Hearing Loss LIVE! Talks What We Learned: Resilience

There are many faces to resilience and not all of them can be pretty. Sometimes we just have to blow that wall up!
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Transcript

Hearing Loss LIVE! talks, what did we learn about resilience? 

Julia: Good morning, and welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! This month, May, we hope you have liked, subscribed and shared our content about resilience. I hope you joined us for our let's talk we had this month. It was super awesome. So if you did, if you were able to join it, and you're joining us on this podcast, leave us a note, leave us or leave us a message. Tag us in something. It was super fun. And super great information. I think sorry. I've got too many things going on. And I just had a squirrel moment. Lots and lots of information. One of the takeaways I have this month is resilience looks different, not just to everyone, even inside ourselves, it looks different for each situation, right? One of my favorite-- uh-oh, I just sorry, guys, my face went all crazy there a minute. I don't know if that will happen on the video. So I apologize. One of my favorite takeaways was one of our regulars said when I can't get through, I blow it up. her resilience is how she gets it up and she blows it up. And, and we just we got a great laugh out of it. And I think it's one of my favorite. Gonna blow it up. So you may hear me say that quite often. Chelle, give me some thoughts on what you've found about resilience this month.

Chelle: We had resilience happen right there in that workshop. In fact, we've had resilience happen right now in real life this is pretty amazing that we came up with this theme months ago, months ago. And here it is we're practicing resilience a lot this month. So during the workshop, Gloria Pelletier, she led us in the workshop, her computer went down. Oh, no. My backup, I don't have the battery. And I can't find the plug. So her computer went down like 20 minutes into it, I think. And then she got on her phone right away, but it's so small. So she moved-- showed resilience to moving from her computer, to her phone, and then to her iPad for more options. So she did that. She showed us resilience with technology, having backups. Oh, my gosh, this didn't work. Let me try this. Oh, let me go to that one now. And that's kind of what resilience is all about with hearing loss. And in life. I liked that, that it happened. And to me, it's very important that you have a good support team. When you're going through resilience too. Gloria had me and Julia as back up. She said chalet takeover. And I did. I picked up on some thoughts that I had I had while she took about 15 minutes, 10-15 minutes to find her way through things. Support team is very necessary. During my my my own challenge this month, which have been trying to get captions for a video for classes, it's through school and they don't want to give me captions. So Julia has been a very good support for me and given me ideas and how to get around things and telling me you know, sometimes we just need somebody saying no, you need to follow through on that. Now that's different for everybody but to me, this class is for a life coach class, and that's that's what I'm moving into. So I I thought well, holy crap. I cannot back down and just go through this, oh, except the summer anything, skip the videos and everybody else gets the videos and the summary. Right? So I thought I can't I can't do this with what I want to do is help other people with hearing loss get through these same challenges. I'm sorry. I need a transcript or I knew captioned so Julia, Gloria, and my mom. I've been very good support and and I, it does not feel good. I've been down. I've been heartbroken. I've lost sleep over it. So their support keeps me afloat.

Julia: That's a good thought that that support you need. And, and resilience is maybe you didn't get what you really want at the end of the day. But you also had to take care of yourself as well. So, so when to change directions to get what you need in life. That's part of resilience. We weren't given the journey of hearing loss because we said I want to be deaf or I don't want to hear anymore. Or, you know, you say it all the time, Chelle heairng loss chose me, I didn't choose it. Therefore, I shouldn't, you know, XYZ. So part of the journey is letting people know, you, you've let me down. And now I have to walk away from the situation and no longer partake, type thing. But support is is huge, right? If we don't have support, not just with, well, we talk all the time about Hearing Loss Association of America and SayWhatClub and adult late-- Association of Late Deafened Adults, I'm sorry, I always get it wrong. Not that I don't love all debt, because I do but and us were a support group. This is the whole job that we we took on and wanted to be out there and have just one more layer of support. Because when we support each other, that's when we make change. And we do need to bring our hearing partners along, we need to shake them and say, you need to be behind me, I need help. I need a shoulder today. I need to bounce ideas off of you. You know, it's not tell, you know, it's not your hearing partner saying to you, well, that's too bad. That's not, that's not support, and it needs to be rethought. I think it's one of the reasons why we work so hard to build our classes to involve both those who can hear and the hearing loss individuals and how we can support each other. Whether you're related, whether your co-workers, whether your friends, maybe you don't know anybody with a hearing loss, but maybe you're going into a social service type job, you should be looking into things like this. This is how you learn how to give those supports that are needed for those who might have a hearing loss. I'm gonna turn it back over to you Chelle because I'm kind of rambling. But I'm trying to get around on all the things that just happened this month, it was so crazy.

