Deaf Girly's world of employment

This morning, I read the latest report from the brilliant charity Scope about 'Why we need to see changes in support for disabled people in work' and it really struck a chord for me.

I am disabled. I lie awake at night worrying about my job prospects and where my career is going. About my earning potential and the restrictions my disability places on my ability to do jobs.

I know – I was told in an email – that my deafness has cost me an interview for some work. You can read about that here. And I know that this damaged my confidence in a way that it had never been damaged before.

The Scope report states that 58% of disabled people have felt at risk of losing their job because of their impairment. While I have never felt this, I have felt the sick fear of how I will get another job if I lose the one I am in – and as my industry is precarious at the best of times, this feeling never really goes away. It's a 24-hour, 7-day, 52-week low-level nausea. It's a bit exhausting.

I am lucky too in that I am not one of the 18% who was refused support by their employer. All my employees have striven to meet my needs. Things like amplified phones – which it turned out didn't help – and vibrating pagers for the fire alarm.

But still I get that low level nausea about work and my disability.

The 53% who experienced bullying? Sadly yes, I fall into this category. Although not in the last eight years... but just remembering it? Yep, that nausea is back.

And what about the 13% who don't disclose their disability to their employer? Yep, I've been there too. I don't just apply for jobs on a whim. I research the companies, I look at the role, I do all the thinking about whether my deafness would prevent me from doing the job. And then I apply.

I don't ever apply for jobs via agencies because they always call you, and then I would have to disclose my deafness at the very start, which means I don't stand a chance of making it into the potential employer's office to make a different impression.

And that's the exact reason I don't disclose my deafness. I have hope that if they meet me beforehand, the idea of my disability will be easier to understand. Easier to see around. And whether you can do the job will become the important thing, not whether your disability prevents you from doing so. Seeing as I will have already taken all that into account beforehand.

But that sick feeling? It's there, from the very start of the application process right through to the rejection letter or even the acceptance letter. Either way, it's hard not to feel anxious that at some point that disability is going to put up a barrier that wouldn't otherwise be there.

And the most shocking thing about this? To me, I feel like my disability is simply a part of who I am. Heck, it's given me this blog. It's made me Deafinitely Girly. And it inspired my first novel. And that if I lost out on a job, it would be the same as someone losing out on a job because they had brown hair, or were too tall, or had a lisp.

I have had 27 years to come to terms with my deafness, slowing working out how to live my life in a way I want to live it. Yes, I am profoundly deaf, but I have thirteen years' of experience in my chosen field under my belt. To a senior level. And sometimes I feel like that counts for nothing.

I look at the findings of Scope's survey and wonder how horrific the day-to-day lives of some of the respondents are. How tough they've had it. Whether they too have the same low-level nausea or something much worse.

Right now, I have a job. It's not full time, or permanent, but it's with a company I know and trust. A company that has been supportive of my disability. With people who know my ability. Who don't see me first as a deaf person, but instead as a colleague with 13 years' experience in her field.

But I am aware I have many years left to work. And truth be told I am slightly terrified. Terrified of the fact the job market is getting smaller and the fact that people who aren't deaf on the surface are more employable than me.

I hope that Scope's findings reach the souls of the people who have turned me and others down for work. I hope that they open the eyes of employers who 'choose the easy path' and employ the ones with the straightforward CVs. And I hope that things change. Because I don't want to live with 30 more years of employment nausea. I don't ever want to receive another email telling me that my deafness means I am unsuitable for a job. And I don't want to live a life half lived.

Happy Valentine's Day peeps!

DG
xx

Deaf Girly's and the world of work

The fab peeps over on Twitter will know that since I quit my job to write a book and be an au pair, then got a permanent job for one year and then left it again, I've been going it alone in the world of employment. With varying degrees of success.

But this morning as I was walking to one of the offices I am working at, I suddenly realised I should in fact feel incredibly proud of myself.

When I first started out working in London many many moons ago, I used to look at the freelancers who came into our office on a regular basis and wonder how they did it. How they slotted into a different team, got to know different people and different ways of working and didn't panic about it.

I mean, me getting a job in the big bad world was the reason I started this blog. Learning how to be deaf in a professional environment sent my head into a spin, I cried every day - in a cupboard where I did much of my work. I loved that cupboard, it was my safe haven away from the people who could use the phone and be efficient in the world of new millennial media.

In my 20s, I clung to every job like my life depended on it. My food and rent certainly did depend on it. I was terrified of redundancy and so eager to climb the ladder that I think I lost perspective of what made me good at what I do in the first place.

And then in 2013, I had that brainwave to quit my job, rent out my flat, write a book and be an au pair. All of which were varying degrees of successful... But all of which taught me an awful lot about myself and my capabilities as a deaf person.

And then I finished the first of many drafts of the book, got a job while being an au pair (RESPECT TO WORKING MOTHERS HERE BECAUSE THIS WAS A MENTAL TIME IN MY LIFE), then stopped being an au pair, left my job, continued to rent my flat, and had to rent another one...

You still following?

So what does a thirty-something deaf girl with a patchwork CV and an unpublished book with bills to pay do?

I did something I'd never thought I could do... I went freelance.

To be fair, at the start I kept it local. I contacted former colleagues who gave me work and gradually built up my confidence again. But then - because I really did need a bit more money - I sent my CV out to random places to see what happened.

