With the new year approaching, it is natural to talk about New Year resolutions, but I want to talk to you about Christmas (replace with your holiday of choice) resolutions.
Let me explain.
When the holidays approach, we look forward to spending lots of time with our family and closest friends. We’ll often spend entire days in their company. While the prospect of spending time with people we love is heartwarming, if we have a hearing loss, we might have something else on our mind. We might wonder: will we be able to hear everything?
Regardless of the severity of our hearing loss, it’s inevitable that we’ll miss things, like jokes or the soft voice of a child.
It’s inevitable that we’ll feel more fatigued towards the end of the day compared to people with perfect hearing, we might even become irritable.
It’s possible that family members will not understand what we’re going through, as many still think that hearing aids should solve all our hearing problems.
Since there’s still a little bit of time, I urge you to think about how you can give yourself a better experience this Christmas, and take the opportunity to educate your family on how living with hearing loss really feels like. You could remind your loved ones how to speak to you and that you don’t do so well in rapid-fire conversations.
You could plan to charge and bring your remote microphone to dinner and actually use it. Having your accessory on display will make it easy to bring up the hearing loss topic and educate your family that hearing aids alone are not enough in some situations.
You could plan to have some guilt-free breaks, nothing better than retreat to a quiet place to rest your ears and brain. You could take a nap or simply read a book.
Last but not least, please remind yourself that despite your best efforts, you will likely miss some things, but you will also hear many more. And that the important thing isn’t to hear everything, but to connect with the people we love.
Take a minute or two to think about your Christmas resolutions, and I promise you’ll have a merrier Christmas this year.
Happy Christmas,
Gianluca