The Onion Project: Week 8 ~ Connection and Community

Week 8  The Layer of Family: Connection and Community

The next layer we reach is about connection, the bonds that shape us long before we can name them: family and community.

For many Deaf children, family is the first and most powerful test of belonging. Some grow up in homes where parents learn ASL, where conversations flow in the language of the hands, where laughter is visual as much as audible. In these homes, Deafness is not treated as loss but as another way of being. The dinner table becomes a space where communication bridges generations, where eye contact is intimacy, and where silence feels like peace, not exclusion.

But others grow up surrounded by love yet cut off by silence. No one in the home learns their language. Every conversation passes above their head or behind their back. They smile, they nod, they guess, performing participation without truly being part of it. They become guests in their own family, strangers at their own table.

The same pattern echoes in the lives of many neurodivergent children. Some families learn to move at their rhythm, to honor sensory needs, to see joy in difference. Others demand conformity, insisting the child bend until they break. The unspoken message is the same: You can stay, but only if you are easier to understand.

Family can be bridge or barrier. And when it becomes a barrier, the search for community becomes urgent, not a luxury, but a lifeline.

Deaf people often find one another in schools, community centers, or Deaf clubs, spaces where hands fly freely and understanding flows without translation. The moment a Deaf child meets another Deaf person for the first time, there is often a visible transformation: the sudden relief of being seen, of realizing they were never truly alone.

Autistic and ADHD individuals find similar relief in community, in support groups, online spaces, creative collaborations, or friendships built on shared rhythm. These are places where stimming isn’t corrected, where pacing isn’t policed, where tangents are welcomed as curiosity, not distraction. Within these spaces, difference becomes dialogue, and expression becomes safety.

Community does not erase the hurt that family barriers leave behind. Wounds of early misunderstanding run deep. But community offers repair. It speaks the words many needed to hear long ago: You are not alone. You never were. It gives permission to exist without explanation, to unlearn the fear of being misunderstood.

In Deaf culture, CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) often serve as bridges between the Deaf and hearing worlds. At the same time, “chosen family” within the Deaf community provides belonging where bloodlines could not. It is not unusual for Deaf elders to become mentors, teachers, or second parents to younger Deaf people searching for roots. This extended kinship reminds us that family is not limited to genetics; it is formed by shared language, shared struggle, and shared joy.

In neurodivergent culture, chosen family emerges too. Online communities, local meetups, and creative collaborations become sanctuaries where no one has to defend their wiring. These are the places where difference is not apologized for, but celebrated where the stims, tangents, and bursts of passion are recognized as unique dialects of being human.

This layer reminds us that no one thrives in isolation. We all carry the marks of the families we were born into the lessons, the wounds, the shapes they gave us. But we also carry the power to build families of our own making. Belonging can be born from blood, but it can also be chosen, crafted, and cultivated across distance and time. To be Deaf, to be neurodivergent, is often to discover that love itself can be bilingual, fluent in gesture, in patience, in presence.

Peeling this layer shows us that identity is not only what we hold inside, but what we build together. We are made, remade, and sustained by those who understand us in our native rhythms whether that rhythm is signed, spoken, written, or felt.

Family, then, is not just who raised us, but who raises us up. It is the people who make space for our full selves, who teach us that connection is not about sameness but about seeing each other clearly.

With that foundation, we move closer to the core toward the next layer, where the question shifts from how do we belong? to how do we thrive? Because survival is where the story begins, but thriving is where we finally take root.

~ A. Bret Cummens, M.Ed.