And that had varying degrees of success.

There was the company who contacted me and were really interested having seen my
CV but then on finding out I was deaf, told me I wouldn't be suitable for the job and they needed a hearing person who could communicate well... All without finding out whether I can communicate well and dismissing the fact I have a CV showing 13 years of communicating well. *scowls

Then there was the office who gave me chance but was so frantic I swear I only peed once the whole time I was there...

Shortly after the 'you're too deaf to do this job' rejection, I got an email from another company I'd sent my CV to. They offered me some work – a trial. I accepted. But as the dates drew nearer I found myself getting more and more anxious.

What if my deafness let me down? What if I was required to use the phone and there was no other alternative? Should I have told them in advance about my disability? What if they had a problem with me not telling them about my disability? The worry list went on... and on... and on... I almost talked myself out of doing the work.

On my first day, I went through all the possible disaster scenarios before shooing myself out of the door reminding myself that the need to earn money was greater than my anxieties about being deaf.

On arrival, I discovered my lovely manager had a Scottish accent, which meant revealing my deafness in the first second of our meeting. And he didn't bat an eyelid. Not even a tiny flinch. He just accepted the information. I passed my trial.

And since then, in the three months that I have worked at this office, my manager has continued to accept the information I give him about my deafness. He's made phone calls for me, repeated things without any issue, reminded me of people's names and he always, always comes over to speak to me rather than shouting.

It's amazing.

I am lucky. I know I am. Not all offices are like this. But I think quite a few are. And now, when I realise that freelancing is going OK, and I'm not falling apart in a deaf-related anxious heap, I can't help but beam to myself.

It's made me realise that some of the things I've avoided in the past because of my deafness are do-able... and it's made me wonder what else is...

I'm just off to make a list!

Happy Tuesday peeps

DG
xx

Deafinitely Girly's new adventure

Today is the start of the crossover week between my old life and my new life.

I'm still going to work – for 5 more days – but I'm leaving early to get back to my new life.

This morning I woke at 4am. I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and eventually got up.

Leaving for work at 6.30am means I am here far too early. Even by crossover week standards.

As I travelled in on the bus this morning, I could feel myself gulping down a rising panic. It was there in the pit of my stomach. But it climbed up to my chest, into my throat and appeared in my eyes as fresh, hot tears.

This panic, as I look at the blue sky, speckled with clouds and promising a warm September day is completely unstoppable today.

This realisation that I've made the leap. I'm giving up the job I loved for 10 years, to write. To see where writing takes me.

I've wanted to write since the age of 5. Since I plagiarised Topsy & Tim and The Munch Bunch. Ever since I could read, I've wanted to write. And, the idea of being able to give more time to Deafinitely Girly seems like the most exciting thing in the world.

So why am I afraid?

I'm afraid that maybe I'll be rubbish at writing. And I'm also afraid I'll feel alone. Which is silly really as I'm rather good at being alone.

Usually.

I guess in the last 2 years, in my amazing company, I've spent every day seeing friends. It's a bit like being at school. But without the bullies and the double maths.

And it's the fact it's like leaving school that I am trying to remind myself of as I feel the hot, fat tears gathering in my eyes and ruining the make-up I did at 5am this morning.

You see, in the summer after my GCSEs I went deafer than I'd ever been before. I didn't notice so much as I wasn't in an environment where listening was that important. I was having holidays. I was having fun.

Going back to school for A Levels, I noticed that I couldn't hear anything. I was falling asleep halfway through my 90 minute lessons. And doing four A Levels, meant I had a lot of lessons.

So it was decided, halfway through the September term, that I would do three A Levels in 2 years and one A Level in one. A third year of 6th form. Which actually was quite a good thing as I was a year ahead at school after a mix up in kindergarten so it meant I would be going to university at 18, not 17.

The summer after my A Levels, I was in denial about going back to school. About all my favourite people not being there. Being at uni or on gap years. But that first day back, it hit me like a big rising wall of panic.

It was horrific. I panicked when I woke up, I panicked as I drove to school and then I panicked as I walked into the 6th form common room knowing full well the fun of the last year was gone.

I remember thinking the panic was never going to go away. That I would never feel like this was the right thing again.

But it went away gradually, day by day as I found my feet, realised that not seeing my friends every day didn't make them any less of my friends. And I made new friends, too. What's more, a third year of A Levels got me the grades I wanted to go to the uni I wanted. To set me on the amazing path that has been non-stop work and play to this moment.

Today when I felt this rising panic, I had a moment of wondering if I had made a terrible mistake.

Choosing to leave my amazing friends at work. Leave the job I stayed at school an extra year for all those years ago.

But I have to believe that I've made the right decision. And when I feel the rising panic, remember that it's only a temporary feeling. A reaction to change. A reaction to fear of the unknown.

Because it is the unknown. It's days stretching out in front of me where I have to form my own structure. Face my fears. And find new words. Every day.

There will be lots of tears this week, I think. There will be moments where this rising panic probably threatens to cut off my air supply. And when I walk out my office on Friday for the last time, I think I'll probably bawl my eyes out.

But it's OK. I'm ready for it.

And this time next week, I'll be sat at my desk, cup of tea brewing laptop open and I'll be Deafinitely Girly, writer. Freelance. Available for cake baking. Available for dates. Available for columns. Available for general writing miscellany…

It's going to be good right?

It has to be.