I am Paula Pfeifer, the woman behind Crônicas da Surdez, Hearing Loss Chronicles and The Hearing Loss Club. I am also a deaf oralized woman, a former hearing aid user, a bilateral cochlear implant user, a writer, a patient advocate and someone who has spent many years saying out loud what people with hearing loss are often expected to keep quiet.
I did not grow up dreaming of becoming a public voice on hearing loss. Nobody wakes up one day and thinks: excellent, let me build a life around explaining invisible disability to a world that believes hearing is simple. My story began the way many stories about hearing loss begin: with confusion, denial, shame, bad information, expensive decisions, and the strange loneliness of being present in a room while missing pieces of almost everything.
For years, I wore hearing aids. They were part of my body, my routine, my handbag, my panic, my hope and, occasionally, my rage. Later, I became a bilateral cochlear implant user. I know hearing technology from the inside, not from a brochure. I know what it is like to depend on devices and still miss words. I know what it is like to hear again and, at the same time, never become a normal-hearing person. I know the beauty of access and the exhaustion of always having to explain it.
That is the place from which I write. Not above patients, not on behalf of an industry or from a clinic waiting room with a sponsored smile. I write as someone who has lived the questions people type into Google at midnight: Why am I losing my hearing? Which hearing aid should I buy? How much does a hearing aid cost? Am I too young for this? Is a cochlear implant scary? Will people treat me differently? Why am I so tired? Why does nobody understand?
I created Crônicas da Surdez in 2010, when there was very little online conversation in Brazil about the real life of adults with hearing loss. Most available information was medical, cold, commercial or written as if the patient were a passive character in someone else’s story. I wanted the opposite. I wanted a place where the person with hearing loss was the center of the narrative: confused, intelligent, angry, funny, afraid, curious, capable and deserving of honest information.
The site grew because people recognized themselves in it. They found stories about hearing aids, cochlear implants, tinnitus, otosclerosis, accessibility, rights, family, work, shame, adaptation and identity. They also found something rarer: a deaf woman saying, in plain language, that hearing loss is not a small inconvenience. It changes the way you understand yourself. It changes how you work, love, travel, argue, listen, rest, spend money and ask for help.
In February 2013, my first book, Crônicas da Surdez, was published. It marked my debut as a Brazilian deaf writer and helped bring the experience of oralized deaf people into public conversation. At that time, even saying “I am deaf” while speaking Portuguese and using hearing technology could confuse people. Many still wanted deafness to fit into a tidy stereotype: either total silence and sign language, or no deafness at all. My life never fit that lazy little box.
After that came more writing, more books, more public conversations and more uncomfortable truths. Novas Crônicas da Surdez continued the work of turning private experiences into collective recognition. Saia do Armário da Surdez carried one of my central messages: hiding hearing loss is exhausting, expensive and lonely. Coming out of the hearing-loss closet is not a performance of courage for other people to applaud. It is a practical act of survival.
My books are not academic manuals or inspirational wallpaper. They are records of a lived experience that became useful to thousands of people because it refused to be polished into something harmless. I write about the joy of hearing and the grief of losing access to sounds. I write about the absurd price of technology, the emotional weight of adaptation, the arrogance of people who think they know what deafness is, and the relief of meeting someone who gets it without needing a lecture.
From this work came the Clube dos Surdos Que Ouvem, a community for people with hearing loss who use spoken language, hearing aids, cochlear implants, lip reading, captions, apps, strategy, stubbornness and every possible tool to stay connected to the world. The name bothers people who like simple categories. Good. Life with hearing loss is not simple. We are deaf and we can hear. We hear and we miss things. We speak and we still need accessibility. We use technology and we still have limits. We are not contradictions, just real people.
The Club became a place for conversations patients rarely have in public. Which hearing aid is worth it? Why is adaptation so difficult? What questions should I ask before buying? What should I expect from a cochlear implant? How do I talk to my family? Why do I feel ashamed? Why does the hearing industry make everything so confusing? Why did nobody tell me that hearing loss would be emotional, not only medical?
One of my main achievements is having helped thousands of people stop treating hearing loss as a private failure. It is not. Hearing loss is a health condition, a disability, a technology issue, a money issue, an accessibility issue and, very often, an identity crisis. People deserve information before they spend a fortune, before they give up, before they accept bad service, before they blame themselves for struggling.
Another achievement is protecting the patient’s point of view in a market that often speaks beautifully about care while treating people mostly as buyers. I believe in good doctors, good audiologists and good technology. I also believe in critical thinking, transparency and independence. Patient education should not sound like disguised advertising. A person researching hearing aids or cochlear implants deserves more than a sales funnel with medical vocabulary.
That is why Hearing Loss Chronicles now exists in English. Hearing loss is a worldwide public health problem. Adults in the United States and everywhere else are losing their hearing, postponing treatment, hiding devices, making expensive choices with incomplete information and wondering why they feel so alone. They need patient-centered content written with intelligence, honesty and a little impatience toward nonsense.
If you are new here, understand this: I am not here to make hearing loss cute, to sell miracle solutions or to pretend hearing aids or cochlear implants solve everything. They can change lives and they have changed mine. But they do not erase disability, fatigue, prejudice, cost, fear or the need for access.
I am here because hearing loss is invisible until it ruins a conversation, a job interview, a dinner, a marriage or a person’s confidence. It is invisible until someone decides you are rude, distracted, difficult or dramatic. It is invisible until you are exhausted from pretending.
I stopped pretending a long time ago.
My work is for adults with hearing loss, hearing aid users, cochlear implant users, families, parents of deaf children, people with tinnitus, people with otosclerosis, professionals willing to listen and anyone who suspects that the official version of hearing loss is missing the most important character: the patient.
Welcome to Hearing Loss Chronicles by Paula Pfeifer. This is an independent publication about hearing loss from the inside out. No empty inspiration or fake neutrality: I’m 100% pro hearing rehabilitation.
Just the truth, written by someone who lives with two bionic ears, a long memory and very little patience for silence where there should be information. I write because people make better decisions when they finally see themselves inside the information they are reading.