Mourning Myself With Eve Chalom

After being struck by a car at age four, Eve Chalom lost her sense of hearing. While she regained some of her ability within six months, the emotional and energetic consequences of the accident stuck around for a lifetime.

Transcript

I want to start off by telling everybody your loss story because I understand it is a little bit unique. My loss story is basically about losing my hearing. It happened when I was four years old that I was in a car accident on the back of a bicycle. As a babysitter was riding a bicycle across the street, We were hit by a car and I hit my head on the windshield of the car. I don't really remember what happened, But I went to the hospital and then I did not have my hearing at all for about six months. Then I went on a plane ride and it came back to about 50% in each year. It's roughly about 50% in each year now. The loss is something that there was at six months where I didn't have any hearing. It was also very traumatic for me because I didn't know what had happened. I didn't really understand anything. I couldn't hear my family. That was a very difficult time and I feel like I lost a lot of things in that time, Not just my hearing. When the hearing came back partially, I just continued to live as a person with hearing loss and being hard of hearing. I was coping with that throughout my whole life. I want to know how much of that six months do you remember? I really probably don't remember any of that six months. There are some feelings that have come back about that time period as I've worked through layers of PTSD that I got from that. I think it's a lot of that wanting to connect really badly and having difficulty connecting. Also, It's a very subtle sense the way our hearing works. Do you notice people approaching because you hear them coming? I didn't hear people coming, So I was often startled or shocked when somebody would all of a sudden be there. I wouldn't hear them leave and I didn't hear them come. That actually seems to have had more of an impact on my life than I expected. Just like all the little ways in which our hearing work to keep us safe and feel connected in our lives. Tell me more about your feelings regarding this accident, Regarding the babysitter, Regarding your family's reaction, Your friend's reaction to all of this happening in your life. What did the immediate aftermath look like for you? I think I was at home a lot. There was this device that my mom—there was a device that I wore around my body that was a box and I did have some headphones. I could hear a little bit if my mom spoke into a microphone. I think that she was using that. I could hear one person at a time with the microphone, But it was not clear, Not very clear at all. I think for my family, It was extremely difficult to handle. I know that my mom really suffered under the shock of it and the weight of it and she didn't know how to help me. My dad was in denial of the event because he couldn't believe what happened and he was so upset about it. He didn't really acknowledge that I had a hearing loss for a long time. That's drastically different for both parents. Your mom seemed to have been trying to do everything she possibly could and still not knowing how and your dad was like, This isn't happening. This is not what my life looks like. Wow. I just said I had one brother at home and I know that my brother did not get a lot of attention during this time period because it all went on me. I feel like it depends on when things like this happen in a family. It depends on how strong your family is or whether things like this can bring the family closer together. It's very strange for me because it did not work well in my house and it served to make me more separated from everyone else in the house. My family didn't know how to accommodate the deafness and somehow they didn't receive the aid or tools that they needed. In order to know how to handle it better, I was often kind of an outsider in the house. But in a way, It's been really strange because as I've gone through a process in the last eight years or so where I've realized what a huge impact this early event had in my life, Which I was unaware of before, I feel that the fact that I had a little bit of that outsider feeling in my household allowed me to sort of move and grow beyond the connections of my family. Then being able to come back to my family and bring a new way of connecting and communicating back to them and sort of help them move into a healthier direction, It's been very exciting. So I almost feel like it's been an opportunity. The whole thing was an opportunity. I think that I'm living a very different life now than even would have been possible had I grown up in my household without having an accident like that. I feel like I have a potential for more because of what was provided by having to take a leap over something that was so big. Do you ever hold any resentment or anger for the babysitter who was watching over you or anybody else who was involved or caused the accident? Does that ever come up for you? It did in the past. I don't feel like it's so anymore. For the babysitter, I never really felt angry at her. She was a teenage girl and she didn't mean that. Maybe she was given too much responsibility and then that sort of falls onto my parents for giving her the responsibility of taking me out on the bike. My parents have more than enough expressed their guilt feelings or their wishes that things had been different. I don't feel like there's anything left where I'm upset at them for it. What did inspire your growth process? Was there ever a lightning bolt moment for you where it's like, Okay, This is what my life looks like now and I'm going to have to deal with it however X, Y, Z way? There definitely was. There were a few ripples. When I was in my mid-20s, I started doing some meditation and going to a Buddhist monastery. One of the monks there had a hearing loss where she had one ear. She was deaf in