One day I was trying to find out more about the famous Deaf actors I always hear about so I would be more in tune to the Deaf people I know from the Deaf Theater. I always get free help from interns coming from a local college, I ask the intern that was doing her hours at that time to do a research and write a report for me on Sean Berdy. He is one of the actors that inspired me to learn about the Deaf community, culture and language. He plays on Switched at Birth I already wrote about how things started for me. After him the intern did a report on Bernard Bragg and Deana Bray but this story is about the report done on Sean Berdy. While the intern was researching his career and past life she found some information about his girlfriend, Mary Harman. At the time of the research they had a lot of tweets and Instagram posts to each other and their relationship was open to the public (which at the time I'm writing this is not or they are not together anymore, again this is not about his personal life either, I'm just writing to have a better reference of the facts and situation in case I read this in the future..distant future) So looking around her tweets and IG posts the intern started to look more into what she wrote or what she does. She found out a bunch of sites and information about Mary, which believe it or not, I still haven't read the report on any of the actors to be honest, but the report is supposed to be about Sean, not Mary but since I didn't read yet, I'm still blind about who he is too beside he is a good actor, signer that works on Switched at Birth. The thing that amazed me and made me so proud was that the more she was looking for information the more she found out about Mary, the more she liked her. She became a fan of Mary, for her vibe, for her attitude and her thoughts that were all visible through her words on the social media.
The fact the Mary is so well spoken and has so much in depth thoughts about life, politics and philosophy changed her thought about Deaf people in general. She, like me before, always knew that Deaf people exist out there in the world, but never she thought they had such a rich culture and were so intelligent as most people. The usual old stereotype "deaf and dumb" was what she had in mind, but reading and learning about how much they can do and what they accomplished and seeing it all real on Mary's profiles and interviews, she opened her mind to a very different world she was living in and didn't even notice.
Regardless if she will continue searching and getting involved in the Deaf community, she is now with a new view and complete respect to Deaf people. She can see a new world around her and all thanks to Sean Berdy and Mary Harman (if he wasn't a famous actor I wouldn't have asked her to do a report about him, and if he wasn't dating Mary she wouldn't find out about her either and fell in love with her)
That whole process of discovering the Deaf world also made me feel super involved, every new discovery she would share with me all excited about it, of course most of the info she would share I would know already, but it was so good to see one more person so enthusiastic to learn more about them.
And just yesterday, I got a text message from her asking to know who is playing the CODA girl who was Natalie's girlfriend because she wanted to follow her on twitter. Here are the facts: 1 - she didn't have a twitter account, she must have created it just to follow Mary as this is what she said when she finished her hours as an intern, 2 - she had never seen Switched at Birth until I told her about the show, and of course introduced her to Sean Berdy and the deaf culture, 3 - Although, I did not appreciate a text at 11:41pm asking for something that could have waited until the following day, and another text at 12:23am saying she found the person it was nice to know she is still looking for more role models in the Deaf community such as Abby Walla (the person she was looking for). Maybe she is really trying to get into it.
On this week's episode of Switched at Birth, there was a line that fit perfectly to what just happened here "the best leaders lead by example". The example of a Deaf person that just for being herself created such an impact on someone else's life, that is Mary Harman, a true leader and great influence into the "Deaf world"
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| Sean Berdy and Mary Harman |
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