Sudden hearing loss can be terrifying and disorienting. Existing loss that worsens, or becomes bilateral, or in other ways changes can also be difficult to adjust to. This is no less true today than when I suffered a devastating decline back in 2008, manageable loss that suddenly was no longer manageable. As readers of “Shouting Won’t Help” know, I struggled to hold on to my job for a year, and then gave up.

My former New York Times colleague Jodi Kantor, an investigative reporter who shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on Harvey Weinstein, and who now covers the Supreme Court for The Times, changed gears recently to write an advice book. Called How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work, the book evolved from a 2025 graduation address she gave at her alma mater, Columbia University. (Click here for a YouTube link). The book is meant for young people, especially college graduates just entering a bleak job market.

But it’s relevant for another population as well: those whose lives are interrupted by the onset of a disability. It made me reflect on the challenge of learning how to restart when life throws you off your expected path.

I am well past my career days and even further past the time when I had to figure out how to start, but I did have to learn how to restart after I took early retirement from The Times because of my hearing loss. I was 62 and not really interested in retiring. But my job as an editor was increasingly stressful as my hearing declined, and a buyout offer in 2009 looked too good to refuse. I left with sadness and regret, some anger (at my hearing loss, and at a workplace that couldn’t accommodate it except by offering a job I didn’t want), and relief.

Mornings were hardest in the weeks after I left. I missed picking up my coffee on my way to work, I missed walking through the newsroom to my desk, I missed casual conversations with colleagues. I missed working. What now, I wondered?

Jodi’s advice to the college grads was to focus on two things. The first was craft. Craft may be easier to identify in an older adult like me, with a lifetime of work behind me. “Craft” is the skill you possess, the expertise you’ve acquired, whether in the workplace or as an avocation or as a volunteer. The second is need: What does society need?

For me, the need was a lack of information about hearing loss. The craft was my ability to report and write. And so I wrote a book, and I started a second career as an educator and advocate for people with hearing loss.

My expertise was easy to identify, but all of us have something we know how to do. I think of my colleagues in HLAA. We’re all volunteers but we draw on a wide range of learned skills. A retired event planner puts her experience to work organizing meetings and events. A bookkeeper keeps our books. People in vastly disparate industries — finance, law, education, retail — offer advice to people in their field dealing with hearing loss. A teacher serves on our scholarship committee and is our primary contact with New York City Schools. A PR man uses his communication skills to advocate for better accommodations. A journalist edits our newsletter.

It can take time to recognize your skill and how it can be matched to a need. Perhaps your most obvious skill is one you wouldn’t think of: you’ve learned to live with hearing loss. You wouldn’t be reading my blog or active in HLAA if you hadn’t already at least started to understand your loss and how to live with it. You’re learning to advocate for yourself. You already possess the lived experience, the skill to fill the need for support and advice that people new to hearing loss often face.

We all have a skill. We just have to identify it. The need is obvious.

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For more about living with hearing loss, read my memoir Shouting Won’t Help, and for more practical advice try Smart Hearing. Both are available as Kindle or paperback.