For any any author, publication day is an exciting event. And after months or years of working on a book, it can also be nerve-wracking. This is that week for Shari Eberts and me: the launch of our new book Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss.
A secret part of us wonders, although we don’t say it to each other: what if no one likes it? What if we got it wrong? What if we wasted two years on what my favorite writer Anne Lamott lovingly calls a shitty first draft, plus the endless rewrites and edits and the hardest thing of all – picking the name? What if hearing care professionals don’t see the value in it for their clients? What if people with hearing loss go, “Who do these women think they are, saying they have all the answers?”
Self-assured thoughts like that….
But, then we look at the highly positive, early reviews from hearing care professionals, professors of future HCPs, and other hearing health advocates. We start breathing again. Confidence returns. We know that people with hearing loss need this book – because this is the book we needed earlier in our respective hearing loss journeys, but it didn’t exist. Both Shari and I had to claw our way along a bumpy hearing loss journey to get where we are today: in charge of our own communication success, doing the absolute best that we can, using technology, communication game-changers, and a reframed view of hearing loss in our lives.
We call this trio of strategies our three-legged stool, because this stool never wobbles, even on bumpy ground. It’s a solid seat, holding us up as we learn to go beyond hearing better, to communicating better. And when Shari and I each realized that this had to be our goal, life changed and magic happened.
In Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss, a whole section is dedicated to Hearing Hacks – the workarounds, tips and tricks that make the life with hearing loss – especially in our relationships – easier and less stressful.
This book, to us, is the Mother of All Hearing Hacks. We hope you read it, enjoy it, and share it with the people who need it.
