Let me give it a shot. When I first found out my son was deaf, as I said before, I was devastated. I cried buckets of tears, because all of a sudden, my whole world was turned upside down and I was thrust into something that I did not know about, and had no idea how to deal with. And then, a few days after his diagnosis, my son was sitting in my lap, and he turned and smiled up at me the same way he always had. At that moment, I realized that nothing had changed for him, it had only changed for me. I had to change the way I saw my own child, and that was my issue to deal with, not his.
Was I scared and insecure when I first tried to make contact with the deaf community? Yes, I was. Scared out of my mind. I did not know what to think of these people that talked with their hands. I did not know how to communicate with them. I did not know anything about deaf people. Did I sometimes get my feelings hurt by some of the things they would say to me? Did I get embarrassed when I would try my hardest to communicate with them and they would laugh because I used the wrong sign? You bet I did. Did I get my feelings hurt when they would tell me I thought like a hearing person? Of course I did. And I was offended many times. Did I keep going back. Yep. I kept going back, and I kept trying because they had something that I did not have. They had the experience of having been a deaf child, and I desperately needed to know about that so that I could better understand my child. Did it humiliate me to go into a group of strangers and ask them to teach me about the very child I gave birth to? Yes, it did. This was my child! I should know how to raise him! I should know what he needed! I am his mother, for God's sake! But as much as I loved him, as much as I felt like I was incapable, as much as it hurt to admit that I needed the help of people I didn't even know, I kept going back. I will be forever grateful that I did. They allowed me to see my son not just as my son, but as the deaf person he is. Yes, he is still my son. Yes, I am still his mother. But he is also connected, in a very real way to other deaf people. Does that threaten my relationship with him. There was a time that I was afraid it would. Time has shown me that rather than being a thread, it has been a glue that has bonded us even closer.
