Strictly Final. Amazing outcome!!
My childhood was not the same as my friends.
My mum was born in the 1940s and due to a trauma at birth was left profoundly deaf. The world then was very different to people with disabilities.
“You’re stupid, you’re useless….” you can only imagine.
BUT
She emigrated to Australia on her own and lived there for 3 years where for a time she ran the accounts department for a company.
Returning home to England, she met my dad, married and in 1979 I came along.
From 6 months old, I was her ears and helped guide her through a world of silence.
Her disability meant she was always held back from doing senior jobs that required the use of phones but she had to learn how to use a computer, email, excel, the lot and worked in the management accounts department of a large travel business doing the most complex of the work.
Through lip-reading alone.
I am so proud of what she has achieved in her life, despite what she had to deal with in a world where people with disabilities are excluded and treated differently.
Even now, at 80, she still leads out in our church services and shows no sign of stopping. She has never let her hearing hold her back or use it as an excuse to not try and do things.
She has been a huge inspiration to me.
Whatever your “lot” is in life, let nothing and no-one hold you back from dreaming, and pushing to achieve your ambitions and dreams.
