Jeanette Wright Prefers Being Deaf

By Angus Watson

Hearing is overrated - How 53 year-old Jeanette Wright learnt to prefer being deaf.

If someone could restore my hearing tomorrow, I’d say no. I prefer being deaf. I have a language and a community of my own. I always get a good night’s sleep, and always win an argument by just saying my piece then looking away. Why would I suddenly want kids screaming and traffic blaring in my head 24 hours a day? I’m much happier without it. But I wasn’t always.

I became deaf 20 years ago, when I was 33. I was on holiday in Devon with my husband, two year-old daughter and six week-old son, just after a sinus infection. The pressure changes driving up and down hills pushed the infection into my cochlear. Within six months I’d lost 90 per cent of my hearing, which is where I am now. With my hearing aid, if there’s no other noise, I can hear that you’re saying something but I need to lip-read to hear what it is. Without the aid I just hear a bell ringing in my right ear and a jet engine in the left.

At the start I fought it. I didn’t want to be deaf, so pretended I wasn’t. I struggled to understand the customers at my job as a cashier in a building society. They thought I was stupid - it was embarrassing and frustrating and I had to leave. I cut myself off from everything apart from my family. If I was out with the children and saw someone I knew coming towards me, I’d cross the road, and they’d think “she’s rude.” Soon I lost almost all my friends.

I kept saying: “why me? What have I done?” I was angry with everyone and everything.

My husband was supportive at first, but after a while it was too much strain and we split up. I hit rock bottom. I’m surprised that I’m here to tell the tale now. I was on anti-depressants and counselling. My only income was from the state, and I hated it. You can’t live on benefits, you just exist. I wanted to work, but I kept saying: “Who’s going to want a deaf woman with two children? How can I work when I can’t hear?” I spent two more years locked away in self pity.

I’ll never forget the moment I decided to turn things around. I was sitting in my lounge, looking at the garden, thinking that I wasn’t giving my kids the life they deserved – I couldn’t communicate with them like a mother should, and I couldn’t give them the holidays and toys that their friends had. I said to myself: “Right. No one’s going to do this for me. No one’s going to make me hear again. I’ve got to accept it, I’ve got to move on, I’ve got to earn my own money.” The very next day I enrolled at the local college to learn sign language.

I decided on sign language because I couldn’t lip read my children – kids are hard, because they tend to mumble and look away. Nothing changed to begin with. I was still isolated because nobody else I knew signed, but then, to practise for my first exam, I went to my local deaf club. Suddenly I realised I wasn’t alone – I was not the only deaf person in the world. I’ve never looked back.

I started to work part time at the Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD) teaching life skills, sign language and deaf awareness. I’ve moved up and up and now I’m a Training Manager. I’ve trained the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, Guys Hospital, and many more. I’ve qualified far more as a deaf person than I did as a hearing one, and done so much more professionally.

It was teaching sign language that I met my second husband, Michael, who was on the course with a minor hearing problem. Michael asked me out after my first lesson as a teacher, and I said no. He asked me again and again and I refused because he was on my course and I didn’t think it was professional. So he waited until the year’s course finished, and asked me out again. I said yes, and we’ve been together ever since. We got married in 2004, after living together for seven years.

Now I live with Michael, my son Daniel and Michael’s son James. My daughter Jemma lives nearby with her 20 month-old son Hayden James, who’s learning to sign already. He comes with me to the deaf club and signs with the little old ladies who love him to bits.

Deaf life suits me very well. I feel it has made me a better person. I judge people for themselves and not by their disabilities, and my children do the same. I’m also far more assertive than when I could hear. I will always speak up for myself if I have a problem with anything, so my sign language name is Devil!

In day to day life, I love the peace and quiet I’ll find in an otherwise noisy place like Liverpool Street, although I do prefer to drive because of the communication problems on public transport. It’s communication that brings the greatest problems with deafness. People often think I’m stupid, and talk to Michael even if it’s me that’s asked the question – which I find annoying. On honeymoon a woman told Michael what a kind man he must be to marry a disabled person. I almost hit her! I also hate the dark, because without light I have no communication. It can make the world a very lonely place and I wish everyone would take time to learn basic sign language. When people go abroad they always try the local lingo, so why not learn sign language and make British deaf people feel welcome in their own country? Even if its only fingerspelling, which is spelling out the alphabet on your hands.

Other than easy communication, the only things I really miss are music and the sound of my grandson laughing and giggling – but I put my hand on his chest and I feel him. I do see the funny side of being deaf too – last year in Thailand I was so busy looking into a shoe shop window that I walked slap-bang into an elephant, and once my children persuaded me to order a drive-through MacDonald’s from a letter box.

With my great new life, I don’t want to hear again. I’m told a cochlear implant might help, but I don’t want one. The only real problem is people who aren’t deaf aware and tend to ignore you out of fear or embarrassment. And, very happily, it’s my job now to train them how to communicate with me!