![]() The disappointments led to breakdowns and depression. She was put on phones where the technology connecting her implant to the phone frequently failed to connect calls promptly.Ĭolleagues would call out across the busy office, but the background noise made it impossible for Sophie to hear them. A horrified couple at the next table took pity on her and hired her to work at their prestigious real estate agency.īut their workplace wasn't equipped for a deaf person. ![]() Her prospective employer stood up and left when he realised she was deaf. In spite of significant barriers, she graduated school with flying colours. Sophie discovered reading and that she was academically bright. I didn't get what was going on with music and movies and all that," she says. She so wanted to have "genuine" friends but found it really hard to connect with people as she wasn't able to hear and participate. "There was such a negative connotation with deafness and being seen as not very smart," she says. "And Sophie just looked completely lost."Ī second cochlear implant improved her speech significantly but it was still "a lot of work" to hear.Īs a teenager, Sophie tried to hide her deafness. "I could hear the joy of the other children," Mary says. She would go home in the middle of the day to rest and then be homeschooled by her mother. Sophie was able to go to school, but it was exhausting trying to listen and understand what was happening. "It was a love-hate relationship with my mum growing up," Sophie says. Mary and Sophie lived in their own bubble, but Sophie grew tired of the endless speech therapy. "But you train and do speech therapy and you get used to that kind of sound." "I was deaf for the first four years of my life, so it was still really hard because there were sounds I've never heard before," Sophie says. Switching it on, says Sophie, was "overwhelming". When she was four, Sophie had a cochlear implant, an electronic hearing device which fits electrodes into the inner ear and mimics sound, invented by Australian Professor Graeme Clark. “It was heartbreaking to see her give up her beloved ballet career, sacrifice it for our daughter and then seeing very little progress," Li says. “I was a tiger mother so that she could have the same opportunities as everyone else," Mary admits. “She was trying to communicate with me but nothing made sense,” Sophie says now. Sometimes, Sophie would put her hand over her mouth to stop her talking. I had her sitting in front of me, I talked about everything I did - turning on the kettle, hot, cold, up, down.” “As soon as she woke, I had those hearing aids on. “I woke up thinking about her,” Mary says. Where once she went to sleep rehearsing ballets in her head, now she went to bed thinking about Sophie. Soon after all that energy, that indefatigable work ethic, was poured into her struggling daughter. They went to a Chinese healer on the mountains in Li's hometown.ĭance took Mary around the world with some of the best ballet companies. ![]() He took Sophie to China to seek out help with the top acupuncturist there. ![]() From that moment, the Lis' lives changed completely.Īt first, Li refused to believe there was no cure, that he couldn't fix it. "The only person who had no reaction to it was Sophie … my heart just dropped."īack in Houston, Sophie was diagnosed as being profoundly deaf. "You have no idea how loud that pop sound was," Li remembers. On a visit to Australia to perform at the Sydney Opera House, the family was in Brisbane when Li took Sophie to the park and she was given a red balloon. Their daughter had been born into a world of silence. "I had a beautiful husband, a beautiful baby, career - I thought I had more than I ever wanted."īut when Sophie was 17 months old, the music suddenly stopped. "I'd never seen anything more beautiful in my life," recalls Mary, who had planned to continue to dance after her pregnancy. The pair married in Houston in 1987 and Sophie was born two years later. Li and Mary have been married for more than 30 years. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |