Better Hearing Consumer

  When do we finally get what it means to have hearing loss? When it happens to us. When do we learn how to live well with it? When we’re ready and when we really want to. Which may be very soon, sometime soon, or never. Recently I gave a presentation on hearing loss in the community where I live.

If you have not yet tapped into the world of TEDx talks, you’re missing out. These short talks, usually 10-15 minutes in length, are ‘ideas worth sharing’ delivered by experts from their lived experience. If you want a good source of information not corrupted by media or fringe conspiracies, try TED and TEDx talks. And, if you have hearing loss,

Casual conversations aren’t my thing. It’s not that I don’t like casual chats – I love them! Talking with people is one of life’s joys. But because of my hearing loss, I just don’t do casual very well, especially with strangers. A successful convo that sparks up and ends in just a few seconds or minutes, only works if I

What would your life be like if some major aspect of it had never existed? If you had met someone else to be your life partner? If instead of mediocre, your artistic and physical talents were world-class? If you looked different, or were raised in a different country or culture? If you didn’t have hearing loss? While it’s fun to

  Living well with hearing loss is not instinctive. We must learn how to do it. Nothing in a person’s personal experience prepares them for the emotional, life-changing impact of even a mild change in hearing. We don’t just hop to it, adopting strategies that will help us deal with communication barriers that we never realized existed. Even if we’ve

  Where are you on your hearing loss journey? I asked myself the same question – when did I morph from a self-described hard of hearing person who used hearing aids, to a person on a journey with her hearing loss? I remember the exact moment because it was seismic in its revelation. It changed me. In 1995, I attended

  My life has changed for the better since I started wearing an Apple watch. If you have hearing loss, as I do, there is no downside  and a multitude of upsides to using a smart watch. It tells me the time. I went for years without wearing a watch; who needs to know the time within a nanosecond? “Excuse

  I’ve had to deal with a few frustrations recently. Our lovely motorhome Thor suffered a series of  indignities in rapid succession – a cracked windshield, me almost setting it on fire (I forgot the eggs boiling on the stove), and a big one – the slide-out wouldn’t slide out. This snafu made me consider how I handle my hearing

Life with hearing loss can be chaotic and messy and, at times, just plain hard work. Trying to sort out what was said and by whom is often an aerobic workout, complete with swiveling heads, waving arms and raised voices. In Finland on a Scandinavian speaking tour, I was sitting at dinner with a joyous group of new hearing loss

Business meetings involve being able to follow what people are saying. I can’t do the meeting minutes. Phone calls with strangers are difficult because of unfamiliar speech patterns. Can you make this phone call for me – I can’t do it. On a walk with friends, we hear a bird call from the trees. My friends look up to the