A Little About Me
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I have worn many hats since leaving my hometown of Garden City, New York to attend a small, Southern women’s college in 1989. Surrounded by Virginia’s rolling mountains and the supportive academic community at Hollins, I began to cultivate the art and skill of creative writing. With a degree in economics in my hand, and a desire to climb the corporate ladder, I jumped directly into banking - eventually leading projects in global corporate communications.
EVERYTHING CHANGED IN 2008
A few months after my youngest child Bridget (aka Bridie) began preschool, teachers started to notice what my family and I had failed to see: atypical speech and language development and significant cognitive delays. A few weeks later, a thorough hearing evaluation would reveal that Bridie had mysteriously lost her hearing. (Listen to my detailed account recorded for the Virginia Department of Health.)
PHOTO: SITTING IN A SILENT WORLD Bridget’s first day of preschool, September 2007.
While the news was startling and devastating, it was my private process through guilt and grieving, and our long list of unanswered questions, that inspired me to lead our family on a search for hope - and hope is what we found. In the years that followed Bridie’s postnatal hearing loss diagnosis, I met many other parents who had initially responded to their child’s disability just as my husband and I had – shocked, worried, and struggling. We were all desperate for answers, advice, information, and emotional support. We found validation and comfort from each other.
After stepping away from corporate America to become her full-time newbie parent advocate, I began writing short reflective essays, including my experiences raising a child with a disability. Something was exciting about rediscovering my outlet - the process of thinking deeply about an experience, examining how I was impacted by it, and looking at it through a new lens. Writing became a restorative and healing practice. I eventually discovered that this style of writing allowed me to look back with less judgment and more compassion for myself and others.
In May 2021, I published my debut book, Padapillo, which is based on the true story of how our family discovered and came to terms with Bridie’s hearing loss. Our whole family was delighted when Padapillo won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award a few months later.
Today, I am the founder/director of Padapillo PBLLC: the social enterprise behind the national Late Onset Hearing Loss Awareness Campaign and co-founder of the Virginia Lions Listen Up! Preschool Hearing Health Outreach Program. We are devoted to ongoing, growing community awareness about early childhood hearing loss, informing the public about the consequences of late identification, and partnering with schools, agencies, and organizations to develop and launch creative programs aimed at finding children who are deaf and hard of hearing before school enrollment (typically kindergarten). We are equally committed to helping children with hearing loss and their families access whatever services and support they need to thrive.
This important mission needs collaborators like YOU to take this important information and message forward into communities big and small. Together we can find children with postnatal hearing loss sooner.
PHOTO: STANDING IN A SILENT WORLD Bridget (2) and Mary Clare (5) - about 3 months before hearing loss was discovered.