Deafie Blogger: Life as a deaf blogger!

Looking back to my teenage self, sitting in English class at school trying to make sense of a complicated book, there’s no way I ever imagined myself as a blogger/writer today…

It all ties in with cognition and understanding, linked to congenital deafness (deaf from birth). Babies who are born deaf or with severe-profound hearing losses don’t have access to sound from day 1 like hearing babies do. Therefore, it delays vital communication and language development skills. It wasn’t until I was 10 months old that I received my first hearing aids, so I missed out.

It took years of patience, determination, repetition, home visits from my Teacher of the Deaf and speech therapy to learn how to speak and lipread to the standard I’m at today. I’m pleased all the hard work paid off, and I’m thankful to everyone who played a part in the early years.

But all this came with assumptions that my speech was ‘too good’ for a deaf person, making it seem like my hearing aids were some magic tool to enable me to be able to talk and do well at school.

It really bugged me when I tried to explain to my peers and teachers that the high grades were due to the extra work, headaches, sweat and tears that I put in, along with family dedicating their time to helping me understand the school work, when they had jobs of their own to do. I spent all weekends going over school work that I didn’t understand, as well as doing homework and preparing for the next lessons.

I pulled out of drama, music and other irrelevant subjects so I could dedicate that time to catch up and do well on the core, academic subjects. Because of all this, I never had a social life. I spent lunchtimes in Learning Support, weekends at home studying, than being out with friends, but I suppose I never had any ‘true’ friends anyway as people treated me differently due to my deafness.

Written language takes me twice as long to understand and process it, as I have to comprehend it, translate into simple English and work out if it’s important or not. That’s why when I write, I use simple English, because;

1. Why bother using complicated words when I don’t use/understand them myself?
2. As well as raising Deaf awareness through the hearing community, my target audience is aimed at the deaf community, so using simple English makes my blogs easier for them to understand.

The truth is, I never told my parents when I started blogging as I was conscious of how good/bad my writing skills were! At the time, blogging was a way for me to vent my frustrations and share my experiences of being deaf, so I wasn’t too bothered if it wasn’t good, just as long as I got my words out there.

When I started receiving comments saying how people could relate, and that they were glad they weren’t alone, it not only encouraged me to write more, but to show my parents! (Turns out I had nothing to be embarrassed about!) Over time, with practise, my writing skills have improved.

Fast forward 4 years, I’m now an award-winning blogger, writing blogs for national and international deaf organisations, with my blogs being shared worldwide… it’s something I never imagined possible!

My advice is…

1. If there’s something you want to do, do it! Don’t let anything stop you from achieving your goals!

2. If there are people who doubt your abilities, or say you can’t do something, prove them wrong!

So, to those who judged me in the past, I hope this blog brings to light just how hard it is living with an invisible disability, so please don’t put us down… we’ll only come back stronger!

Ellie (Deafie Blogger)

Deafie Blogger, aka Ellie, was born profoundly deaf, uses verbal communication, lipreads and wears Phonak hearing aids. Ellie embraces every new challenge; working as a Marketing Executive for a Spa & Health Club and blogging for Hearing Like Me and British Deaf News. She is passionate about deaf awareness, campaigning for equality and helping others through her personal blog as Deafie Blogger.

You can follow her on social media via @deafieblogger