Beverly Biderman is a writer living in Toronto. She is a past Chair of the Board of the Canadian Hearing Society, and the author of Wired for Sound: A Journey into Hearing (rev. 2016). Her memoir is the basis for a new opera developed by Carlos Alberto Augusto, “On the Threshold of the Outside World.”

Cochlear implants have become a potent tool in the fight against the pernicious stigma of deafness. Not just against deafness, but the stigma as well. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, profoundly deaf, I tried to pass as hearing. I was ashamed of my deafness. Mainstreamed with a profound hearing loss, I would bluff, and try to fake it. But now, many years later, instead of ashamed, I am proud to have coped with such a severe disability. I am open about my hearing loss, unashamed. 

What has happened in the intervening years? The answer is the life changing technology of cochlear implants. This technology has given me and others a foot up so we can thrive with more ease in a hearing milieu. When I tried to pass in that milieu, the stress was so crushing, the support so absent, that I recall scouring the shelves of my local drugstore for “nerve pills.” I did not know how to advocate on my own behalf, how to ask for the accommodations I needed. My hearing loss was a burden I bore alone in silence, at great personal cost.

That all changed when I received my first cochlear implant in 1993. People were curious about this new technology; they asked questions; they were happy to help me in this amazing adventure in learning to hear. Importantly, I learned how to ask for help. The burden of deafness was not mine alone to bear: I could openly share it. After the essay at the link below was published in a Canadian newspaper and posted on Facebook, I received a flood of replies that indicated many other cochlear implant recipients and their families had experienced the same change. They felt more open about their deafness and more supported. They told me my story was theirs too. The stigma of deafness has met a powerful foe in cochlear implant technology.

I have learned from responses to my essay that teenage boys shave their heads to better display the proud markers of their bionic hearing. Cochlear implants are considered “cool.” I have been told that girls proudly affix their receivers on top of their hair rather than hidden beneath it. Parents told me that their children are learning to advocate on their own behalf, and to explain their hearing technology anew each year to their teachers. All this has been gratifying. I have also heard from people with other disabilities that they have learned that honesty and openness about their disability helps them to thrive. As one correspondent with epilepsy and ADHD said, “You carry everything you’re dealt in life with more strength and acceptance when you’re open about it.”

Amen to that. 

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/ columnists/biderman-learning-not-tohide-a-disability-was-the-best-lessonof-all