Chelle: It was crazy. Sometimes that our workshops, we do have people that will bring up totally unrelated topics, okay, we always have a topic. But we always let people bring in whatever issues they're having. And there's like 10, 12, 18 people in the workshop. And then you get different feedback, you get different ideas, we all support each other. So our workshops are great in person sort of online, in person online, experience for people to to work out issues, there's a lot of us that are different levels of the journey. So if we can help each other people with hearing loss have the biggest hearts, we always want to see each other succeed. And I'm not just saying with hearing loss, because our partners too. When they come in with us very valuable, super valuable. So like Julio said, bring him in, try to get them in. Some people won't. And this will be a first for me to say my husband. He is really not that big of a support in that way. So that's why I depend on Julia, and Gloria and so many others in the community. The other thing I wanted to bring up was that resilience takes a lot of patience. And it's more patience than I want sometimes. But it's giving people a chance to get it right. I mean, we don't want to charge in when we're having issues with captions and accessibility. I'm going to an ADA lawyer right now. I'm going to sue you. I avoid that approach. But I might mention it. I, I don't want to go here, but I will if I have to. So it's taken at least two weeks of patience right now with me, giving them a chance to get it right and see where it goes. Because I don't know where it's gonna go right now, I still don't have a solution.

Julia: That's a really good look at resilience. Resilience, I think we didn't realize how much we face it just daily. I think I said it in the first podcast, and I'll say it again, it's a buzzword, so people see it and their eyes kind of glaze over. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the truth is, you face it daily, right? It looks differently. And maybe it has the face of failure, for whatever reason. But you got back up and found something else that moved you, you blown up that wall, I'm gonna say it again, blow up that wall. You know, maybe it's, maybe it's okay, I'm done fighting this battle, because it's not doing me any good. And I'm not going to move it forward right now until XYZ happens. But this one I can pick up and I can keep moving forward. And, you know, it's that resilience to get back up and get out there and face the day. I think it's one of the reasons I love our classes. Because not only are they teaching you about lipreading, they're teaching you about better communication skills. Our workbooks are the same way they're are about how to have you know, get through all those layers of the onion that is hearing loss. It's it's so all you know, it's a whole large onion that people don't realize-- sorry, the dog is growling and I do not know if zoom cut it out or not. So there's, there's huge layers of that onion. And that's what all of our stuffs built around. We have lipreading concepts soon to be called lipreading strategies starting June 1, it's a three hour Super Saturday. So all the best stuff in three hours. We've already got some amazing people attending the class, only a couple spots left. So we hope you know to fill those last couple spots. And then we follow it up with a Super Saturday June 8, which will be lips shapes. So you know, let's see how fast you can read lips. No, just kidding. Just the top information for lip shapes and review. (laughing) For those of you on Buzzsprout Chelle just gave us her best "forever" Are you lip reading camera stuff. She's got a great new camera. I can't wait to make a couple shorts with it. But, Chelle back to you any thoughts about our classes or workbooks or the summer in general?

Our classes, people who attend our classes either in person when I teach it for OSHER Lifelong Institute or program, you're at the University of Utah. All of them appreciative. I had no idea there was so much I could do to manage my communication with hearing loss. And even the hearing partners who take super appreciative. One lady I she didn't have her husband go You didn't want to attend. And she attended and said it's changed her communication at home, just because she knows how to better talk to her husband. So we always have those hearing people in our class one per at least and it's just as valuable for them.

Julia: Thank you. I do agree. You know, I do a lot of,  well doesn't everybody do this as a hearing partner? Myself just because I was raised as a hearing partner and I just think everybody it comes natural and then I have to realize oh, no, it's not it's it's kind of a duh moment. So I love teaching it from both perspectives. I think it helps so much. I had a thought I lost it. It's coming back. Okay, so we're headed into summer. In June, we will have one last let's talk before we take a small break. It will be on technology. Chelle's still putting it together so I just know it's on technology, but it is June 4th, 6pm, Mountain Standard Time, so adjust for your timezone. If you're not already subscribed to our E newsletter, or our let's talk, reach out to us at hearinglosslive.com and sign up for those. It will give you the Zoom link if you do and bring your thoughts and questions and what technology and the summer months may or may not work for you and what you'd like to see or experiences we love to share. We can we will not be at a well no, Chelle will be at HLA A's conference in Phoenix for a little minute this summer, like a day or something?

Chelle: One day.

Julia: in June, into June so you can always go to their local website and look up their hearing loss conference. SayWhatClub will be in Massachusetts at the end of July and ALDA will be in Florida. And I'm gonna say I think October or September? I can't quite remember but we'll work on that, we'll get it on in June's podcast for you. Because those are always great to find your people in person if you can. Great time, lots of technology, lots of other stuff, great vendors. You can always meet your your favorite captioning app phone reps there. All those sorts of things. Anyways, we hope to see you next month in June. 

Bye!