A Personal Reflection on Identity, Belonging, and the Wounds That Resurface

By Morrison

I invite you to read this personal reflection, and why I write on about this recent experience…

Standing alone in the rain, with the pain lingering within, outside the State House was an encounter with the deepest parts of myself. As the rain poured on, and the celebration continued inside without acknowledgment of the harm done to the DeafBlind community, I felt something shift within me as I reflect and this is not a new pain, but the return of a familiar one. The loneliness of that moment was not born on the sidewalk that day; this pain was born decades earlier, shaped by internalized audism, fractured belonging, and the constant negotiation of my identity. This essay reflects my own lived experience, my own history, and the wounds I carry.

Growing up in a hearing family, I learned early what it meant to be “other.” I desperately wanted to belong, to communicate, to be understood, to be part of the effortless flow of conversation that surrounded me. But I was always on the outside, working harder than anyone else in the room just to keep up. Without realizing it, I internalized the belief that being Deaf was something to overcome, something that made me less worthy of connection. I absorbed the message that if I could just be more like my family… more hearing, more fluent in their world, I might finally belong. That longing shaped my earliest sense of self.

When I entered the Deaf community, I expected home. And in many ways, it was the first place where my language, culture, and body aligned. But even there, belonging was conditional. I was not part of the “elite.” I was not central. I was not someone people gravitated toward. I was, in many ways, invisible and have felt this way for a long time. I did not have many friends then, and I do not have many now, and while I have made peace with that reality, the truth is that the loneliness of those years left a mark, a scar. It taught me that even in the spaces where I should have belonged most, I could still be peripheral.

When I was first confirmed as being DeafBlind by my doctor, I resisted the identity. I denied it. Not because I was ashamed of myself, but because I had witnessed how the DeafBlind community was treated… with discomfort, avoidance, and sometimes outright disgust. I remember walking into a conference where Deaf sighted people sat behind their tables, cold and distant, not coming forward to greet me or engage with me tactilely. I remember standing at the entrance of a banquet hall, unsure where to go, and asking a Deaf sighted person for directions. The moment they saw my white cane, my mobility cane, their expression changed. They said, “I’m not your SSP,” with irritation, and walked away. If I had not been visibly DeafBlind, they would have simply pointed me toward the food. That moment was not just rude; it was dehumanizing. It confirmed what I had feared: that even within the Deaf world, there is a hierarchy, and DeafBlind people are placed at the bottom – the “untouchables” within the caste system. 

These experiences settled into the deepest layers of my identity, shaping the wounds I carried into adulthood. So when I stood alone in the rain at the State House, the present moment collided with the past. The silence of the community, the absence of support, the knowledge that people had been told not to join the protest, all of it reopened the wounds of my childhood. It echoed the message I had internalized long ago: that I was unworthy, that my identity was unworthy, that my community was unworthy of standing besides with.

What made the pain sharper was the historical irony. The Deaf community once united against the hearing world’s refusal to provide access. They fought for interpreters, for captioning, for recognition, for dignity. No one told them to stay away. No one threatened them for standing up for themselves. They came together and prevailed. Yet when the DeafBlind community stands up for its own access, its own leadership, its own dignity, people are told to stay away, and they obey. Organizations instructed their staff and contractors not to participate in the protest, not to stand with us, not to be seen supporting us. This was not neutrality; it was complicity. It was a reenactment of the very oppression the Deaf community once fought against.

And there is another layer… one that is harder to name because it comes from within. I have had to confront the reality that harm also comes from Deaf elites, Deaf people in power, and those who benefit from proximity to hearing norms. I have experienced how DeafBlind individuals who speak, or who can still sign visually, are often favored, elevated, or treated as more legitimate representatives of our community. Their presence is more comfortable for those who do not want to confront the reality of tactile language, proximity, or the reality of touch as the core to connect. This dynamic is not always intentional, but it is deeply harmful. It reinforces the idea that DeafBlind identity is acceptable only when it aligns with hearing or sighted norms.

This is audism. This is vidism. This is distantism. And it is ableism…

Many DeafBlind people who speak do not mean harm (and I respect them with my whole heart). They are navigating their own identities and survival strategies. But when the system, and even the hearing and Deaf community, gravitates toward them as the “acceptable” DeafBlind people, it misrepresents the rest of us. It erases those of us who rely on touch as the core of our language and communication. It tells the world that DeafBlind people who do not speak, or who do not sign visually, are less capable, less articulate, less worthy of leadership.

This dynamic places many of us, those who rely on touch, those whose communication is not easily consumed by the sighted or hearing world – into a box of misfits. It tells us that we are too much, too complex, too different, too inconvenient. And for me, it reawakens the old wound of never being enough, never fitting in, never being seen as worthy to belong.

This is why, (and for those who don’t know) even though I can speak – yes, I can… and have been encouraged to use spoken language, but I choose not to. Speaking would make things easier for others, but it would also reinforce the very systems that marginalize my community. It would signal that I am willing to bend toward audism rather than insisting that the system bend toward accountability and accessibility. I choose to sign. I choose to tactile. I choose to embody my DeafBlind identity fully, without apology and without approval, because doing so is an act of resistance. It is a refusal to enable the structures that have harmed us for so long. It harmed me for so long, growing up – being forced to speak, to hear… then it harmed me when I tried to fit into the deaf world. I was a misfit, and this experience reminded me of that – that I still am. 

Standing alone in the rain, I felt the weight of all of this, the childhood wounds, the internalized audism, then distantism, the misrepresentation of my community, the silence of those who should have stood beside us. The rain did not cause the wound; it revealed it. And naming this truth is not an act of division. It is an act of clarity. It is a call to accountability. It is a reminder that liberation cannot be selective.

This essay is my truth, shaped by my life, my experiences, and the identity I have fought to claim. And while the wound is real, so is the strength that has grown around it. Standing alone in the rain was painful, but it also affirmed something essential – my identity is not defined by others or who shows up. It is defined by the truth I carry, the community I serve, and the leadership I embody. Naming the pain is not weakness; it is the beginning of transforming it into something more – strength, resilience.