one ear. She did these movement retreats. I'm also a dancer. I was really enjoying doing these movement retreats at the monastery. I realized that my hearing loss had affected my personality. I realized that I had a lack of confidence because of it. That was a huge awakening for me because I had ignored any impact that the hearing loss might have on me as a person or taking it into consideration and how I dealt with people. I just struggled blindly without ever trying to make an allowance for myself because of it. That was the first time when I started to realize that there was something that I needed to recover from or that I needed to take stock of. I was doing it in a small way, But then I got married and it turned out very poorly and got divorced pretty quickly afterwards. That was the beginning of my major growth process where I had to figure out why I was having such bad relationships. The hearing loss and my feelings about myself because of the hearing loss were huge things that I had to work through because it wasn't fair the way I was seeing myself and feeling about myself because of a disability that I got that wasn't my fault. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What was going through your head or what were the beliefs that came up for you that either weren't true or things that you discovered were true? One of the big things when you have a hearing loss is that people, Most of the time, They don't know that you have a hearing loss because it's not very visible. Hearing aids are not very obvious most of the time. People will not know that you didn't hear them and they just assume that you're slow or that you're stupid, That they have to talk down to you to try to explain what they're saying. It's very subtle and it happens very fast because people just jump to that conclusion right away. Being able to have the confidence to say right up front, I have a hearing loss, Can you repeat that? So that the person knows that it's not that I'm slow or that I wouldn't understand them if I heard them. So then they don't have to try to rephrase it in a simpler way for me. So that's one of the biggest things is that dealing with feelings of being inferior or slow or stupid. One of the problems was that when I was a kid, I didn't realize what was happening. I just knew that people talked to me like I was stupid all the time. So then I started to think I was stupid and that was one of the beliefs I held about myself because that's how other people treated me because they didn't realize how they didn't hear them. Oh my gosh, That absolutely breaks my heart. It sounds like you found a new voice for yourself in this. Tell me if I'm wrong there. Yeah, I mean I worked on it a lot. Sometimes I still find that I'm a little bit shy to say something, But most of the time I'm generally able to say something right away. The other huge improvement is that technology has improved so much over the years that I can't. From when I was 16, It went from analog to semi-digital. When I was 21, It went from semi-digital to digital. Since then, There have continued to be improvements every few years in terms of how many frequencies the hearing aid picks up, The clarity of the sound. Most of the time, I can turn my hearing aid up a few notches and then I'm good. I can pretty much hear what people are saying. If there's a lot of accents or they're talking fast, It is difficult for me. Sometimes I have more trouble hearing kids because they don't speak as clearly as adults do. Most of the time or sometimes. In general, I'm able to hear a conversation so much better than I did when I was younger. That makes a big difference too because I feel more comfortable to be proactive. Because I can take steps, I can move closer, Or I can turn the hearing aid up. Then if I'm having trouble, I can say something. Whereas when I was younger, There was so much of the sentence that I would miss. Like three-quarters of the sentence or two-thirds of the sentence, I would miss all the time. In that case, Communication really becomes a much more focused activity where somebody would have to really face me and speak extremely clearly for me to be able to hear all the whole sentence. My family and the way I grew up, I grew up in a society and a culture where I was in a regular school. I didn't grow up in a signing community. I probably would have had an easier time had I grown up in a community with sign language. I was one of those people who read lips a lot and managed to get by. Wow, So you didn't have any other than having the technology of a hearing aid. You had no accommodation. Yeah. Wow, Holy crap. Lip reading. Then sometimes in school, Somebody might help me with the notes or if I had questions. I did a lot of reading to help myself keep up in school. I would read a lot about the subjects that I was in to get the information other than just in the classroom. Talk to me more about the movement element that spoke to you. When I found out we were going to be doing an interview and your loss was loss of hearing, I instantly jumped to loss of balance, But that's vertigo and I think that's different, Correct? Well, No, Actually you have a very good point because my balance is impaired. My vestibular system is impaired. That's the inner ear system that has to do with the philia, Which are the hairs that are responding to the fluid in your ears. It's because I have nerve damage in my ears, Those philia are impaired. I do have a weaker vestibular system, But I will say that it's actually stronger now than it's ever been. It might be average or a little bit above average because I've worked so hard to repair the vestibular system. I've been very lucky in my life that I was so kinesthetically gifted and very sensitive, Physically very sensitive to body language and emotions and nonverbal communication. That was one way in which I was making up for my hearing loss. I lived an extremely physical life as an ice skater, A modern dancer, And a dance movement therapist, And