Tabby Belhorn: There’s Room for Everyone On Our Path

Thirteen years ago I was grieving the loss of having a child that could hear. My daughter had just been diagnosed with a permanent hearing loss. I was facing a lot of decisions to make about amplification, communication, doctors, and therapies. I left the audiologist’s office that day with a hundred emotions swirling inside.  I realized my daughter had most likely never heard me say “I love you” or calling to her from the another room in the house to say, “It’s okay, Momma’s right here” while she was crying. I also realized that day, that her life was exactly the same as the day before. She was happy, smiling, still had her favorite foods, toys, books, and TV show. Most importantly, she knew she was loved and she knew how to love as well.

My life changed that day, not hers.

Shortly after that day, my husband and I were contacted by  professionals to help us know what to do. We were provided guidance and information, but ultimately, we had to make choices for our daughter and our family. We were not aware of the conflict and controversies surrounding communication and amplification options for deaf or hard-of-hearing children. We simply made decisions that felt right to us for our family and our daughter.

We continued to make decisions that were right for our child and our family. We were lucky though, we knew we had options and choices. Part of this was because of our location, part because we worked with experienced and knowledgeable professionals, and part because we had support–family and friends were beside us to support our decisions.

A couple of years later I found myself working as a parent mentor.  Somehow I had become the parent that others went to for advice and guidance. During those two years, the job brought me into a world of differences and really taught me how to support parents who have a different perspective and those who made different choices than I did. That shift in focus was hard for me. Some days I didn’t understand why parents made the choices they did for their child and family. When I took the time to listen, and I mean really listen and hear what parents were telling me, I realized we were not all that different. We had the same goals for child and family, the only difference was the path we chose to get there.

One of my job duties was to establish a support program for parents and families of deaf children. My job was to provide support without bias for families of all deaf children regardless of the choices they made. This is how I found Hands & Voices.

Hands & Voices was founded by parents who were tired of the communication wars. They quite simply wanted to support each other, because raising a deaf or hard of hearing child alone is hard. The parents involved wanted unbiased and unbridled emotional support. A group of parents guiding parents.

The first Hands & Voices conference I attended felt like home. In my life as “Reagan’s Mom,” I often found myself explaining the choices we made for our family and why, but when I attended the Hands & Voices conference, there was no need to explain myself. No one there judged us, disagreed with our choices, or disrespected our choices. Everyone had open arms and welcomed me and my family, because now we were all family.

Hands & Voices has shown me that it is okay to have my own opinion and personal belief system, but also how to set those aside and walk beside any parent of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing. Hands & Voices has a wonderful way of respectfully accepting individual differences, while focusing on our common goals to achieve success-individually and collectively. We do not let our differences separate us, but instead our differences bring us together.

Thirteen years on my path raising a deaf child and 11 years into my role supporting parents has made me realize two things; there is no fork in the road and we are all sharing the same path. We all want happy, well-adjusted kids. The path we walk is shared with parents, families, children, friends, Deaf adults, doctors, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, teachers, interpreters, and more. I urge you to take the time to talk to and listen to the people sharing your path and find the shared respect and support we all need.

There is room for everyone on our path.