6 Ways I Practice Self-Care as a Deaf Person
Yes, self-care is a buzzword right now. But it’s important to note that a lot of activities considered self-care in mainstream media are extremely classist and ableist.
“Self-care began as a way for patients to prevent or manage illnesses by eating well or exercising,” Aisha Harris writes in Slate. The idea then moved over to the health professionals themselves, as it was found that in order to help others improve their mental and physical health, they needed to be taking care of themselves as well. There’s a whole long history of the evolution of self-care, going back to the 70s and tied in with the Black Panther Party’s wellness initiatives. However, in recent years, the distinction between self-care and treating yourself has been lost — and it becomes important to ask ourselves if the motivation behind our self-care is simply to make us happy for a moment, or if it’s to ensure that we will be our best selves for the rest of society?
Ableism — when one characterizes people by their disabilities as inferior to abled people — is a foundational institution of our society. It is the ongoing systemic, institutional devaluing of bodies and minds deemed deviant, abnormal, defective, subhuman, and less than. Now tie ableism in with the current notion of self-care, which takes the original intent of helping prevent or mitigate illnesses by eating well or exercising; out of the context of disability and illness. This new spin on self-care — wherein practices include anything from taking a bubble bath and reading a book to using dry shampoo instead of washing your hair — sounds super nice, but isn’t always easily obtained for disabled people.
For example, some people with physical disabilities can’t bathe themselves and need help getting a bath or shower. This takes that bubble bath out of the realm of a fun thing to do, and into the realm of a limited necessity. People with chronic fatigue will often go days without washing their hair, but dry shampoo is a commodity, and while it’s not that expensive, there are often lots of other things that disabled people have to spend their money on instead — things that take precedence because they’re necessary for living. This is referred to as CripTax, which puts the burden of accessibility on already overburdened people.
As a Deaf person, in many ways, I still have a lot of privilege, and the things I do for self care will show that. (I also, for the record, have a chronic illness and cPTSD, and generally, these self-care ideas take those both into account for me.) The reason I often focus on self-care as a Deaf person; is because my existence is spent fighting for access and struggling to understand the Hearing world around me. It’s physically and emotionally draining, and I need time to recharge to be able to continue fighting an inaccessible world everyday. The ways I practice self-care are specific to my deafness because my deafness is the most visible disability I have, and all of my other disabilities tend to tie into and be exacerbated by it. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it’s a start to understanding how self-care can look different for folks like me.
Here are six ways that I practice self-care as a Deaf person.
- Intentionally Attending More Deaf Events
Deaf events are self-care for me as a Deaf person because I spend all of my time around hearing people, aside from the time that I am alone at home with my partner (who is Deaf like me).
At a Deaf event, I am immersed in interaction in my primary language, without any misunderstanding or confusion. I get to spend hours talking with people who intimately understand my daily struggle to get along in the hearing world. I can participate in a conversation that my partner is having, because he is the extrovert in our relationship, without having to work ten times harder just to understand what all parties are saying. I get to easily network and build relationships with people over the course of something that may only last a few hours.
I have made some really valuable friendships at Deaf events, meeting people in the same field of work, or people interested in learning about what I do and bringing me or my knowledge into their sphere of influence to teach others.
2. Forming and Nurturing Deaf Friendships
I have a very small circle of friends, being an introvert. But also being Deaf makes this circle smaller than I would prefer. Over the years, I can count on two hands the number of hearing people who truly understood me as a Deaf person and were willing to do the extra work involved to build on that friendship. By comparison, I have several close Deaf friendships where we can pick right up where we left off any time we meet up again after being apart.
Some of this is because of the natural language barrier. But also, when I run into an accessibility issue, which is unfortunately often, the first person on my text list is usually a Deaf friend (and very occasionally a hearing interpreter friend). That is, my Deaf friends understand my fears of the future, my musings of what a family would look like with my partner who is also Deaf, and the barriers I face every single time I try to do something; and they feel the same anger as I do when a Deaf person (whether me, my friend, or someone else) is abused by the hearing community by refusing to do even the tiniest thing to allow us equal access to the world.
3. Pushing for Access in the (General) Community
I have learned over the last five years that because I am a relatively privileged Deaf person, that means that I have both the means and the ability to push for access in the community.
It’s hard to push for something other than an ASL interpreter for myself, but in doing that at various times, I bring up the actual citations in the ADA, and I teach businesses what they’re actually responsible for when it comes to accomodations. That means that, hopefully, the next time a disabled person comes into their business, they actually provide accommodation — because they’ve learned what the law says. (Maybe I’m naive, but this is what I hope will happen!)
Some other ways able people can get involved in making the world more accessible for disabled people include bringing disabled people into the planning committee if you’re planning an event. This population has a lot of ideas of how to make events more accessible, and a more accessible event is better for all parties.
4. Allowing Yourself to Stay In and Avoiding Socializing
As a Deaf person, socializing with hearing people is exhausting. Even working with the hearing public in a role where every part of my job is scripted, is exhausting. This means that after any event or activity, or even just a night out with hearing friends, I have to take some time entirely to myself to recuperate.
If I’m at an event or retreat with an interpreter, there are often still times when I’m expected to interact with hearing people on my own. I spend a lot of my downtime reading books, or if I’m particularly wiped, I will spend downtime watching historical documentaries on Netflix. (I’m definitely a social and cultural history enthusiast at heart!) Many of my relationships are very emotionally draining, and as much as I love being able to be there for people as a sounding board, as amusing as that is as a Deaf person, it is super taxing.
5. Getting Everything in Writing
In some ways, this refers back to #3, in that it’s very difficult to push for access as a Deaf person without verifiable proof that someone is denying you access.
When interacting with new people, paying for a service, or finding out about events in the community, it’s helpful to have everything in writing so that you can refer back to it — especially since it’s really easy to misunderstand someone when you’re coming at it from a lipreading perspective with a native language of American Sign Language, and they’re coming at it from their English-speaking, hearing perspective.
With my own cPTSD issues, sometimes I have giant gaps of nothing where memories should be — and it helps me a lot to have things in writing so that I can see what happened, and to know that I didn’t make up that little part of it that I remember. It also helps me to learn things, because it takes a really long time for me to learn something new, especially when it’s not in sign language. (Totally doesn’t apply when I’m learning something new from another Deaf person and they’re signing to me).
6. Refusing to Fake Hearing
Finally, for me, it’s very important to stop pretending to be hearing. I’m not! I spent many years feeling bad because I was trying to be like hearing people — lipreading them and just nodding along to conversations that I didn’t understand. People would tell me “never mind” or “it’s not that important,” — which really; meant that I wasn’t that important: I wasn’t worth taking the time to explain or reiterate something to. That pain made life super difficult for me.
Finally, I just started being up-front with people: I can’t hear you! Yes, I can lipread. But it is not a perfect science, and I need you to work, too, and help me continue understanding what’s going on.
It hasn’t been a perfect process, but this has helped me come to find some really good friends over the years — and I’m finally starting to be happy with who I am. I call that an important part of self-care.
