Are you guys happy to show people your hearing aids, or cochlear or not? Do you mind tying up your hair to reveal your HA or CI? Do have coloured hearing aids etc? Do you like having a hearing loss? Does it make you feel unique? Etc.
C'mon guys, inspire me!
My answer to your question
Hannah Louise is that I am very affected by how people around me treat me. Because my deafness caused me to be treated badly by the hearing people around me (usually unintentionally but still very painful & shaming)
I didn't like showing people my hearing aids,
I didn't like having a hearing loss and
I didn't like feeling unique. The tombstone on this misery was that I unconsciously believed this bad treatment was
my fault for being born deaf and different from hearing people (i.e. "disabled").
The turning point was realising that my misery was due to how hearing people treated me. If they had made an effort to allow for my hearing loss and not treat me, consciously or not, as inferior to themselves I would have been happy. This realisation has now put me on a new path to find contentment in being the unique person I am, which includes accepting my deafness. Personally I find this very difficult, but I try to not care about not fitting into the hearing dominated society I live in. The most important thing is that I treat
everyone with care & respect (hearing, deaf and myself) and not think of myself (or anybody else) as an inferior human being. I want to love people who are different from me, and in return I expect to be loved even though I'm different from them. I know that the reality is that many people can't/won't do this, but if they can't, then I know it's
their disability not mine.