THURSDAY
From Maurice about the workshops and some evening activities:
Thursday morning, the Workshops started. The first workshop was on Telecommunications and Mary Lee Cunhill, Outreach Specialist for Florida Relay was the speaker. She had a lot of information to share with us. She gave a power point presentation. Although most of it concerned what was available in Florida, you could adapt it to your state readily, and in the handouts were pictures of the various equipment available. She was a very knowledgeable speaker. She also had displays of the available equipment.
The next speaker was Lois Maroney, who was a licensed mental health counselor and also deaf, and spoke but understood thru sign language. She was a teacher who lost her hearing and became a psychologist. She was wonderful. She spoke about the five stages of adjusting to physical differences in abilities.This was a wonderful presentation. I was most impressed with her summary of I am Ok. and You are Ok. So often we try to blame others for our failures. They mumble, they don't help us. The final thing to remember is hearing loss is hard on all connected with us. It is hard on us, it is hard on our friends and family.
- Stage one, the initial impact, shock, anxiety
- Stage two, Defense Mobilization, bargaining, denial
- Stage three, Initial Realization or Recognition, Mourning and or depression, internalizing anger
- Stage four, Retaliation or Rebellion, direct and indirect methods of externalizing anger and aggressiveness
- State five. Reintegration or reorganization, Cognitive acknowledgement or reconciliation, acceptance and adaptation.
She gave us a feeling wheel of emotions that led down to 6 basic emotions Sad , Mad, Scared, Joyful, Powerful, and Peaceful. She had a hand-out that said "It's okay to have hearing loss. Really, life doesn't stop when you lose some or all of your hearing." This woman really knew. She had been there and done that with the rest of us.
A lot of us had planned to go across the street to a Sea Food Restaurant for lunch, but it was raining, and the hotel kept the inside restaurant open for lunch. Usually the Tiki Bar by the pool was where you had lunch. We went into the restaurant and had a delightful lunch and enjoyed each other. The hotel was having a reception at 4 that afternoon, so I went to the room to relax for awhile.
The hotel reception was wonderful. They had an open bar and wonderful refreshments. We had a wonderful time, taking pictures, eating and drinking.
A lot of us went on a Dolphin Watching tour that evening. We rode the Jolly Trolley to the Marina, and boarded a boat, I think called "Little Toot". It was really hard for me to get on the boat, but some of the men helped me into the boat. I heard later, that the boat realized how inaccessible it had been and had taken measures to correct it before we left Florida. We had a wonderful tour and saw some dolphins and a beautiful sunset.
Read on about day two: NEXT
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