I’ve been profoundly deaf ever since I was born but I wasn’t diagnosed until I was one years old. My foster family suspected I was deaf but every time they took me to get tested, I would always respond to the ‘sounds’ made by a drum or a triangle. Little did they know; I was just watching the professionals in the reflection of the window I was facing so I was responding to them by sight. I was a clever baby, wasn’t I? Eventually they confirmed I was deaf. When I came to live with my adoptive mum at 16 months, I had hearing aids, but I refused to wear them because they didn’t help. I could not hear anything with the hearing aids and it just did not work for me. Mum then looked at different options and she found one that was promising.

What Is A Cochlear Implant?

After many appointments and assessments, I was given the thumbs up to have a cochlear implant. A cochlear implant is a device that works by turning sound into electrical signals and sending them to part of the inner ear called the cochlea. From here, the signals travel to the brain and is heard as sound. Getting a cochlear implant wasn’t an easy task back then because you needed to have a big operation on your ear. I have a scar from where they cut the back of the ear up in order to put the implant. They have to use a drill into your skull to feed the wires into your cochlea and then place the magnet just under the skin. The implant has two main parts: a microphone behind the ear that picks up sound and changes it into electrical signals, which are sent along a wire to the coil on the skin, and a device that is placed inside the skull that picks up the electrical signals from the coil on the skin and sends them along the wires to the cochlea which is then translated into sound.

When the professionals first switched on my implant a few weeks after the operation, I began to hear sound for the first time, but I wasn’t able to understand the voices. See, you need to train your brain to hear because it has never heard sound before. This was helped by speech and language therapy where I learnt to speak and hear although slowly. When I started speaking more coherently, I was about nine years old.

How Did You Communicate?

I hear you asking, how did I communicate before I spoke? I used sign language and I still use it now. Sign language is a visual means of communicating using gestures, facial expressions and body language. It is preferred by most D/deaf and hard of hearing people. I always find it difficult to understand people when they are speaking to me and I have to often tell them to slow down and speak clearly. I can’t hear their voices very well and I have to use lip-reading.

“I rely on the visual, not the auditory. The word ‘lip-reading’ implies reading, like reading a book whose book is legible and clear. But the human face isn’t a book and lip reading is not reading. People mumble. People talk fast and laugh loud. People have facial hair like porcupines and lips like sphincters. People cover their mouths. People have accents. “

– Rachel Kolb, Seeing At The Speed of Sound.

I went to many different schools, and I kept having to leave because none of the schools were prepared for someone who was deaf. They didn’t know how to educate me. They didn’t know how to help me. As a result, I fell back behind my peers and my learning was severely delayed until I went to a boarding school specialised for deaf students. I caught up and I was overachieving in many subjects, but I was being bullied for being different. I had to leave school and I was home-schooled for two years until I attended Riverside. The staff at Riverside always went above and beyond for me, helping me work through my issues and helped me to access the conversation and subjects.

Who Do You Identify As?

I struggled with my identity a lot, did I want to be in the deaf world or in the hearing world? Did I want to accept my deafness or reject it? Do I want to sign or speak? Those were all questions niggling at me. Throughout my life, I have always had problems with my deafness. Sometimes I wanted to fully accept my deafness and reject my cochlear implant and just sign completely or wear the cochlear implant and pretend to be a hearing person and reject the deaf world. It wasn’t until my Teacher of the Deaf, Jill recommended I go to a BSL (British Sign Language, the sign language used in Britain) Learner’s coffee evening that I started to really understand my deaf identity. Barb, the organiser talked about her experiences with being deaf, and I realised that I wasn’t alone. There were people out there who had similar experiences as I had. I made some deaf friends and they all helped me to find my deaf identity. I am proud to call myself Deaf. I am a Deaf person.

Was it Easy To Get A Job?

Sometimes finding a job can be hard, but I was lucky. At the BSL Coffee evening, I was talking about the difficulties of finding a job as I had been looking for weeks prior. There was a man attending, his name was Mark. He kindly offered me a job. Mark is the Artistic Director of Prime Theatre, which is a theatre company that has a youth theatre for children, they produce professional shows and they do workshops in schools too. My job was to become a deaf signer for the three young deaf children that attended their youth theatre. I became a role model for the children, and they were able to access more out of the workshops. I made connections in the theatre industry which would prove to be valuable.

What Are You Doing Now?

Since working at Prime Theatre, I fell in love with drama and I decided to attend the workshops myself! Prime Theatre Youth Theatre produced a show called ‘This Is Our Town’ which explored the history of what Swindon was like in the 1900s and I was cast as the milkman, Howard Webb. Prime adapted the role of Howard Webb to be a deaf milkman to fit me and I signed and spoke my lines and learnt about physical theatre. We polished up the production and then we performed at the STEAM museum for three consecutive nights. This production was my ‘taste’ of performing and I fell in love with it.

I decided to study Acting at New College Swindon for a year and have loved the experience. I’ve studied texts from playwrights, I’ve learnt about famous playwrights, performed unique texts and experimented with the Brechtian technique. I have decided to study Performing Arts for a full three years this September. I still work at Prime Theatre assisting workshops and I have now become a Young Trustee on the Board! My confidence has come up in leaps and bounds. And I can’t wait to see what the future brings!

If you are someone struggling with your identity, please don’t be afraid to explore it. Be confident. Try things and you never know; you might like it! If I can do it, you can do it too!

Be yourself. Dare to be yourself.