Missing Letters
What one workshop in Louisville taught me about being my daughter’s ally
By Rizwana Jmari
The sentence on the screen had holes in it.
Kay_ee cou__ _ear e_ery__ing Mrs. _ura_ _aid, e_en __en __e _urned _o wri_e o_ the _oard.
I read it twice and got maybe half. Then Katherine Rybak put the same sentence back up in capital letters, bigger, and the holes sat in exactly the same places. Louder had changed nothing. The sentence was STILL broken.
Only on the third slide did it come whole. Kaylee could hear everything Mrs. Duran said, even when she turned to write on the board.
That was the moment the session earned me. Not because I learned something new about audiograms, but because I have spent years calling from another room in my own house, raising my voice at a child who could hear my volume perfectly well and was missing my consonants. Katherine had a slide for that further on. Instead of talking louder from a doorway, get her attention first, then speak. Instead of repeating the same sentence louder, rephrase it with different words. Small enough to fit on an index card, and I had been getting it wrong for years with the best intentions in the world.
On May 31, 2026, the Long Beach Walk4Hearing enjoyed great energy and success as hundreds gathered for the event. Hosted as part of the nationwide effort by the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) to support people with hearing loss, the event was a major success—both in participation and fundraising.
Of course, no chapter get‑together is complete without great food and even better camaraderie. There was homemade dishes to plenty of pizza and buffalo wings, and the spread was as inviting as the calories! As the day wrapped up, events like this remind us how meaningful it is to show up for one another, celebrate community, and create memories that last long after the final whistle.