a yoga teacher, And an ice skating teacher, And performer. I've done a lot of movement as a way to channel my energy because movement, Because then there's not quite as much talking and communication because you can see what people are doing and then you know what to work on. I'm curious now about the second loss in your life, This divorce, And how it tied back to your hearing loss and what new things it unearthed in you, But also maybe what new things you learned altogether. I really appreciate that question because what the divorce did was the divorce kind of woke me up because I thought that I was making a great decision and I thought that I had figured out relationships. It was basically a loss of the person that I was because the person that got married or decided to do that had a different version of me. I feel like I've gone through maybe a thousand versions since then. Every single time it's like a loss. I've had many times when I felt like I had to mourn myself because I died again and had to be reborn again. I'm like, How many times does this have to happen? How many times before I'm just born and it's fine. Right, Right, Right. Tell me more about your perspective on death of self and mourning versions of our previous selves. I think it's one of those attachment things. You get attached to who you think you are and who you're used to identifying yourself as. Then when you want to grow and change and you let go of that, Then there's this trust that there's still something there that is you and will always be you. It's like, But it's trusting that there's something there that will be there and that you could really let go of a lot of other stuff so that you have a chance to continue changing and growing and continue becoming more at one with your environment and with the world around you and with other people. It's freeing once you get there where you don't feel the need to hold on to who you are anymore. It feels like I can be bigger when I don't need to identify myself anymore. I want to know now, Aside from age, What is different about you now and the little girl who lost her hearing? That's a good question. That makes me kind of emotional. I would say that one of the biggest things is not holding on anymore because after the accident, I clung very tightly to people and to my mom because I was so terrified. I needed somebody to anchor me. I needed people to anchor me because I was incredibly lost. To be able to feel like I've gotten to the point where I don't have to hold on to people that way, Where they're free to be themselves or go in their own direction, And I'm free to go in my direction, And that I'm not lost, That I do feel like I'm with myself, I think that is the biggest difference. I've just got this word or this phrase or this image of, You don't have to stay in order for me to stay. I love how that feels for you, Eve. That feels really cool. Oh my gosh, Thank you for sharing that. Thanks for putting that phrase out there. I like that too. Oh my goodness, You don't have to stay for me to stay. That's some deep freaking power there. And that also has to do a lot with that death of self that keeps happening over and over and over again as we lose all these things that we think that we're connected to. I want to go in the direction of anyone who has lost a sense or anyone who feels like they've lost a really vital piece of themselves. What would you tell them if you found out that that was their story today? One thing that's amazing about the human brain is that it's plastic. I love the fact that I can make new connections at any age. I read this wonderful book called The Brain That Changes Itself, And I read other books about neuroplasticity, And I believe in it very strongly that when you lose one sense, The other senses can make up for it. Sometimes they can do an incredible job compensating for it, And you end up being a more sensitive person and a more connected person than you would have been had you not lost the sense, And also appreciating the other senses more because you realized, Because you had to become conscious of it. I would say take full advantage of everything else you have, Enjoy everything else that you have, Because it can do a really awesome and creative job of making up for what you lost. I absolutely love that. So for anyone out there who feels like you've lost a sense, You've actually lost a sense, Or you've lost a piece of your identity, Your brain, Your mind, Your spirit will shift to accommodate that. You will shift to accommodate you. It fits so well with the idea of coming back because the loss is never the hard part. Life is really good at dealing us losses. It's all of the decisions that we make in the coming back process about how we live our lives and what we choose to believe in, And who we decide to lean on for support that ultimately shape who we are today. Yeah, I agree with that. Rock on. So if anybody that's listening right now wanted to get in touch with you to share their stories, To take a class, How would they go about doing that? I'm teaching yoga at McFetridge Sports Center on California in Irving Park Road, And then I'm also teaching a movement class at Oriole Park Library. And then, Yeah, I guess the ice rink is a good place, And you can find me on Facebook. My name is Eve Shalom, C-H-A-L-O-M, And my Facebook page is public, So that's an easy way for people to find me and message me if they want to speak with me. That's great. Eve, I am so thrilled to have had you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It was such an honor to know not only your experience, But what you've learned since then. It really was an honor to know that about you. So thanks for being on the show today. It was so great to have you here. Thank you. I do also have a blog. If you put my name in, You'll find a blog where I've written some articles on that. Oh, Lovely. So we'll share that as well. Very good to talk to you, Shelby. I'm really happy that we did this interview.