Not “hearing impaired”

People learn how to better love people all the time.

One term that is hard for me (and many of my friends) to be called is “hearing impaired” or that I have a “speech impediment.”

Here is the explanation in this article.
“…this terminology does not use people-first language; it places the disability before the person. Second, it establishes “hearing” as the standard, and anything different as “impaired,” or substandard.”

With my level of hearing loss it is correct to call me “deaf” with a lower case “d”

I do not like being called with an “impairment or impediment,” it opens up a lot of wounds and scars Jesus has worked so hard to heal.

I believe I am fully myself without hearing and when people pray for me to hear or to heal me, it deeply offends me.

A lady once tweeted me that she thought I needed more faith to be healed to hear. I told her that I knew Jesus and His voice because I cannot hear, and that my faith is because I am in silence. It is the perspective in which I know God.

~ Emma Faye Rudkin | Founder Aid the Silent