How the deaf girl became
SEWING MACHINE

A strange ringing sound slices through the silence of the room. Everybody starts scanning the surrounding for its source. Only the tiny girl in the corner does not even flinch and keeps reading her book - even though the sound of finger nails on a blackboard seem to be emitted from her very fancy earrings...they are the most powerful hearing aids you can get.   
It does not feel comortable but people keep asking me about the fact I was born officially deaf when my hearing aids and considered to never being able to even speak. 
Intuitively l learned reading lips and managed 

 
I was lucky enough my mind adopted and I taught myself reading lips. 
(Do not even try to imagine what boys think you are looking at their mouth the whole time...). Today I am even fluent in Dutch, German and get along in English. 

After a number of adventures in promotion and motorsports in my twenties a more than toxic relationship brought me to my physical and psychological limits. 

There are 2 solutions to most problems: fabric and love. 

The latter was the first to save me. My parents saved me and send me to visit my brother who was doing an internship in the Dutch Antilles at that time. This is where a young German diving instructor asked me to have a drink with him. (He would later tell I picked him up). 4 children later again I was miserably in Germany. (Dutch and Germany are not the same at all!) 

This time a sewing machine