瘫痪5年，得了两次癌症的聋子竟逆袭成全美知名脱口秀演员！她才是一位真正乘风破浪的姐姐！（附视频&摘要稿）
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近日，英语演讲君在YouTube浏览视频的时候，发现了一个非常震撼人心，却又幽默至极的演讲。
这个演讲者是美国喜剧奖提名最佳独立女性喜剧演员的脱口秀演员和励志演讲家Kathy Buckley。她的演出很真实很动人也超级好笑，我们一起跟着她又是哭又是笑，直击灵魂。
而她最让我震撼的是，她其实是一个聋子。大家都知道，聋哑聋哑，如果一个人是聋子，一般来说，他就会成为一个哑巴，因为他根本听不到声音，又怎么可能学得会说话？
而Kathy是通过看老师口型和感受她说话时气球的震动学会说话的。一个字，Kathy要花2周才能学会。
尽管如此，Kathy依然经常被其他正常小孩欺负，也听不太懂老师讲课，成绩很差，也找不到好的工作。后来，在被车子碾压了一次，再得了两次癌症以后，Kathy终于愤怒了，也终于站起来了。
我真的是不敢想象，什么都听不见的她究竟是经过多少辛苦，才学会用语言精准地掌控住所有人的情绪的。
看到她，我就觉得，我们千万不要给自己设限，一切真的皆有可能。给自己一个机会，只要我们不断努力，奇迹会发生的。
Born deaf. Ho ho. Run over by a Jeep. Ha ha. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Hee hee hee. Stop! It's just too funny! Or at least it is when it's Kathy Buckley telling you her life story. Her one-woman show "Now Hear This!
Moved from Los Angeles to Broadway in September, garnering raves on both coasts. How can you not laugh and cry often simultaneously as 6-foot-tall Buckley describes her absurdly dramatic existence, beginning with her early years in Ohio, when she was wrongly labeled "retarded"? "I was 8 years old when they found out I just had a hearing loss," she says, pausing. "And they called me slow?
Buckley herself didn't know she had a hearing problem because she read lips didn't everyone? It was tricky only when the teacher turned to write on the board. Then Buckley missed chunks of the lesson, and to this day she has trouble reading. Literature, that is. Not people. Somehow she's always known who her friends were, and in her show, she gives them their due. There's the blind girl she used to trade lunches with: "She never saw me switch and I never heard her complain.
And the little one-armed boy she did not like, at least when they had to play ring-around-the-rosey. "Bad enough I can't hear the music, I had nothing to hang onto!
Miss Joan Dailey was probably the most influential friend of all: the speech therapist Buckley was sent to once her school finally realized she was deaf. Equipped with a balloon that she would hold against Miss Dailey's neck and then her own, 8-year-old Buckley practiced imitating the vibrations that the therapist assured her were sounds. Sometimes they spent two weeks on a single word, with the promise of a hamburger and milk shake on Friday if she tried her very hardest. Those milk shakes were the highlight of Buckley's life. And somehow Miss Dailey decided she'd earned one every week. Today, at fortysomething (Buckley won't pinpoint), the lessons are still paying off: Even though she retains a slight "accent," she is completely easy to understand, onstage and off. "I still do vibration therapy, and I always have a balloon somewhere in my house," says the actress, waving to the stuck-in-the-'70s apartment she's subletting. "It's my way of keeping her with me. I don't think anybody ever thought they'd come back as a balloon, but she did.
If Buckley muses about the afterlife more than most people (and she does), it's because she's been there. At age 20, while sunbathing on the beach, she was run over by a lifeguard in a Jeep "Talk about not knowing what your job description is.
As the wheels crushed her face, stomach, chest and arms, "I died that afternoon," she tells her audience. The medics pulled a sheet over her face. But a gentle hand God's, she believes watched over her. It gave her the choice to live, or leave. "It was totally my decision to stay.
