In This Family, We Wear Our Deafness as a Badge of Honor

When people realize I'm deaf, they tend to have a lot of questions. Can you drive? (Yes.) Get married? (Yes! What the heck?) Know if a baby is crying? (Yes, thanks to my vibrating wristwatch monitor).

As these questions imply, deafness is understood by most hearing people as a deficit that make life harder, and when I began losing my hearing as a middle schooler, I agreed. I viewed myself just as everyone around me did — as a defective version of them.

Since I had learned to speak, read and write English before I became deaf, the adults around me thought it was unnecessary for me to learn sign language or meet other deaf people, and I felt incredibly isolated. After a few years, I found the Deaf community myself. As a teen, I signed up for American Sign Language (ASL) classes, which were helpful in making higher education more accessible, but it was even more important to be with people like me — in coffee shops and dive bars, at bowling alleys and deaf service agencies, in the basements and backyards of deaf schools across the country. Since I lacked this type of community anywhere else, these spaces became my home. These people became my chosen family.

Some of our hangout locations were not deaf-specific, but we made them work: To see one another's signs, we cleared tables of anything that might obstruct our view. Other places were built with deaf people in mind, in a design aesthetic known as DeafSpace: circular tables, wide hallways and ramps for signing pairs to pass one another, the use of mirrors and balconies for increased visibility across rooms. Unsurprisingly, DeafSpace buildings are comfortable for me, and they typically incorporate elements of universal design that make them more accessible for everybody.

The real value of these spaces, though, were the people in them. They taught me deaf history, humor and generations-old stories. I learned that I was not a broken hearing person but a whole deaf one. Deaf schools in particular often keep archives or museums cataloging the history of the schools and their areas. Wherever I go, I know that at least in these spaces I'll be welcome, safe and understood.

Fast-forward more than 20 years, and I've created a deaf space of my own with my family. In the U.S., 90% of deaf children are born into hearing families, and only about 8% of parents learn enough ASL to hold a conversation. Luckily, my Deaf son isn't part of those statistics. He has the rare experience of being raised by signing parents. For him, family and home can be synonymous.

I fought for my son to attend a school for the deaf, wanting to offer him the chance I'd never had in a classroom full of peers getting an education designed for their benefit. Mainstreaming isn't a privilege for disabled kids — imagine what it really means for a deaf child to be dropped into a room of hearing people. Without deaf friends or mentors, a deaf child must either do the extra work to communicate or fail. Statistics on language acquisition of deaf children not exposed to signed language show that for the majority, the latter is the case.

In contrast, my son takes pride in his identity and community. He is learning to read, write and speak two languages, and he can communicate directly with peers and teachers and everyone in between. Each morning when I drop him off at school, I tell him I love him and he goes to chat with his friends. Usually I leave, too, buoyed by the knowledge that he is excited to be there and is safe. But some days I hang back, catching up with the principal or the staff. In those moments, it feels a bit like coming home.

Icon illustrations: Ananya Rao-Middleton.

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