Keep on writing

Hi there. I’m still here. It’s been an arduous yet exceptional couple of months.

When I started this blog, I believed it would be a way to write about change and showcase positive, exciting gains of cochlear implant hearing. And it would bring awareness to hearing loss and deafness, and to what’s possible and what’s different. I thought I would write thoughtful stories about generations of people grappling with hearing challenges and ultimately triumphing and that these would inspire. And while I still think that’s true, in optimistic fashion, I didn’t consider what I would do with setbacks.

After the initial high of activation, the past three months have been unexpectedly hard. And it has taken me some time to figure out how to write about it. I have found myself waiting for the challenges to resolve themselves in positive endings before I want to write the story. A story that would go like: it WAS hard but NOW I’m here.

As I often do, I looked for something to read and inform my mindset. I picked up Brené Brown’s Rising Strong and read about “gold-plating grit.” In her introduction, she talks about this tendency:

“…rarely do we see wounds that are in the process of healing….We much prefer stories about falling and rising to be inspirational and sanitized…. We like stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending.”

In my drafts folder are quite a few posts just waiting for happy endings. They’re standing in the way of other posts that share incremental gains and observations of my new hearing with a CI. Reflections on my kids’ voices and memories of music, Bluetooth therapy and thrillingly easy conversations at outdoor concerts.

So as the title of my blog reminds me, I’m in pursuit. Let’s get back to posting and here’s to unresolved setbacks and the gritty parts of the story that I’d rather breeze past.