From the other side of the chair

Eliza Gordon grew up as the only hard of hearing person in her family, navigating a world that largely didn’t notice – until hearing therapy changed everything. Now she’s the one doing the helping.

Eliza Gordon was a baby when the ear infections started. Repeated infections left her with a hole in one eardrum and a mild-to-moderate hearing loss in both ears. By primary school she had her first pair of hearing aids – colour-coded blue for left, red for right, which she loved. “I thought it was just another accessory,” she says with a laugh.

But growing up as the only person in her family with hearing loss – and as far as she knew, the only one at Heretaunga College in Upper Hutt with hearing aids – meant there was very little understanding of what she was actually experiencing. “Apart from the medical side, no one really knew what to do. It was just one of those things that wasn’t talked about.”

High school brought its own challenges. Eliza went through a rebellious phase of not wearing her hearing aids, and she remembers being bullied – two boys sitting behind her in class, saying unkind things and assuming she couldn’t hear them. She could. She caught the teacher’s eye. Nothing happened. “That stayed with me,” she says quietly.

Her mum, out of love and a desire to protect her from bullying, once asked an audiologist for the smallest hearing aids possible. Eliza understood completely – but still felt the sting of it. “It was the first time someone had pointed out that my hearing aids weren’t a good thing. Hearing that from my own mum was quite hard.” Her dad, meanwhile, took her to every appointment and did everything he could to make sure she got what she needed.

She eventually came back to wearing her hearing aids consistently – a pragmatic decision driven by a desire for good grades. One teacher who understood her situation would come and speak to her directly, and Eliza realised: “I can hear in her class. I better start wearing them.”

A lifeline she didn’t know existed

By her early twenties, Eliza was dealing with significant anxiety and facing a pressing practical problem: her hearing aids were approaching the end of their lifespan. “I cannot get a job unless I get another pair of hearing aids. I cannot afford another pair of hearing aids.” She didn’t know where to turn – the support she’d had as a child had simply evaporated when she turned 18.

It was a support worker at WorkWise, an organisation helping people with mental health challenges into employment, who pointed her toward hearing therapy. Eliza did a self-referral to Your Way | Kia Roha – and the first appointment with hearing therapist Susan Lenny ran for two hours.

“She could see how many things had slipped through the cracks,” says Eliza. In that single session, Susan helped her access hearing assistive technology including a vibrating alarm clock that finally solved a longstanding mystery (“I never connected that I was sleeping through it because I couldn’t hear it”), a hearing assistive smoke alarm, and a specially sourced pager so she could be alerted safely in the same room as her brother, who has epilepsy. Susan also arranged a referral for a new funded pair of hearing aids and connected her with a youth advisor from the National Foundation for Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

That last connection turned out to be unexpectedly profound. Eliza met the advisor – a young woman around her own age with hearing loss – for a hot chocolate at a café. “It was like talking to someone who just gets you. Little things about my life that I didn’t even realise I was doing because I was hard of hearing – she would say, I do that too. I was like: I am doing this because I can’t hear!”

At 23 or 24, it was the first time she had ever spoken with another hard of hearing person. “That was such a healing moment. Something I didn’t realise I needed.”

From therapy to hearing therapist

Over the following years, hearing therapist Rachel Roberts took over Eliza’s care. Their work together included building assertiveness skills – learning to tell her family what she actually needed, advocating for herself at medical appointments, and navigating everyday situations like bus replacements where the driver calls out stops verbally and simply keeps going if nobody responds. She filed a complaint and received a very politically correct email in return.

Rachel also helped her process something the mental health system had largely dismissed: the anxiety that came specifically from her hearing loss. “A psychologist once told me, you have hearing aids, so you are fine, and just moved on. Opening up about it to Rachel – and having someone validate that it was a real feeling – it did wonders for me.”

Then came a difficult detour. Eliza started a job as a dental assistant – only to discover on her first day that the equipment cleaning room operated on the same frequency as her hearing aids, rendering them useless. Despite working with Rachel and her audiologist to find a solution, there was none. She had to leave after a single day. “It felt like I’d proved to them that hard of hearing people can’t do it. That felt awful.”

About a month later, a text from Rachel changed everything. A hearing therapist trainee position had opened in the Hutt Valley. Was Eliza interested?

“I had my CV ready within a couple of hours. I’d seen the good work Rachel had done for me, and to be able to do that for other people – that would be a dream.” She applied, did the interviews, and got the job.

Now on the other side

Today, Eliza is a hearing therapist trainee at Your Way | Kia Roha, working toward her Level 6 Hearing Therapy Diploma – funded by the organisation – while supporting people across the Hutt Valley. She brings something to the role that no textbook can teach.

“When people we work with are hesitant to trust that I’ll understand what they’re going through, I just say ‘I’ve got hearing aids’. I know exactly what it’s like when your partner turns away mid-sentence and you lose them completely – and they don’t even realise they’ve done it.”

She loves busting the myth that hearing aids are bulky and embarrassing. “People come in and say, I don’t want to be that person with the hearing aids. And I say, did you know I’ve got hearing aids? And I show them mine.”

One of the most rewarding parts of the job, she says, is that the service is completely free. “People ask how much they owe, and I say nothing. Removing that barrier opens so many doors.” Watching the people she works with grow in confidence and independence – and eventually not needing her anymore – gives her the same feeling Susan and Rachel once gave her.

She also reflects on what it means to work somewhere that truly understands. When she mentioned she sometimes struggled to hear on the phone with people, the response was immediate: we’ll get you a captioning phone. No questions, no fuss.

“Going from losing a job because of my hearing loss, to a job where my hearing loss is almost an advantage – that’s been a lot to sit with. In a really good way.”