Stephanie Todd from ‘WovenAware’ – finding my voice as a deaf storyteller (BSL)

I grew up in a hearing world that didn’t know how to listen. Words filled every space, but silence filled me. As a Deaf child in a hearing family, I learned early on that communication wasn’t about understanding; it was about surviving.

Lipreading, guessing, nodding at the right moments, pretending I understood when I didn’t. I became fluent in smiling through confusion.

I was born and raised in Bermuda, where Deaf awareness was almost non-existent at the time. When I was five, my Mum brought my younger Deaf sister and me to the UK in search of better Deaf education and support. My Dad stayed behind in Bermuda.

The move opened new doors but also brought a different kind of isolation, being far from home, navigating a world that still didn’t fully see or include me.

People called it “coping.” I called it exhausting.

I didn’t have Deaf role models growing up. I didn’t see my experience reflected anywhere, not at school, not in books, not even in my own home. The message was unspoken but clear: fit in, be grateful, don’t make a fuss. So I learned to shrink myself to make others comfortable.

That silence stayed with me through adulthood, in family, workplaces, meetings, and friendships. I was always the one who had to adapt, to explain, to educate. When people said, “We didn’t know,” what they often meant was “We didn’t think to ask.”

At some point, awareness became something I stopped waiting for from others. I realised it had to start within me.

After years of burying my feelings and enduring inaccessible environments, something inside me began to crack. The cracks weren’t a weakness; they were light getting in.

During the COVID pandemic, that light became impossible to ignore.

I had given birth to my youngest son just a month after the first lockdown began. My pregnancy and birth plans were suddenly turned upside down, and it became a traumatic experience that I never truly had time to process.

In that moment of chaos, one interpreter became my guardian angel – the person who made sure I was understood and safe. I’ve never forgotten that.

Grief surfaced, for things I’d lost, for the childhood I never fully processed, for the version of myself that had been surviving for too long. Everything I’d buried, grief, exhaustion, and memories I thought I’d forgotten, began to surface. The silence of that time brought reflection, but also pain.

During that time, loss came in many forms, some new, some old, and each one echoed the abandonment I’d carried quietly for years. The early months of the pandemic were filled with grief I couldn’t name – losing moments I should have had with my newborn, the slow unravelling of a close friendship that had once felt like family, friends drifting away, and the quiet ache of being surrounded by people but feeling completely unseen.

One loss after another blurred into exhaustion, until I realised how much of myself I’d been losing too. The stillness of lockdown forced me to face the noise inside my own mind. Years of deeper trauma I’d forgotten began to resurface, tangled with exhaustion and silence from my time working in an environment that slowly drained me.

I kept going because that’s what I’d always done, but inside, I was breaking.

That period became both an ending and a beginning – the start of my mental health decline, but also the first step towards healing. In the quiet, I began to see clearly for the first time: the patterns, the systems, and the truths I could no longer unsee.

For most of my life, I’d been told who I was by others, through assumptions, silence, or judgment. Becoming aware wasn’t just about healing; it was about reclaiming my own story.

For years, I wore different masks – the smile that kept everyone comfortable, the humour that hid exhaustion. Humour became my shield, the way I survived rooms that didn’t see me. But the more I laughed, the more invisible I felt.

Inside, I was collapsing. My cries for help often went unheard, and I began to believe their stories about me more than my own. There came a point where silence stopped protecting me. It was no longer safer to stay quiet than to speak.

But healing taught me that silence isn’t weakness, it’s what happens when you’re never truly seen. Once I started speaking, through writing and reflection, I began to find the real me again.

I started counselling, and for the first time, I was allowed to name things that had always been buried – trauma, grief, isolation, the pressure to be “the good Deaf person.” Naming them didn’t make them smaller, but it made me stronger.

Healing hasn’t meant forgetting; it’s meant finally being heard, understood, and supported in ways I never was before.

Writing became my way to make sense of it all. At first, it was private, words scribbled in notebooks late at night, fragments of thoughts I didn’t have the courage to speak. Then, piece by piece, I began sharing them.

When I wrote, I wasn’t trying to be brave; I was trying to breathe. Through writing, I found my own language of awareness. I could finally describe the weight of being unseen and the beauty of being Deaf, both at once. It was through words that I stopped seeing my difference as something to hide and started seeing it as something to honour.

That’s how WovenAware was born, a space to explore Deaf identity, access, and lived awareness. It became a way to turn everyday barriers into stories that build connection and understanding. And now, Becoming Aware has grown from that same thread, a deeper, more personal space where awareness is lived, not just spoken about.

Awareness isn’t a campaign or a day on the calendar. It’s a daily practice. It’s how we listen, how we include, how we hold space for stories that make us uncomfortable.

For me, awareness is also about my children. I have three, and one of them, my middle son, is Deaf. Watching him grow up in a world that still has so many barriers has been both painful and powerful. He’s the reason I keep writing, keep pushing, keep showing up. Because I want him to grow up knowing that his Deaf identity isn’t something to overcome, it’s something to celebrate.

Awareness lives in those everyday moments, standing firm when I ask for interpreters, advocating at school meetings, at job interviews, at medical appointments, explaining that access isn’t a favour, it’s a right. It’s in the small acts of courage that say, “I belong here, too.”

Healing hasn’t been linear. Some days, awareness feels empowering; other days, it feels heavy. But I’ve learned that becoming aware isn’t about perfection, it’s about presence.

Every story I write now is part of that process.

It’s me saying: I’m still here. I’m still learning. I’m still becoming. I don’t write to be understood anymore.I write to show that awareness isn’t a destination, it’s a way of being.

And maybe, by sharing my story, someone else will find the courage to share theirs, too.

Stephanie Todd is the Deaf founder and storyteller behind WovenAware, a reflective awareness platform exploring Deaf identity, access, and healing through storytelling. She’s currently developing her new blog, Becoming Aware, launching in early 2026, which invites readers into a journey of lived awareness, self-discovery, and connection.