When I call out, name, and highlight the superpowers that come from my disabilities, misfortunes, and otherwise; I am NOT saying that these are born out of a purpose.
I am not saying that God (universe, whatever) gave me a jacked up spine, mental illness, deafness, and a uterus SO THAT I would have these superpowers. I do not think that I am deaf because God needed me to learn a lesson, or to teach a lesson to one of you.
I haven’t solved the theological conundrum of why shit happens yet.
Here’s where I am at the moment: being human comes with pain and suffering, joy and love, and a crap ton of imperfections.
The only sure reason I know that I am deaf is because my parents both have a recessive gene for nerve deafness and I had a 1 in 4 chance of having the recessive gene from both sides come to full expression. (Yay punnet square!)
Cause and effect: I won the deaf lottery.
You may believe your imperfections were given to you as a purpose. That's OK! Whatever belief helps you fully embrace and love yourself is the one that helps. Just don’t get hung up on it.
We do not need to understand the theology behind our imperfections to come to terms with them and glean our superpowers.
Now let's move to superpowers.
I am deaf (lower case because I don’t know sign and didn’t grow up in the deaf culture).
I was talking to my child the other day without my hearing aids in and he said: "Wow! You sound really different!!”
I sound deaf. Because I am.
For so long I’ve tried to be normal, blend in, present myself as a hearing person (with lots and lots of help). But now I’m realizing that my deaf voice- THAT is my voice.
As I embrace my deaf identity, I can finally recognize my deaf superpowers.
One of my deaf superpowers is: I am observant as hell.
Deaf people lean on their visual observation to fill in the missing auditory gaps. We read lips, body language, eyebrows, and I swear there’s a sixth sense for some of us. We need all the help we can get, so we become experts at reading our visual (and vibe?) clues.
Here’s a fun trick I have: I can often tell what accent a speaker has in a muted video. It's automatic, I'm not *trying* to figure it out. I just watch the video on mute, and the voice that plays in my head has an accent. Voila!
My observation superpower makes me pretty amazing at a lot of things. Sometimes I might know what you're feeling before you do. Our bodies often speak before our brains compute.
My older sister is a therapist, and she is also deaf (she won the deaf lottery too). She is realizing the superpower that her hearing loss has been in her career as a therapist.
Can you imagine having a therapist who can see through your bullshit within seconds? Scary, but helpful!
It takes years of training and practice to get to the top of your game in reading body language, but as a deaf therapist, she has been amazing at that since the beginning. She has a *lifetime* of hyper-observation practice to glean from. Add a master’s degree and over a decade of experience, and she is one bad ass therapist.
She gave a talk at a recent online gathering of therapists, encouraging them to find their own superpowers:
I have a superpower. I am ninja quick with microexpressions. It’s how I’ve survived my entire life... My attunement and ability to move in quickly - I contribute that to being hearing impaired... I hear with my eyes.
-Kelly Bourque, LMFT, owner of Red Therapy group
See what I’m saying? Superpower.
I was a hospice chaplain for a handful of years and always worried that my patients would be telling me some deep dark death-bed secret and I’d miss it. Whispers, mutters and mumbles are impossible for me to hear and discern.
The reality is that most people who are in their last moments do not talk. They look. My observation powers and sixth sense means I often had a feel for what they were looking at.
One patient had nothing but fear in her eyes. In our previous visits, she told me stories of her life. In her eyes this time: was her dead abusive husband waiting for her on the other side?
Aw hell no.
I don’t claim to know exactly what happens when we die, but I could say with absolute certainty in her ear as she struggled to release this life for the unknown:
“You are safe, you are loved, it’s OK to go.”
Mean-ass husbands are not going to touch you.
She died peacefully that night.
I won't take the credit for her peaceful passing, but my soul tells me I helped by telling her what she needed to hear to let go.
My intuition is highly developed. I trust my gut as an integral part of my observation tool box.
SUPERPOWER: Observant as hell.
Do you have something “wrong” with you? What’s your superpower hidden underneath? The way you've coped, that's likely made you a master at something.
Example: Folks who are dyslexic, they are solving complex puzzles EVERY time they read. EVERY time. That's impressive. It's also exhausting. Think about your superpower, and think about the energy you spend doing it.
It's impressive, but you might need to rest.
I am hyper-observant, as a skill, but also as a necessity. Large gatherings friggin exhaust me. This is why I nap and take baths. I will not apologize. I just gave a handful of folks my FULL attention for two hours. Nighty-night. (I'll write more about resting later.)
I'm going to keep listing more of my superpowers in the coming blogs.
I hope you'll start to accept the "imperfect" parts of yourself and discover your superpowers.
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