Jenna Bonfiglio is my longest best friend, my little sister. From a young age, Jenna dealt with hearing loss which impacted her life in many ways that have transformed over time. From hiding her hearing aids to now embracing them, Jenna is pursuing a major in Psychology and a minor in American Sign Language at Northern University of Florida. With a mission to provide mental health services to as many communities as possible, Jenna is working towards offering therapy in ASL for hard of hearing individuals. If you’ve ever met Jenna, you know that her personality lights up any room. It is because of her hearing loss that she is able to shine greater.
How are you liking Florida? We grew up in the Chicago suburbs so it’s different, huh?
Yes, it is a lot different. I’m studying psychology as my major and American Sign Language as my minor right now at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. I live 15 minutes from the beach so after class, I’ll just go to the beach to meditate and calm down. I love being outside, so it’s great to be able to go for a walk and not be freezing during the winter months. Compared to Chicago, it’s so cold, especially in the mornings. I remember my nostrils would freeze up waiting for the bus in the morning.
So where to begin? We grew up together, but usually, I ask people about their backgrounds. I feel like something I don’t know well enough about you that I more recently started to realize was how much of an impact your hearing had on your childhood. Can you talk a bit about your ears?
Yes, absolutely. As you know, growing up, you guys would get extremely annoyed because I wouldn’t wear my hearing aids.
Still, I think we get annoyed that you don’t wear your hearing aids.
I am better about it. You guys would be so proud of me because I rely on them so much more now than I ever did. After all, I feel like my hearing got worse. I don’t know if it’s just from going to certain entertainment events with loudspeakers, but I also get sick a lot. Growing up, I think it was age two or three when our parents first started to notice that I had hearing loss. I was getting sick a lot with ear infections, but from my understanding, I feel I like I was born with hearing impairment. You saw in our home videos how I couldn’t hear from a very young age.
Yeah, we were watching home videos before I left for Rome and it was the first time I realized how when you were very little you had no idea what was going on when people would talk to you. It made me so emotional because you were in a lot of pain too and I never really realized this. But you still were a spaz, and you still are.
I feel like that’s just my personality, I’m very outgoing and I talk loud. I feel like the reason I talk loud is because I can’t hear good. It’s funny because when Mom and Dad came to visit me, I wore my hearing aids to dinner and I was talking so much lower that the server asked me, “What did you say?”
Do you know if your hearing loss is degenerative, like that it will get worse over time? I would imagine that everyone’s hearing in general over time gets worse as they age.
I had my team of audiologists and growing up I felt like I would see more than certain relatives because I would go to the hospital a lot. I had a lot of surgeries for tubes and a lot of people say that it made my hearing worse, not better. I think that over time, just from learning from my American Sign Language classes, the majority of the population have hairs in their ears that allow them to hear well. The more hair you have, the better you will hear. But as you get older, you lose them. In my case, I have a lot less than a normal person would. So there is a possible chance that my hearing could no longer work which is something I have to prepare for. It’s scary in a way to imagine waking up and not being able to hear anymore. I can see a difference in my hearing now than I did a couple of years ago and that scares me.
You also read lips, can you talk about that?
Yes, I learned how to read lips at a young age. You know this because you and Carissa (our older sister) would do that all the time when you’d say “Hey, what am I saying?” But yes, I learned how to read lips and I feel like that’s what makes my life a lot easier and why I can understand Sign Language a lot easier than the other people in my classes when we’re signing. We don’t talk as we’re signing, but we mouth what we’re saying. For me, that makes my learning experience so much easier because I know exactly what the professor is trying to say. When I go to my classes that are in ASL, I feel like I can connect more in a way since I fall under the community of hard of hearing. So my definition of hard of hearing is like, you can hear, but you’re hearing impaired. Some people wear hearing aids like me and some have cochlear implants. I learned at a young age how to read lips while going through the process of figuring out how hearing aids work. Hearing aids have been a thing for a long time, but also a technology that was still a work in progress. Compared to the big sparkly pink hearing aid molds I had as a kid, today my hearing aids are all through my phone. I can have phone calls or listen to music through my hearing aids which is super cool.
I feel like, if you did not have hearing loss, you wouldn’t be the person you are today. What do you think?
I grew up with my hearing loss. Just as you talk about roots, I feel like my roots of being hearing impaired my whole life is why I am who I am today. I am super outgoing, I talk to random people daily. I make friends with baristas at different coffee shops because I feel like If I wasn’t outgoing, it would be harder to talk, hear, and understand people. Being outgoing is my way of communicating. It took such a long process because I used to hate being hard of hearing. I hated that I had to wear hearing aids and being different from other people. It brought me a lot of insecurities and I was bullied for having hearing aids. People used to make fun of me so I wouldn’t wear them or I’d wear my hair in a way to cover them so people couldn’t say, “What are those?” Now I embrace it, I am who I am. I love who I am and I feel like I wouldn’t change it for the world now because I bring a different dynamic to our family. It would almost be too perfect without me, you know?
It would be so boring! It’s what makes you, you which you can’t hide from anybody. So you’re doing psychology as your major and sign language as your minor. How do you want to combine those?
Well, you out of all people know this because this whole map of my plan was your idea. You were the one who was like, what’s something else besides the FBI that you’re interested in? You pointed out the part of profiling and doing that kind of stuff is a lot like psychology so why not go into that? I feel like I’m a very talkative person, so being a therapist would be a cool opportunity that I never thought I would do. I was so wrapped around doing something with the FBI but the more you brought it up, I thought why not be a therapist for people who are deaf or hard of hearing? It’s unheard of and I love to be different. The more I tell people about it, they would also say that they have never thought of that. A lot of people have said that someone hard of hearing has to rely on having an interpreter for therapy. I thought to myself, imagine if you want to talk about your feelings or you’re going through a hard time. Would you want an interpreter there? Or would you rather talk to someone directly in a safe environment?
Everyone is human, there are times in life when we might need someone to talk to or we might be grieving or going through a hard time. That goes for anyone, it could be a blind person. We’re all human and it’s good to cater to everybody because not a lot of places can offer that. I feel like this is going to be something successful, I know the path I’m going down is the right path with no regrets. It makes me excited because my idea is turning into something even bigger that could be more recognized in the future. I’m not just catering to a hard-of-hearing community, but an even wider community which is exciting. The demand for therapists is huge right now and I think that catering to different communities is going to help a lot of people. At the end of the day, I’m doing this to help all people with their mental health because it should be for everyone.
Would you be able to give some advice to hearing impaired or deaf people in sign language?
Translation: I’m going to give you help in the future. Stay true to yourself, think about your dreams, and make them happen in the future. It’ll happen.
