Just Me

  I'm late with this blog post again, but only because between my bad headaches and a looming deadline, I haven't been able to post on here for Deaf Awareness Month on a Friday like I planned to. I even missed Saturday! But as long as I get a post out there at least once each week of the month, then I'm good.   And today is the last day for me to meet Week 3! Well, for me, it is, because I have a deadline on Wednesday, and I will be hunkering down from Monday to Wednesday, working on my article!   So, here is the next post for my efforts to debunk the many myths and misconceptions out there about the Deaf, for the purpose of Deaf Awareness Month. This particular post is about sign language, and there are actually MANY myths and misconceptions about sign language. In this blog post, I will be addressing five of them.   I have a long, torrid history with sign language. Even though I am profoundly deaf, I am not fluent in sign language. Yes! It's true! I h...

  Shortly after I became deaf, my parents knew we would have to figure out how this new communication barrier we were now faced with was going to change the way we communicated. I would no longer be able to hear anyone calling for me from another room and I could not communicate with them when they talked to me while having their face turned away. We knew perfectly well that, from that point forward, my deafness was going to change how everyone in the family communicated with me. (I was the only deaf person in the family.)   One thing they did was write things down. Nobody learned sign language right away; it was as though using sign language to communicate with me was a last resort. Because of this “no sign language” rule in our home, I didn’t learn sign language either. Communication was either via written notes or lipreading.   But mostly lipreading.   My parents really wanted me to use lipreading as a form of communication. “We live in a hearing wor...