginalised?” My answer is no. In fact, it gives all of us the power to empathise with disabled people in a way we would never have done before, as we navigate through this challenging situation. For example, we understand just how valuable lip-reading and seeing facial expressions is, now that facemasks form a barrier. We imagine what it must be like to not to hear and understand fully, and we share in the frustration of it all.
So, we have this invaluable opportunity now to learn from people with disabilities
They have already encountered many of the challenges we face in the COVID world - from isolation to self-doubt. From this adversity, they have developed coping strategies and tactics to be resilient that others can simply copy.
Someone once said to me I’d be a terrible poker player because I wear all my expressions on my face! But my advantage is that I was dealt my hand long ago, and I hope through my honesty and openness others can learn and excel from the cards I hold.
In my next article, I’ll elaborate on the things I’ve learned from my disability, and how they may help others now.
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