Hearing Link Services

How Hearing Link Services helped me

When May decided to retire, she also made the decision to take action and understand her hearing loss.

Mid shot of a happy woman leaving on a fence outside looking directly at the camera and wearing a lanyard with a badge that says ‘Volunteer’

After struggling throughout her life and teaching career, May wanted this new chapter in her life to be one that she could enjoy and make the most of.

Communication

Although May's poor hearing goes back to her childhood, further communication difficulties emerged at the start of her career. She muddled through for years before finally receiving audiology support.

She attended lipreading classes and the communication hints and tips she picked up helped her to keep her head above water. But, she found that she was still struggling in many aspects of her life.

Hearing Link Services

Then, May heard about Hearing Link Services and was encouraged to find out more about our personalised peer support services.

May remembers: “When I took early retirement, I was very aware I needed to understand my hearing loss better and find more ways to cope and optimise my listening skills in order to better communicate and to socialise.”

I had become quite isolated, very withdrawn and possibly a little depressed.

Personalised support

May initially signed up to attend a peer-led support group.

She said: “The workshops explored ways to cope with so many of the difficult situations deaf people such as I face on day-to-day basis. I particularly found ‘target setting’ useful because I was able to take a fresh look at the problem, work out how I might resolve it, and then work on it step by step.”

A key benefit of those sessions to May was that she met lots of other people facing the same hearing and emotional challenges as her.

May said, “Hearing Link Services turned several corners for me. I realised I was not alone. I came to accept my deafness as a fact which I must deal with and keep moving forward.”