Closing the Distance: Accepting Who I Am in the World of Dispatching

Written by Emily Smith, published June 20, 2023

People shy away from those who are different from them. This is something I’ve noticed, experienced, and have said since I was in school. Fast forward to my career, a new question rose to the surface. What do you do when the person you are distancing yourself from is you? 

Having family in public safety, I thought I knew what to expect when it came to starting down the 911 journey. The part that nobody prepares you for is how much you learn about yourself and how much you grow. Just like in school, you grow closer to those who are more like-minded or similar to you, and you distance yourself from those who may not understand the job as easily. 

It is so easy to get caught up in how someone in public safety can relate to you rather than try to explain it to those who aren’t faced with it every day. It is easy to get caught up in the “endless overtime” paychecks. Hell, it is even easy to get caught up in the adrenaline of the job. It is easy to let this job become your identity. 

I spent my life pushing things deep down and just moving on with life day-by-day. In doing so, I did such a disservice to myself by pushing my true identity deeper and deeper down inside. You know, the whole idea of “surviving, not thriving.” I guess the best way to explain is to share part of my story. This is just one of many that I still work towards embracing.

As a child, you tend to just accept things as they are and not overthink the outcomes or the “whys.” For me, that meant I completely undersold and undervalued the significance of my missed school days, medical struggles, and hospital stays. It was just another ear infection. Just another hospital stay. Just another day I was taken from class to go to a speech therapy class/session. It was my normal. Thankfully, in a small town, I was never treated differently. In fact, I never even talked about it. My hearing loss was just a normal thing for me. It wasn’t until years later, in high school, that the significance really settled in momentarily. I started learning sign language on my own, with help from some amazing friends that I made. (Pro tip- If you know how to sign “how” and “sign,” as well as the alphabet… you can ask a deaf person how to sign almost anything!)

In school, we all are put into categories by ourselves or others. In my case, it was unique- The “hearing” girl who could read lips, the one who hung out with the deaf kids, and who could semi-communicate in sign language. “The deaf group.” While I didn’t mind, it caused my hearing to come up and questions to be asked. I embraced that side of me at the time because it was something that was unique to me and something that I felt made me, well… me. 

After I graduated, my hearing and reading lips fell into the background noise of my life, not to be thought about or shared much with others. It was just another thing, second nature as if I was conditioned to it my whole life. 

When I started my career, I was a mere twenty-one-year-old with no idea how much this job could change a person. I spent years trying to hone my skills and absorb everything there was to learn, meanwhile pushing down the “human” parts of me. Onto the next call… That’s what we are taught, right? Disassociate, compartmentalize and do whatever it takes to do the job. I got lost in proving to myself that I could not only succeed, but exceed my own expectations. More than ever, I fell back on making sure that my hearing wasn’t ever going to stop me. I tried to focus so much on what I could do, what I needed to do, that I forgot the simple fact that pushing down those human elements of myself was only pushing my true self even farther away.  

Five years into my career, my childhood came flooding back when I noticed my hearing wasn’t what it was when I got hired or even just six months prior. It became a part that I tried even harder to hide. I spent so long trying to shove that part of me into a deep dark hole inside of me, worried that if others knew of my hearing history and past, I would be considered less than. Incapable. Unable. The sole thing I fought my entire life to avoid. 

I shouldn’t have to worry about this. After all, I passed the hearing test to get hired, right? I’d spent five years saying that this job was the best thing for my hearing… it made me focus on the callers or the officers and narrow in on what was being said. Now, here I am facing the idea that if my hearing continues to get worse, my fears may come true. But this time, it’s not just a speech therapy class while everyone else is in gym…. It is my career on the line. A career that I love and that I am good at. A career that became such a part of me that without it, I didn’t know who I would be. 

Spoiler alert: I got hearing aids.

When I first got my aids, I didn’t want to tell anyone. Maybe it was the worry of not wanting others to think I was incapable. I didn’t want my officers or callers thinking that I couldn’t be their lifeline. How could someone who needs help doing such a simple task - like hearing - ever be enough? I didn’t want the thought of my hearing loss to handicap me. Yet, looking back, the only thing that did was allow me to handicap myself with the idea of it. The only person that worried about me not being able to do the job… was me. 

I took a step- no, a leap- outside my comfort zone and posted a small snip of my story. The outpour of support and love that I received was humbling. Even after, it still took months, probably closer to a year, to start being able to really share and be open and vulnerable. In that vulnerability, I started seeing a change in me. I started learning who I was instead of who I was afraid of being seen as. I still do my job, just with two extra parts. Instead of fearing who I would be without this career, I started realizing what I could do for this job. The more I embrace myself and the parts that make me… me, the more I can relate to callers. The more I embrace my story, the more I connect to those who work beside me and on the other side of the radio.

My hearing journey has been nothing shy of eventful, with many highs and just as many lows. Instead of fearing what I have to lose, I realized that the person I am is forever, and my hearing aids are just as much a part of me as being a dispatcher is. 

With accepting this one portion of me, I started doing the continued work of pulling out the parts of me that I kept shoving down due to my own fears. The moment we allow ourselves to embrace who we are and what makes us so uniquely is the moment that we discover that we are more connected than we seem. Connected to our callers, partners, friends, and family, but most importantly, ourselves. Dispatching is a part of me. A part that can be embraced by every other part of me. 

Thank you, Emily for sharing your experience with us. If you are interested in writing a blog, please email amanda@911derwomen.com. Sign up for our newsletter on our homepage to stay up to date with 911der Women programming, exclusive content and blog updates. Click here and scroll to the bottom.

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