The Sound of Silence

I was born in the quiet corners of Benoni, a small town in South Africa where life once hummed with colour and sound — a world of children laughing, radios playing, footsteps echoing through our modest home. I didn’t know then that silence would become my closest companion. Back then, I was a child who belonged to the music of life. Until, one day, I didn’t.

I was three years old when the world went silent.

The doctors called it a consequence of mumps and measles. A few fevers, some swelling, and then — stillness. I don’t remember the moment the silence came, not exactly. It wasn’t a sudden curtain drop, but a quiet fading, like the sun sinking below the horizon. What followed, though — that I remember with aching clarity.

I remember my mother’s eyes more than her voice. The way they brimmed with both love and fear. I was once a chatterbox, full of curious questions and loud giggles. But after the illness, my world turned inward. The words didn’t land the same. The vibrations dulled. The once-familiar soundscape became a memory slipping through my fingers.

My parents tried to bridge this invisible gap with love and determination. We were five children — I was the second youngest — and while the house overflowed with energy, I often felt like I was on the other side of a pane of glass, watching a life I could no longer fully access. They laughed, bickered, played — and I tried to keep up, tried not to feel the ache of difference. Some days, the noise around me felt like home. Other days, it was a reminder of what I had lost.

There were no local schools for deaf children, so my mother became my first teacher. She transformed our kitchen table into a classroom, filled with books and flashcards and infinite patience. She taught me to read, to write, to speak again — not just with my mouth, but with my eyes, my hands, my whole being. She taught me that silence wasn’t absence; it was just another way to listen.

When a specialised school finally opened — nearly an hour’s drive away — my mother made a decision that would shape our lives: she found work nearby and made that journey with me every day. Not because she had to. Because she believed in me. I can still see her in the driver’s seat, coffee in hand, courage in her spine. Her sacrifices were quiet but profound.

That little school became my sanctuary. For the first time, I was surrounded by children like me — kids who understood without explanation. The isolation I had known began to loosen its grip. I was no longer the "different" one. I was just one of many. It was the first time I felt seen.

Still, I longed for something more — not just acceptance, but invisibility. I didn’t want to be the girl with the hearing aids behind her ears. I wanted to melt into the crowd, to walk into a room without explaining my existence. At ten, I begged for the tiny in-ear hearing aids, the ones no one would notice. They didn’t restore my hearing — not fully — but they gave me something else: the illusion of normalcy. And for a time, that was enough.

But illusion has its price. Behind the comfort of those small devices was a constant vigilance. I became an expert at reading lips, interpreting body language, stitching together conversations from fragments. While others flowed through life on autopilot, I was always decoding. It was exhausting. But it made me perceptive, adaptable — quietly strong. In learning how to survive in a hearing world, I learned how to see people in ways they didn't even know they were showing themselves.

Yet, something deeper stirred beneath all of that.

In the silence I had no choice but to inhabit, I discovered another kind of listening. One that had nothing to do with ears. I began to feel things — things others didn’t seem to notice. A shift in the air before someone spoke. A sense of knowing when something was about to happen. A subtle hum of energy that wrapped itself around me, as if whispering truths I hadn’t yet learned to name.

At the time, I thought this was just... life. Didn’t everyone sense these things?

I had dreams that weren’t just dreams. Some were eerily accurate, playing out in real life days or weeks later. Others were lucid, where I’d realise mid-dream that I was the one writing the script. I could change the outcome, reshape the scene, turn fear into flight. I woke from those dreams not groggy, but empowered. As if I had been somewhere real. Somewhere important.

In South Africa, thunderstorms are their own kind of symphony — wild, electric, primal. I would stand by my bedroom window and watch the sky tear itself open, lightning dancing across the clouds. I couldn’t hear the thunder, but I could feel it — in the walls, in my chest, in my bones. And sometimes, I would feel someone there beside me. Not in body, but in presence. I never saw anyone. But I wasn’t alone. I knew it the way you know when someone is looking at you from across the room — instinctively. Intimately.

It was the same when I was alone with my books and toys, lost in my imagination. In those moments, I wasn’t bound by the physical. My inner world bloomed like a secret garden. No one told me I was different there. I was everything. Anything. Untouched by labels or limitations.

And every night, when I removed my hearing aids, the silence came rushing back. But it no longer felt like a void. It felt like coming home. The quiet was complete, serene — a sacred space. And in that stillness, I often heard my name. Not through my ears, but as a whisper in my soul. I would wake startled, certain someone had spoken, only to find the room empty.

Only now do I understand that voice. I was clairaudient, hearing what others could not — spirit, energy, messages from beyond the veil. Back then, I thought it was part of the magic of being me. I didn’t know I was a medium. I didn’t even know what that word meant.

Looking back, I see how deeply I was connected to something greater than myself. I thought everyone lived this way — with intuitive nudges, with dreams that guided them, with invisible hands holding their hearts during thunderstorms. I didn’t think it was strange to know things I hadn’t been told. It was just my way of being.

I didn’t need to learn mediumship. I was it. Before I had the language for it, I lived it. It was woven into the fabric of my silence — a dialogue with the unseen that began long before I ever knew I was listening.

And maybe that’s the real story. Not of what I lost, but of what I gained.

In the absence of sound, I found presence.

In the quiet, I found connection.

And in the silence that once frightened me, I found my truth.