2023-06-06 04:27:42
Par Eloise Aube
Published on
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From the outset, the tone is set. “Do you remember the lyrics of Barbara’s song saying: ‘it doesn’t warn, it happens’? Well, that’s a bit of it.”
The term “a little” seems an understatement to describe the life of Liliane, originally from Le Havre. The one who has spent her entire career in the National Education, discovered the deafness of her daughter when she was just over 2 years old.
A shock. And above all a questioning: how best to support your child in living with a disability without stigmatizing it? Narrative.
The shocking discovery
As soon as the interview started, Liliane let go straight away: “I know where my wrinkles come from! Indeed, her life – as a woman and a mother – has been marked by early deafness of his daughter Anouchka.
The latter was born in Le Havre on April 2, 1982: “That day, I had to retake the Ena competition, remembers Liliane, I obviously chose my daughter”.
Two months after the birth of the little one, she separates from the father and raises her daughter alone. In between, she passed the educational adviser competition and was assigned to the Gérard Philippe college, in the Massillon district.
His daily life is well established with the deposit, each morning, of his daughter with the nanny. Until the day when the latter said to him: I believe your daughter has hearing loss« .
Hard to believe for the young mother, especially since during Anouckha’s last medical examinations, she had carried out hearing tests without any problem being detected.
So Liliane does a test at home, which she will never forget:
I had a garden at the time. Anouchka goes to the back, her back is to me. There, I take two saucepans, I type: it does not turn over. She does not hear.
One year to accept
The examinations at the doctor confirm this deafness without explaining the cause. From there, questions race through Liliane’s head: will she be accepted into a school? how will she learn to speak?
The mother remembers an anecdote that still upsets her today: “The language began to settle for Anouchka [avant qu’elle ne devienne sourde]. One day, when she had become deaf, I take her in my arms, I talk to her, she wants to answer me but nothing comes out. She just mimics a few words with her mouth, ”she explains, swallowing back a few tears.
In total, it took him one year to accept his daughter’s profound deafness. At three years old, the little one wears a hearing aid “bigger than her ear, remembers the Havraise, when I took her to the carousel, the parents looked at us strangely. We had to accept the gaze of others”.
I took a year to collect. A year of asking myself the question “why her? why me?”
Then she screwed her warrior helmet on her head.
A Mother’s Struggle
She begins to look for information on deafness, goes to associations in Paris and above all, knocks on the door of schools in Le Havre. The first refuses, but the second accepts: Anouchka can do her back to school in the hearing world.
A choice for Liliane who did not want her daughter to live “on the margins” of society.
At school, Anouchka was placed in the first row. Quickly, she makes friends including Charlotte who will help her on a daily basis.
“It was really two thieves at a fair! At home, mother and daughter have to work more since Anouchka is not in an establishment suitable for deaf children. “Every evening, we resumed the exercises, we rewrote, I re-explained”.
So much so that the little girl speaks normally even if she has to make great efforts to understand conversations, mainly by reading lips.
Arriving in 3rd grade, Anouchka no longer feels she belongs in the world of hearing people. The decision was therefore taken to enroll her in Morvan high school in Paris.
Mother and daughter learn sign language in a few weeks “in a gymnasium in Aplemont” since in the Parisian high school, the teachers practice it. Liliane sells everything she owns in Le Havre and arrives in Paris in August 1997.
Love at first sight at the airport
She works at the Gabriel Fauré high school (13th arrondissement) while Anouchka continues her education at the Morvan high school. Then, Liliane became headteacher at Balzac high school.
Time passes. Anouchka obtains her Bac ES and begins a degree in history and geography. At the same time, she landed a job as a supervisor at theINJ (National Institute for Deaf Youth).
One day, while accompanying a group of INJS students to the United States, Anouchka catches the eye of a man at JFK airport in New York: it’s the thunderbolt !
But this one, also deaf, lives in Connecticut. They begin a long-distance relationship but a year later, Anouchka feels cramped in France.
Liliane understands that her daughter wants to live on the other side of the Atlantic with her husband. And even if it’s hard, she accepts it: “I never lost sight of her”.
Once her license obtained, the young woman took off for the United States, welcomed her first child and married. In 2008, when the country was experiencing the subprime crisis, she returned to her mother’s house with her son.
Support deaf children
At that time, Liliane supervised another establishment. As usual, she encourages her daughter to pass the civil service competition in category B or C and goes out of her way to ensure that Anouchka, her son and her husband obtain an apartment with the Paris town hall. Which materializes.
Especially since a second child arrives: a little girl.
Bathed in the world of deaf people for many years, Liliane obtained a position at the Langevin-Wallon college in the Val d’Oise. An establishment that welcomes some children with deafness.
In general, on leaving college, these students were oriented towards vocational courses. But I pleaded their causes with the Academy to train teachers in sign language, welcome parents, etc… Deaf supervisors have been recruited.
Result: all of these students were able to go to a general stream. A great pride for Liliane.
Return to Le Havre
In 2018, she is officially retired and decides to return to her hometown. Saying goodbye to Anouchka (who had two other children between two, all of them speak sign language) isn’t easy, but that’s the way it is. Each respecting the decision of the other.
In the city Océane, Liliane invests in the association of the deaf of Le Havre and supervises, from time to time, exams at the Normandy School of Management.
Of course, every month she sees her daughter “and we exchange about twenty messages a day” she smiles. It’s not the distance that will break their bond. Not after all that.
By her own admission, Liliane admits that the journey has been difficult but that it is not a sacrifice for her, even if she has put herself aside for all these years to (over)raise her daughter.
There is no entertainment in disability. I go to the essential. When it hits you, you question all your values and you learn to live from day to day. You should never give up.
Today, Anouchka holds a master’s degree in education and continues to work for the National Education. With her husband and children, they project themselves in a few years in the United States.
And Liliana? “If there’s a place for me, I’ll go with them, she says, I’m going to be 70, the adventure is not over. »
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