My Favorite Word of the Week?
“What???”
Closely followed by:
“I can’t hear you,”
“Say it again,”
and “Please come closer.”
Yep, part of my hearing is gone. Maybe it was due to a cold or sinus infection, but the idea of a life without sound terrifies me.
I found myself humming Joni Mitchell’s iconic line: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” [For a special treat see below.]
Hearing, speaking, and the power of words—all things I’ve taken for granted—now seem fragile and precious.
A New World: The Kingdom of the Hearing-Impaired
Losing even part of my hearing has felt like stepping into another world, a private universe from which to look out at a world which has lost some of its familiarity.
I’ve developed newfound empathy for friends who navigate hearing loss with such grace—discreetly positioning themselves in conversations to favor their “good ear,” and finding ways to hear voices in a crowd or a speaker at a lectern.
It’s made me sensitive to how much we, the hearing-enabled, could do to make life easier for those who aren’t. I want to do better.
Rethinking Words
When you have to strain to hear words, you want them to matter.
I learned this on Thanksgiving. I hosted a small gathering and could only hear half of it. Sitting in a bubble of muted sounds, I watched conversations unfold around me. The flow of pleasantries, small talk, and laughter carried its own energy, even when the words themselves were beyond me.
It hit me: I didn’t always need to hear the words to feel what was unfolding in the room.
And yet, I kept wondering—what if we could make our words count more? In a world oversaturated with information, we churn out words endlessly: webinars, articles, posts, chitchat. As a learning junkie, I’m always reaching for words that can teach me—while spending relatively little time savoring silence.
But filling space with words isn’t the same as honoring them. Remember (if you do), when we had to type our words—or handwrite them? There was no incentive then to pump out more words than were needed. Now, there’s little to limit us.
With AI making word generation effortless, we face a challenge: how can we make sure our words are valuable?
AI can help edit, organize, and offer us phrases, but it can’t breathe soul into writing. For that, we need a human being, who can imbue words with intention, heart, or the subtle energy that can inspire and change lives.
The Power of Words
As Saint John reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Whether or not you take this religiously, it’s a profound idea: words carry immense creative and transformative power.
History supports this. When the French revolutionaries cried, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” or Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “I have a dream,” they weren’t delivering slogans—they were infusing words with a life force rooted in their deepest truths.
When Helen Keller said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart,” or Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers,” they weren’t pontificating. They were offering pieces of their souls, showing us ways to fly.
Poets, singers, priests, and visionaries understand this. Words, at their best, remind us of who we are and uplift us.
Words Under Threat
Today, that uplifting power feels under siege.
Gaslighting—twisting reality to undermine truth—isn’t just bad behavior. It’s evil. It erodes trust, hinders solutions to urgent problems, and cheapens the sacred power of language. It turns words into hollow vessels, draining them of heart and soul.
AI can generate words. Propagandists can create slogans. But it takes a listening, feeling human heart to make words truly matter.
New Questions
My experience of partial deafness has sparked new questions:
- What makes our speech uniquely human, distinct from machine-generated words?
- Can I resist the urge to fill every silence with words?
- Can I speak less and mean more?
- Can I honor my words with intention and heart?
- And how can I use this experience to be more compassionate, respectful, and supportive of people with hearing challenges?
A Small Gift
In the midst of this reflection, I visited an otolaryngologist. The diagnosis? My hearing loss is likely tied to congestion from a cold or sinus infection and may resolve in a few months. He also suggested hearing aids and offered to drain my congested middle ear.
I agreed.
After the procedure, a small miracle: I could hear a little more. While it may take time to return to my “normal” hearing loss, I feel profoundly lucky—not everyone gets that chance.
On the ferry home, a man nearby played a talk on his iPhone speaker. Normally, I’d find this unnecessary sharing annoying.
This time, I felt grateful.
A world had begun to open back up—and I won’t take it for granted.
And now for a treat—
4 Responses
Wonderful blog, Sally, as always! Our dear friend Claire Blatchford, deaf from childhood, has written an excellent book to aid those gifted with hearing to understand their loved ones and friends who are going deaf. It is, as you so beautifully expressed, an experience of grief and disconnection and needs special attention and awareness from those who care about them. Often they are met with annoyance or teasing. The book title is Full Face and is written as a correspondence with one who is going deaf in midlife. I highly recommend it for anyone who is experiencing hearing loss to give as a tool to help their family members understand their needs. Depression is not uncommon.
