I was four years old when doctors told my mother I would likely never be able to speak, that my hearing loss was worsening instead of improving. I don’t remember their faces, or even the meaning of the words they used. What I remember instead is the soundless crinkle of tissue paper beneath me as I sat on the exam table, staring at the roll and wondering how something
meant to refill itself could seem so endless. It’s strange what stays with you from childhood. It wasn’t until later—when my mother asked how I would feel about learning American Sign Language—that the discomfort sharpened into something heavier. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I understood enough to feel defective, like something that needed correction.
The cubbies at the Indiana School for the Deaf were impossibly bright, splashed in neon greens and blues. One was purple, and I coveted it quietly, too nervous to ask. We were only there for a few weeks before moving back to New Jersey, yet that space has lingered in my memory far longer than it should have. For something so consequential, it’s the colors and the way the cafeteria dwarfed my small body that remain clearest. What fades are the details of instruction; what lingers are the emotions. I felt the tension of standing apart from my neighborhood friends. I noticed the sideways glances when I tried to sing along, or the way people startled when I whispered—something I wouldn’t understand until much later was anything but quiet.
The awareness of difference settled into me early. It lived in my chest and stomach before it ever reached my vocabulary. “Rainbow” was the newest word I had learned, and I was proud of its length, its complexity. Still, it failed me. No combination of letters could explain the loneliness I carried. I began concealing my ASL homework, refusing to sign even at home, and avoiding lessons whenever possible. In my mind, learning ASL felt like confirmation—evidence that I was crossing a line I couldn’t uncross. It felt permanent, visible, undeniable. I convinced myself that if I resisted hard enough, if I stayed quiet enough, I could reverse whatever made me different. I prayed for change. I prayed to God and bargained at night with the stars, hoping either by divine miracle or sheer effort, I could return me to some reimagined version of myself one that was normal.
Funny enough, it kind of happened
To this day, the doctors have absolutely no idea what happened, they told my mom I was some miracle, who knows the details. All I do know, is that after a nurse tried a new form of speech therapy she was playing around with, I started to be able to process and understand sounds. Speech, albeit labored and heavily impeded, came shortly after. The details of that story are for another time, another essayette. The point is, I had believed this truth that I was broken, I had believed this truth that all I needed was to be fixed- I had believed the lie. For years, I had absorbed the idea that I was incomplete, that repair was the only path to belonging. This shift felt like proof. Even though I was still hard of hearing, still navigating systems built to accommodate me, I believed I could finally shield myself. Normalcy became a performance, a layer of protection. If I could blend in well enough, if I could work hard enough, if I could just be enough- maybe I wouldn’t have to justify my existence.
That belief followed me into adulthood. I rejected accommodations, even when they would have supported me. I chose struggle over visibility, silence over explanation. I avoided hearing aids, worried they would expose what I worked so hard to conceal. For a long time, I convinced myself I wasn’t disabled at all, took the disability checks my mom received for me as a state error that had yet to be corrected. I had invested so much in appearing unaffected that I never questioned why that mattered so deeply.
Knowing them changed how I understood myself. Dr. Clark showed me that language could be a site of connection rather than correction, that communication did not have to be justified to be valid. Dr. Cannon taught me that access was not something to be begged for or earned, but something structurally owed—and that refusing it was not strength, but learned self-erasure. Xie showed me, in the most ordinary way possible, that visibility did not have to be dramatic to be powerful. Together, they made it impossible for me to continue believing that my difference needed to be hidden in order for me to be respected.
For the first time, I could see how much of my life had been organized around the fear of being noticed as disabled. I had mistaken silence for resilience and invisibility for safety. I had worked tirelessly to perform normalcy, never stopping to question who that performance was meant to serve. Meeting people who lived fully, openly, and unapologetically in their bodies forced me to confront the cost of that performance—and how much of myself I had abandoned to maintain it.
Empowerment did not arrive as a sudden revelation, but as a slow undoing. It came from allowing myself to ask for what I needed without apology. From recognizing that accommodations were not evidence of inadequacy, but tools for equity. From understanding that my disability was never the problem—my internalized belief that I had to be fixed was. I began to imagine what my childhood might have looked like if difference had been normalized instead of pathologized, if Black ASL users had been visible, if the people around me had known even the simplest gestures of inclusion.
I still think about that four-year-old on the exam table, staring at the tissue paper roll and believing something about his body was wrong. I wish I could tell him that he was never broken, never incomplete, never in need of repair. That his voice—spoken, signed, or otherwise—would always be enough. Reclaiming that truth has reshaped the way I move through the world. And while I can’t rewrite my past, I can live in a way that refuses to disappear. That, more than anything, is what empowerment has come to mean for me.
About the Author
Image Description: A young Black man with glasses and a green shirt, looking down in a side profile.
Keaun Michael Brown is a student at Indiana University Indianapolis currently studying Africana Studies and Political Science. Post baccalaureate, he intends to further his work in the local non-profit sector at his current position at Flanner House, as well as continue his career as a poet, artist, and community storyteller. In his spare time, he can be found listening to MF DOOM, watching Pacers basketball, or at Lete’s Injera Cafe in Haughville.