The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. -Helen Keller
I am Lea. I have Usher Syndrome, Type 1 which means I was born profoundly deaf and have retinitis pigmentosa - RP, an eye condition which causes progressive vision loss.
I was born in Connecticut where I started a formal education at the age of three at the Whipple School for the Deaf which was later on renamed Mystic Oral School for the Deaf. As of today, the school no longer exists as it closed in 1980.
Mind you, I failed miserably as their main form of communication was speech and lip-reading. Nowadays we call this Listening-Speech Language (LSL). To make matters worse, I started staying at the dormitory at three years old. We all were small children and if we attempted to use our hands - just to gesture a bit, we were either forced to sit on our hands or get slapped with a ruler.
After 12 years of Oral Education, I was mainstreamed. I was the only deaf student in my local high school and I did not have an interpreter. I learned that I had Usher Syndrome when I was 16, a sophomore in high school. I had no clue as to what it meant, what I might be facing in the future and I had no one to talk to about understanding my diagnosis.
Even though that I graduated from high school with honors, I decided that I did not want to be "the only deaf student" any more. I made the decision to attend the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the first and largest technological college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing in Rochester, New York. NTID has 1,100 deaf students. This meant I could meet other deaf people yet be a cross-registered student as I could take classes at Rochester Institute of Technology.
It was here at NTID/RID that my whole world opened up once I started learning American Sign Language. I didn't hesitate. I jumped in - immersed in American Sign Language. I was socially deficient and I knew it.
After graduating from NTID with a bachelor degree in Social Work, I immediately sought after a Master's degree in School Counseling and Guidance at Gallaudet University, Washington, DC. I then obtained a position as a guidance counselor at the Eastern NC School for the Deaf in Wilson, NC which I later on became a Deaf-Blind Services Specialist at the NC Division of Human Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
After working for the state nearly twenty years, my vision begin to rapidly deteriorated. I struggled with depression and anxiety. I knew I would have to learn Braille one way or another. It was hard for me to accept the fact that I would have to depend on others in order to live independently as a Deaf-Blind person. I could not learn that on my own. I went through a difficult transition - a long journey where I had started living in a new town, in a new community and adopting a whole new lifestyle. It was a painful process and I had nothing else to fall back on other than the love and encouragement that I felt from my family.
While my family has always been a constant support in my life, they advocated me as much as they could without interfering my emotional and spiritual growth. I can only imagine how easy it would be for them to simply take over but they didn't. Even though my parents believed that "Oral Education" was the best route for me to take as a child, I believe that they loved me the best they knew how. With the information they were given at the time.
I am beyond grateful that I learned American Sign Language back in college and it has been truly a blessing that I can communicate in Tactile Sign Language (TSL) as well. I'm also learning a new skill called: Pro-Tactile (PT). Pro-tactile is use of signs that cannot be felt through the air.
How I survived all these years without being given an opportunity to learn sign language is astounding to me as an adult today. I think what saved me the most as a child was that I was around other deaf children despite the fact that we were raised and taught in an oral-only environment. Regardless the oralism, we all felt a sense of belonging. We had each other. Why, we had a language of our own! We were communicating in our homemade signs and this was done in secret.
Books also saved me. I've always had a love for reading. I used to couldn't express myself well in words, books did that for me as I found myself in pages. Literacy is important for deaf children and so is having peer relationships when you're a deaf child.
During this time of incubation period, please stay healthy and help us celebrate Deaf-Blind Awareness Week, June 21-27, by commemorating Helen Keller and to promote awareness on hearing and vision loss.
May you always find kindness in your heart and a book in your hand,
Lea Moynihan
BS: Social Work '92 - NTID, Rochester, New York
MA: School Counseling and Guidance '95 - Gallaudet University,
Washington, DC.
