After moving to a new state, a woman with a hearing loss is glad to eventually find her people.
How I’m Teaching My Kids to Advocate for Themselves
While as a parent advocating for your child is important, teaching kids how to advocate for themselves is more impactful.
A Future in Engineering
I’ve always been fascinated with how things work and have considered electrical and/or mechanical engineering. It would be very powerful for someone who has worn hearing aids for all his life to design hearing aid technology to fit various stages of life and lifestyles.
Help America Hear’s Scholarship Competition
It was inspiring that several students mentioned in their essays that they planned to major in audiology or related fields to learn how to help others with the same “invisible disability.”
What Is Inclusion, Really?
Being kind and courteous to everyone we meet, even when they aren’t kind to us, is hard. Believing people’s experiences and perceptions, even when they don’t match your own, is hard.
What People With Hearing Loss Want You to Know
I write this to help people I encounter—whether family, friends, or passing acquaintances—to better understand my daily challenges with hearing loss and hearing loss in general.
Every Day I Advocate
Hearing loss is an invisible disability and people with typical hearing don’t always understand. There are those with some type of hearing loss who just “deal with it” or prefer to keep it a secret. Connecting with individuals who also have hearing loss helps me manage daily life.
Nurturing Self-Advocacy by Learning How to Speak Up
As self-advocates, we will speak up for ourselves and our peers, learn who supports us, where and how to access information, know our rights and responsibilities, make our own choices, and advocate for our group’s rights.
A Passion for Public Speaking
I went from being a severely hearing-impaired baby with an unsure future to being a state public speaking champion multiple times over. To share my passion for public speaking, during high school I hosted many workshops to inspire others to overcome their fear of public speaking.
My BAHA Is My Superpower
I was born with Nager syndrome. It is a rare genetic disorder that includes conductive hearing loss, which delays speech development and affects the structure of a face.