Sometimes in life we meet some people who actually stay for a very little time while with us but leave us with a lasting impact. With our exploding social media content, online inspiration is a true and tested form of motivation. Kathy Buckley belonged to that online category. Her video about the power of choice is what prompted me to pen this article. No one who knew her story would forget her that easily.
And this is how I found out about Kathy Buckley.
It was eleven in the morning. After the breakfast family rush, I finally had some time for myself. I took out my phone and started aimlessly scrolling through Facebook. After a series of friendly posts, I came across a video. It looked like an old video with the heading mentioning the words ‘deaf comedienne’.
Looking at the title, the words ‘deaf comedienne’ felt like an oxymoron!
Comedy is all about timing and an art form like stand –up comedy involved knowing the pulse of the audience, knowing if the audience were laughing at the right things or if they were completely invested in the show or you were losing them within the first thirty seconds.
It seemed impossible to actually imagine a deaf person telling jokes on a stage. Intrigued, I clicked the link for the video to begin playing. The video was probably about ten minutes. But it had not touched just the audience who were laughing and crying right there but also millions of virtual audience like me.
I found out that the person onstage was KATHY BUCKLEY, a name I was not familiar with then.
After a little research (read google) about her, I found her website. Before I shed light on the list of her impressive achievements and her strong belief about the power of choice,
Here is her universe-challenging, larger-than-life, jaw-dropping story
Childhood
Kathy had spinal meningitis as a toddler that gave way to subsequent hearing loss which was recognised very late while she was in grade school. In the video that I mentioned earlier, Kathy talked about how school was a difficult time for her for the simple reason that she was never accepted.
Sense of belonging is an innate need to any person no matter the age.Our entire society is based on the need to belong to a circle or a community.
Those who fit in too well become successful and those who don’t become outcasts in seemingly small ways that have a big impact later.
So imagine the struggle when Kathy’s classmates made fun of her disability and never truly cared about her.
School life
She had speech difficulties and everyone around her called her ‘slow’. Kathy could not hear her teacher clearly especially when they were talking while not directly in front of her. There was nobody in school to make her journey easy.
In a bid to be ‘accepted’ in her classroom, Kathy started stealing money and other small things from her own house so that she could buy stuff for her classmates with the money. The only intention here was to make friends.
A social system that corners a helpless little child into doing something like this! But this kind of shunning exists across every society.
Kathy finished high school after a long struggle. She was constantly depressed as she could not make anyone understand what was going on in her life. In her adolescence she contemplated ending her life because who would want to live like a social outcast forever?
But when her five attempts to end her life did not succeed, she decided to go ahead with her life.
The accident
When Kathy was 20, she was run over by a 3500-pound life- jeep while she was sunbathing at a beach. For certain things there is no explanation.
Like what is the probability of that kind of accident happening in the first place?
Who was foolish enough to not see a person in front of them in a beach for godssakes?
Like how did Kathy survive such a big accident?
But she did, defying the claims of the paramedics who had rushed to her aid and after their own struggle, pronounced her dead. Kathy at this point in the video says she had an out-of-body-experience but there was only peace and calm in what was assumed to be her final moments.
What followed was a far cry from peace and calm. The accident left Kathy with a devastating paralysis in her legs and years of physical and mental agony. Doctors were sure she would never walk.
The wheelchair became the latest addition to her already jumbled life.
She was in and out of hospitals trying to mend her body. Kathy loved swimming and used to go swimming regularly. Even when she could not walk, she somehow believed that if she swam, her legs would someday realize how to walk again. She never gave up.
It took two years for her to walk again and five years to completely recover from her accident.
Cancer
Just when she thought the worst was behind her, at the age of 27, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Blow after blow did not deter her. She underwent surgery and emerged a survivor. Six months later there was a relapse. The cancer had returned. She had a survival time of six months to a year if she did not have another surgery. She was again in and out of hospitals for two years.
A deaf person who almost died in an unusual accident now beat cancer too.
Stand up comedy
Kathy started working as a massage exercise therapist. Her clients loved her jokes and in no time, Kathy realised that laughter was an essential part of healing. On the advice of one of her patients, Kathy participated in what she thought to be an amateur comedy competition. She placed fourth in that competition she was surprised to realise that she had competed and won against professionals who had three to ten years of experience. She realized comedy was her calling.
For Kathy it was a double glass ceiling. Fewer women were there in the US comedy scene when made her debut and she was the only one with hearing loss. What did not kill her only made her stronger. She used her power of choice to follow that path.
One routine led to another and she became a famous comedienne in the US comedy circuit.
Where that power of choice led her?
Her success put her on all the major television shows like ‘The today show’ ,’Good morning America’, ‘Inside edition’ etc. She also wrote Broadway musicals which were highly successful.
Her television special, ‘No Labels, No Limits’ was the recipient of CINE Golden eagle award and the Media Access Award.
In 2003, she published, ‘If you could hear what I see’, which went on to become a best seller.
Motivational Speaker
Since Kathy struggled with issues like self-esteem, she reached out to people with disabilities through her motivational speeches.
Today Kathy is a sought-after motivational speaker who travels across the country inspiring many people. She works for the betterment for children with hearing impairments. She also works with the Government for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
When we hear of the words ‘hearing disability’, we do not know the magnitude of it.
Social Work
A five year old normal child has the knowledge of roughly five thousand words. For a disabled child, the knowledge is negligent because that part of the brain has not been working at all. Assuming the child gets a cochlear implant and starts to hear words, all that the child can hear, is white noise- sounds that make no sense to the child. Kathy assists such children in speech therapy, so that they can catch up with the skills of a normal child and study in the same atmosphere if need be. Without speech there can be no proper communication.
After school programs for speech and language development and Saturday programs for low-income parents on how to be the voice that their children need (Provisions of the ADA laws) are some of the aspects of her program.
Real challenges for deaf people
When parents hear the first proper words of their children, imagine the connection it can forge within families. For parents who are hopeful all the time, to actually hear their babies call out to them, that’s what Kathy makes possible. According to Kathy, people who can hear with a hearing aid and are able to speak, are no longer considered deaf by others.
There is a shift in community perception. For normal people they come across as deaf. They neither belong here or there.
Despite these challenges, Kathy has showed the way for people across the world for love, compassion and acceptance.
In the process, Kathy has also made sure that the siblings of disabled children too are taken care of. In a family when one child is normal and the other child is disabled, all the activities of the family are normally centred around the disabled child. This can make the sibling lonely or uncomfortable. In order to solve this issue, Kathy has created a community where every child can participate.
The power of choice
In the video I mentioned earlier, Kathy talked about the ‘gift of choice’. I would like to call it the power of choice.
No matter what life throws at you, you always have the power of choice.
You can choose
- To go forward.
- Not to sink in your life’s troubles.
- To make the situation better
- To be you.
Even if you have done something bad, you can choose to correct it.
Look beyond what others expect from you and learn to look into yourself for what you genuinely want.
Kathy is more than just a comic. She is the living embodiment of the power of choice who is audacious and inspirational proving to the rest of the world what kind of things you can achieve if you heart and mind is in tandem. She is the proof to the adage – turning lemons into lemonade. For all the labels she has earned in her life, she is a person who actually eschews labels.
We hold Kathy in high esteem today because she did the near impossible. The will to live and make something worthwhile of her life was never extinguished in her. By overcoming her struggles and simply choosing to move on in life, she showed that nothing is greater than the spirit of courage and compassion.
‘You got one shot at this gift called life. What are you going to do with it?’
Kathy Buckley
If Kathy can use her power of choice wisely, so can you. Choose well!
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