It's not always rainbows...

I am a communicator. I’ve always been talkative.  I can have conversations with strangers.  I love being able to share a small bit of what I’m thinking with whoever is listening (just ask my mom, FV, or really, anyone who knows me.)  I personally believe communication is critical to life.  That’s why I became an SLP.  Helping others communicate is my passion.   

And I am finally able to feel what it is like to not be able to communicate effectively. 

I’m beginning to understand the frustration that many of the children and adults I work with feel on a daily basis. In 4 weeks of French class, I’ve learned a lot and progressed quite quickly, they tell me; however, not enough to “get by.”   

Today, after 5 hours of classes, constantly being corrected, constantly simplifying my thoughts and phrases in order to use proper grammar, I was trying to talk to another student about the metro.  The other student did not speak English and spoke French with a fairly heavy foreign accent which made things tricky.  I was ATTEMPTING to tell her something, but I just did not have the vocabulary and even with gestures and broken phrases, she could not understand what I was saying.   

“Je ne sais pas” (I don’t know) I groaned in frustration and turned away.   
A teacher encouraged me to try again and feeling exasperated, I said, “I don’t know the words! I can’t do it! Forget it, it’s not important!!” as my eyes welled up quickly.

The number of times I have heard an adult with Aphasia say to me, “Ah forget it, not important, too hard” or the look of frustration that appears on a child’s face when I say, “Almost! You can do it, try again!” never truly sunk in for me.  I mean, I could SEE they were frustrated, I could feel a certain degree of empathy for their situation, but I never knew what it exactly felt like to be so discouraged that it is easier to give up than fight through tears to explain something you don’t even have the words for.

Now, I know a small piece of what the people we work with must go through on a daily basis.  It’s an isolating feeling.

I’m selfishly hoping it goes away soon. 

I do believe though, that this experience is teaching me empathy in a way I’ve never before been able to experience, putting a speck of truth behind the words I so often say, “I can only imagine how difficult and how frustrating this must be for you.”

This new adventure is challenging at times.  It's not always rainbows.  But rainbows would be much harder to spot if there were not any dark clouds in the sky.