"When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Do we let our hard times define us or refine us?
Our hard times define us
- if they cause our identities to become submerged in the traumatic event that we're experiencing.
- if they paralyze our lives with grief and anger, or cause us to slink into our caves of isolation and despair.
-if we basically tell the rest of the world to leave us alone because we're suffering too much to care about what anyone else is suffering.
Our hard times define us, then, when we allow them to allow us to opt out of life.
Professional t.v. and film actress Marlee Matlin knows all about hard times. She hasn't allowed them to define her.
Marlee is legally deaf. When she was eighteen months old, she suddenly lost all hearing in her right ear, and 80% of hearing in her left ear. She has never known what it is to hear normally. She uses hearing aids to help her modulate her voice so she doesn't speak too loudly. An interpreter helps her. She both speaks and signs and also reads people's lips for understanding.
Marlee is also a survivor of sexual abuse. At eleven years of age, she was sexually molested by a female babysitter, and she was abused by a teacher when in high school.
Marlee has also had to battle and overcome substance abuse, at one point entering the Betty Ford Clinic.
Yet she has allowed her hard times to refine her and make her even more determined. Despite being deaf, from the time she saw a stage, she wanted to act. She was encouraged by actor Henry Winkler ('Fonzie' on t.v.'s "Happy Days") who grew up with undiagnosed dyslexia and was considered "dumb as a dog," yet worked persistently at the acting craft that he loved. He told her "Do it, and don't let anyone stand in your way."
Validated, Marlee continued acting. She has appeared in "The West Wing," "Desperate Housewives," "Seinfeld," "Law and Order: SVU", and "ER." She is the only person with deafness to receive an Academy Award; in 1986, she received an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film "Children of a Lesser God."
How does Marlee suggest we allow hard times to refine us, not define us?
HAVE A POSITIVE INNER ATTITUDE: Rather than be overcome by anger, grief, or self-pity, Marlee knows that if her mental attitude stays positive, she can defy and overcome society's preconceived ideas of what a person who is deaf is able to accomplish and to be. She says "The handicap of deafness is not in the ear; it is in the mind.... It is ability that matters, not disability, which is a word I'm not crazy about using."
DON'T ISOLATE YOURSELF; COMMUNICATE YOURSELF: When someone is "different" in any way, it is easy to feel self-pity and stay isolated from society. Marlee is proactive to avoid being isolated. She says "I'm the only one in my family who is deaf, and there are still conversations that go around that I miss out on. And I ask what's going on, and I have to ask to be included. But I'm not going to be sad about it. I don't live in sad isolation. It's just a situation I'm used to."
BE AN ADVOCATE: Rather than submerging herself in her own life story, Marlee chooses to advocate for persons with deafness. She says "I'm different, and my manner invites questions. I'm never afraid to answer." She hopes to change people's attitudes and stereotypical opinions by showing them that people with deafness can do everything except hear. In addition to acting, she is a novelist who has written a book for young adults, "Deaf Child Walking," to explain what it is like to be deaf. She works for the Starkey Hearing Foundation, raising money for their work helping children around the world get proper attention and hearing aids.
Most of all, Marlee is an example to others because of her "normal" life: she drives, she's married, and she and her husband have four children.
BATTLE ADVERSITY WITH HUMOR: When performing on "Dancing With the Stars," she knew that America knew that she had to read lips. So she cheerfully quipped "Read my HIPS!"
I would add my own way to battle hardships, adversity, depression, anger, grief, and isolation:
PRAY! That international teacher and lecturer, the fierce optimist Helen Keller, was both deaf and blind. Through prayer she perceived that God is the Great Refiner of Souls. She said "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
Helen's prayer was as great as her soul refined by suffering, for she prayed to accomplish much for the world she only knew through the touch of a hand spelling a word in hers, taste, smell and her books in braille: "It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the doors of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goals."