I am happy yours will be returning soon. Living with one who has always had hearing loss (it kept him from being drafted for Vietnam) I am very aware of the fact that I have to have his eyes before talking to him. Much of his hearing is through lip reading. Also having the family aware of his need for conversations to be one at a time helps. It doesn’t always work, but as you found, Sally, being in the room that is full of voices and laughter has its own sweetness even if you can’t hear the joke.
I was so grateful that David recommended Claire’s book to me – and I ordered it. What a gift it was. She is so compassionate, knowledgeable, and helpful — and I also find a sense of spirit within her. It’s the kind of book I would recommend not just to those who are going deaf — but those who are hearing-able who want to understand more about life. Blessings!
Sally, love your focus on the power of and, for me, sacredness of words. Sometimes there are no words…like recent mystical experiences with Bill’s transition. I can “see” it. Words are more illusive. As an artist, I’m just now beginning to comprehend how someone might be inspired to create a painting to describe their Other Worldly experience. Will ponder the possibilities! I’ve never felt called to abstract painting, because I rarely can “make meaning” of what I’m seeing. However looking at and liking and appreciating the three works of art you are about to display at your Senior Center…maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question? Is it possible when you paint you are expressing feelings, and the things that are unseen? As Bill would say: “there’s so much more going on than what meets the eye.” I have been graced with a multitude of blessings these past years where I have found myself operating in a different realm from our Earthly one. The clearest example came when I took courses in Intuition, with my intention of being better able to communicate with horses (and in fact, dogs, and all animals, and now trees, plants, even rocks.) My most recent experience of being in a different realm was at the instant of Bill’s passing on to his next life.
So, now I’m wondering when you paint, do you notice you have entered different realms from which you paint your impressions of what you are experiencing? Hmmmm….WOW! I think we have some new Grist for our respective Mills! We need a weekend retreat!!! And, when responding to the unseen, it probably doesn’t matter what words we use…there may only be visual images. I’ve always loved listening to the French speak French in cafes. I sit and eavesdrop for long periods of time, not understanding the meaning of the words, but soaking in the sensations I experience in my body, my heart, my Soul. Truly a Romance Language. I have on my bucket list more French language courses in France. For a long time I’ve believed my heart is French.
Switching gears, I want to pass on something I learned when I acquired my hearing aids 7 years ago. The research is even better now: when people allow their hearing loss to continue with no intervention, they are far more likely to develop dementia, and loss of cognitive abilities. If the brain cannot hear, the parts of our brain charged with hearing begin to shut down. They go dormant. Their function is to transmit meaning to other parts of the brain. You can watch seniors who become more reclusive, more isolated, because going out to a restaurant, or to a gathering of friends is no longer fun or rewarding, because they can’t hear. Soon the motivation to socialize is gone, ergo lowered brain functioning. With hearing aids providing normal hearing ranges, the brain stays active and engaged. Not all primary doctors know this: whenever I see doctors or nurses, I ask them: “do you regularly ask your aging patients, do you have your hearing checked regularly. Bill noticed my losses first: we could never agree on the volume level of TV. Or music in the car. Once we both balanced our losses with hearing aids we both were much happier! I wear my proudly. My only dilemma now is going to most restaurants: for whatever reason, the sound decibels are so high the only way Bill and could talk, was if we sat next to each other in a booth. Why restaurants haven’t figured this out, and made their rooms quieter, I have no idea. The sound proofing technologies are available and not costly. Carpets, fabric on the walls, special sound-absorbing panels on ceilings…I pass on my feedback to restaurant managers after an expensive meal with little dialog. I consider it senior discrimination!!! But, that’s another story.
Have fun with you art exhibition…do let us know how it goes! Are you trying to sell your paintings? I can never imagine myself wanting to part with my creations…I do consider one day making prints available! ❤️🤣🤣🤣🙏👍👍😎🐶❤️
Thank you for all of this wisdom!