About Katie

Hi there!  Welcome to my blog, Hope and Sensibility!

My name is Katie, and I’m a mama living in Georgia, with my husband and our little boy, Odin.  I initially began this blog to journal about my experiences as a new grad physical therapist, travel, food, fitness and personal growth.  However, our family has been through a lot since then, and my focus has shifted!  In 2016, we welcomed our beautiful son into the world!  He is the most precious, smart, and wonderful little boy I could ever have imagined, and I’m so incredibly grateful and proud to be his Mommy!  Motherhood has been the MOST rewarding and lovely experience, but it definitely has its major challenges too, and I’ve often felt isolated and alone in my struggles.

In addition to figuring out this whole parenting thing, Odin has completely opened our eyes to life in a different way.  He was born with bilateral severe to profound hearing loss.  As hearing parents who previously knew nothing about hearing loss, hearing aids, cochlear implants, Deaf Culture and Community or sign language, you can imagine how heartbreaking and scary this was to learn at first, but we quickly moved past our grief and began learning as much as we could about his hearing loss and what all options we have available to our sweet boy and our family!  In an effort to give Odin the most opportunity in life and to afford him the ability to be a part of both the Deaf and hearing worlds, we have chosen to be a bimodal and bilingual family!  Odin has cochlear implants, and we use both spoken English and ASL.  We’re still finding a balance to it all, but we’re loving this choice for our family!  Motivated by my experiences with Odin to help other families on their journeys, I am also a Parent Guide with the Georgia Hands & Voices Guide By Your Side Program, and I also serve on the Georgia Stakeholders Advisory Committee for improving Language and Literacy outcomes for DHH children in our state!  Our big guy has changed our lives completely in the most amazing way.  We are loving learning about, adapting and growing within this realm of hearing loss that we knew nothing about only a few short years ago and helping others if we can!

My goal for this blog is to provide myself a therapeutic outlet and memoir for Odin, but I also hope that in sharing about our hardships, triumphs, difficult decisions, and things we’ve learned about providing him with language, I am able to reach other parents of children with hearing loss (and parents in general – parenting is HARD!) and show them that we are NOT alone in any of this!  Let’s do it together!

Thank you for visiting!  I’m so glad you’re here!