Personal Stories

A Poem About Living With Hearing Loss Since Birth

Partial silence/Hours in thought and talk/My dog listened and understood/Time in hours on the old back porch/I was in my own safe, social world.

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Hearing Aids Cost Thousands. A State Program Helped Me Pay for Them.

What changed things was a program almost nobody talks about: state vocational rehabilitation. Every state has a version of this department, just under a different name. The idea behind all of them is the same: If a disability is standing between you and a job, the state will help remove it. Hearing loss counts. Hearing aids count.

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Saying Yes to Hearing Better

Stigma, cost, access. Three people I loved, three different barriers.

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What Are Your Tips for Making Music With Ménière’s?

When performing, I usually play and sing with a small amplifier, using a microphone for vocals, a jazz banjo, or a vintage arch-top guitar with a pickup. The combination of Ménière’s and tinnitus creates practical challenges onstage.

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Catwalk to Clinic

Diagnosed with central auditory processing disorder as a child, this newly graduated actress-model plans to use her degree in speech-language pathology and audiology to improve outcomes for fellow CAPD patients.

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Two Years of Hears

Most people don’t think about protecting their hearing until it’s too late. Every concert, loud commute, and noisy day adds up—and there’s no undo button.

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The Music Inside My Head

My brain now makes up music with a drone tone mostly in the key of D, pounding rhythms, melodies, and harmonies often in different keys.

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From Pain to Purpose

When routine checkups missed our daughter’s hearing loss, we realized how families navigating an invisible disability can fall through the cracks. So we started to build the tools to help them.

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Shifting Perspectives

Eventually I discovered something different: Living with chronic illness is about adapting to a new rhythm with your body. Here’s what I’ve learned.

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A Letter to My Son Turned Into a Children’s Book

One of the biggest sources of encouragement during those intense months after getting Shepherd’s diagnosis was hearing the stories of other families who had walked a similar path.

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