That decision meant five years in and out of wheelchairs. "They told me I'd never walk again, but I figured hey, I can't hear them.
She moved to L.A. and lived in a boarding home for elderly women, subsisting on $100 a month. The old ladies proved her salvation. "They were my books," she says now. She loved sitting on the porch, lipreading their stories and quarrels. But when the time came to get on with her life, she left. And learned she had ovarian cancer. Yes, she survived this, too, as well as several harrowing episodes she doesn't even bother to detail (car crash, rape, abuse).
She was given last rights five times. Perhaps that's why she finally decided to become a nurse. Forget it. Her high school grade point average had been 1. She did qualify, however, for vocational training as a massage therapist, so that's what she decided to do. To receive the training, she had to take a physical, including a hearing test. She flunked. And so, for the very first time in her life, Buckley was prescribed a hearing aid that worked. She was 33. Wow! Babies, birds, crickets, traffic, even mom for better or worse, she could hear them all. As the grocery clerk bagged her purchases, she demanded, "What's that?
What's what? "That noise.
You mean the food? "Food makes noise?
asked Buckley incredulously. The clerk explained no, it was the paper bag. But that surprised her just as much. She rushed home to crinkle writing paper, shopping bags, Kleenex. This last one perplexed her: "Talk to me, baby!
When she tells this story in her show, the audience roars. But for years, these stories were for friends only. One day, one of those buddies decided Buckley was more than just kitchen-table funny. She should enter a standup contest. Because the contest was a fund-raiser for kids with cerebral palsy, Buckley couldn't refuse. On the evening of the event, she learned that all the other comics were professionals with years of experience. Yikes! But she went out there and slayed 'em with jokes about what else? her life. On dating: "I don't know if the phone hasn't rung for five years, or I just haven't heard it.
She won the contest, and that was 11 years ago. She's been on the circuit ever since Leno, HBO, even an episode of "Touched by an Angel.
And when she's not doing comedy, she's a motivational speaker, for obvious reasons. "I teach companies about hiring people with disabilities because I truly believe the only disabilities out there are attitudes.
She glances down and laughs. "Compared to my hearing loss, my flat chest is the far greater handicap.
We all have excuses we can use for why we feel sorry for ourselves or hide from the world — pain in our lives that we feel is holding us back. Kathy Buckley certainly had more than most.
The comedian, who has been deaf since she was a baby, has shared that actually it was growing up being hearing impaired (and her recovery from a near-fatal accident), along with fighting (and beating) cancer that helped her find the humor in life. She turned the darkness into laughter.
Buckley has been through a lot in her life and from a young age, she was misdiagnosed as “slow” and placed in a special education classroom. In fact it wasn’t until she was 8 years old that the school figured out she was hearing impaired and finally connected her with someone who could teach her how to communicate!
That’s how Buckley eventually transitioned into public school, where she still struggled and went through some very dark times. Her classmates weren’t especially kind and she struggled academically, experiencing depression.
It was during the darkest time of all — when she was hit by a truck at age 20 and pronounced dead at the scene –- that she decided to live fully, and do her very best to enjoy it while she was living.
Comedy helped Buckley get through a battle with cervical cancer — and emerge victorious. During this recovery phase, Buckley learned the strength of the healing power of laughter– and discovered she was good at making people laugh. She had found her path and her purpose as a comedian. She got on stage to stand-up at a charity event and her life changed.
I look at the audience and think, ‘I know what it’s like to not have a job, to be on welfare, to have no self-esteem because society has placed labels on me.’
Today, Buckley is a five-time American Comedy Awards Best Stand-Up Female Comedienne nominee as well as an author, actress, and public speaker.
She uses her comedy as a platform to amplify the struggles of others, often bearing lessons about love, honor, respect, and withholding judgment.
Her message comes through clear as day:
“There’s is only one power no one can take from you. That is the power to forgive — and you use that power to love, respect, and honor yourself. You are the gift that has been in this universe.”
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