Rebecca A Withey: The joys of having a sister who is also deaf

I’ve always thought myself to be fortunate to have a sister who is also deaf. I think there’s an added bond between siblings who have similar life experiences, I guess it’s a shared experience that offers a deeper sense of connection and real understanding.

My sister actually had a milestone of a birthday last month so I thought it was a timely opportunity to write about her and our relationship in general.

It was actually the week that I was born that my parents were first told my sister, Emma, was deaf. Emma was four at the time and her teachers at school had been concerned about her ignoring them and not doing what she was supposed to be. They labelled her ‘naughty’ and put her in a group with other kids who were misbehaving, when in actual fact she just couldn’t hear what was being said.

Emma was diagnosed with a high frequency sensory neural hearing loss – which is a type of deafness that looks like a ski slope on an audiogram. She could hear low tones well but as the frequency of sound got higher, her ability to hear them dropped.

My parents were taken aback by this diagnosis yet they both threw themselves into learning whatever they needed to do in order to meet Emma’s needs. As I grew from being a baby into a little school age girl, my parents were mindfully watching to see if I also had any kind of deafness.

I passed my early hearing tests and was assumed to be hearing until a test at school showed that I was also unable to pick up all of the high frequency sounds, just like my sister. It was a type of deafness that would progress as we got older, yet I always felt as though it wasn’t a big deal because I had my sister and she was absolutely fine with it all too.

Our parents later took us to a hospital in Nottingham to find out what the reason for our deafness was. The doctors there did all sorts of tests, even measuring our eyes and our hands, and in the end the doctor concluded that it was a genetic mutation between our parents that caused my sister and I to be deaf.

For Emma and I, our deafness was always something we could get around together or laugh about with each other. Sure, there were times that we cringed or felt awkward in social situations but we always had each other to confide in and offer that sense of understanding.

Many times when we were really young we would go into shops together and not understood what a shopkeeper was muttering to us. Our automatic response back then was to say ‘pardon’ and then if we still didn’t understand we would just smile and wander off whilst giggling.

Music was also a big part of our lives. It became a family tradition that every Sunday, after the roast dinner and walks outdoors, we would come back and play records or cassettes in the lounge at the back of the house. My Dad would sing, my Mum danced and myself and Emma would often be lying on the floor with an ear pressed up to the speaker singing and wriggling along too.

Our favourite songs were by Gloria Estefan, Celine Dion and of course the Backstreet Boys. We made up dances together, turning up the volume where necessary and when Emma’s hearing started to drop so much that she couldn’t hear the music so well I would act as her visual cue and count her in whenever she needed me to.

As my sister and I both started using British Sign Language more, it became our preferred language whenever we were together and we taught our friends at school how to sign too. We became so fluent that we knew more than our parents did and our Mum would often wonder what we were talking about as we conversed privately in BSL. Even now, Emma is the only person in my birth family who I can comfortably switch my voice off with and chat to in total BSL.

Emma and I both know how it feels to be excluded from situations. Whenever we met up with extended members of the family who we weren’t really close to, perhaps for Christmas gatherings and so on, we noticed how these relatives would talk to our parents instead of us.

These relatives would go through others to find out if we wanted a drink or little things like that instead of just approaching us. Yet instead of feeling sad about that at the time, I remember feeling glad that I still had my sister next to me to talk to. We were in it together.

My sister and I live in different counties now so I don’t see her as much as I’d like to, but whenever we are together with the rest of the family it’s like we’ve never been apart. We are slightly mischievous when we are together, always laughing and finding the fun in things.

I was so glad that Emma was able to join me in the sign performance group Unify earlier this year when we went to Manchester. I hope that we have many more opportunities to perform together in the future, just like we hoped to do when we were just two dancing happy kids back in Walsall.

It really is a blessing to have a big sister who is like you, because despite the challenges and trials that are part of being deaf, we’ve always had each other for support and encouragement.

When I meet deaf people for the first time and they ask about siblings, they almost always comment on how lucky I am that I have a sibling who is also deaf.

We are all in need of having someone in our life who makes us feel ‘ordinary,’ and not so different. I hope whoever reads this has that someone in their life who feels like their ‘home’ too.

So, happy birthday big sis. Thanks for always having my back, you know I’ve got yours!

Beckie x

Rebecca Anne Withey is a freelance writer, performing artist and consultant. She is also profoundly deaf, a sign language user and pretty great lipreader. She writes on varied topics close to her heart in the hope that they may serve to inspire others.