Meet Tiffany Storrs

We recently connected with Tiffany Storrs and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tiffany, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I believe resiliency and adaptability are interchangeable. Both are necessary life skills. In the literary sense, resiliency and adaptability are adjectives. I’m here to disrupt these definitions and explain why they are actually verbs. Resiliency/adaptability requires movement and repositioning of self when forced to bend in unforeseen ways. Resiliency necessitates the need to be PROACTIVE…..always.

My own resiliency/adaptability peaked and surprised me in equal measure in my early 30s when I suddenly lost my hearing as a new mom. Going deaf marked only the beginning of a series of unexpected trials and setbacks that shook me to my core and simultaneously illuminated my life’s purpose.

In hindsight, I realize I’ve been honing my resiliency my entire life. I watched my mom raise my brother and I (only 11 months apart) single-handedly while working full-time without ever missing a game, pageant, school function, or whatever my brother and I threw at her. She was a super-mom, and I knew at a tender age that I wanted to emulate her work ethic, independence, and resourcefulness.

Making resiliency a habit and personal trait required me to make friends with my “wildcards”. Once I learned how to navigate moments of discomfort and struggle, I became UNSTOPPABLE.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a triple threat; an actress, author, and advocate. Moreover, I’m deaf and speak three languages (English, Spanish, and ASL)!! What, right?

I lost my hearing suddenly as a new mom (2 weeks after my first was born). It was a very unexpected turn in the road as a new mom with zero familial hearing loss. Without a minute to feel sorry about myself, I quickly enrolled in a survival sign language course and started shopping for a hearing solution. I learned my hearing loss was progressive and irreversible – it would take a Cochlear implant to enable me to continue to hear.

The timing of my new life situation was excruciatingly painful, as it’s an innate motherly reflex to be able to respond to your child’s cries. And yet I couldn’t. But what maimed my heart, was the doubt and disbelief about my new disability…..that’s the dagger of living with a hidden disability.

I was shocked and appalled that I was being asked to prove that I was deaf now. Surely, it’s enough to explain that I am deaf. Seeing first-hand how the hard-of-hearing and deaf community is treated fueled me to share my story in book format (ADAPTABILITY), as a wake-up call to humanity to DO BETTER.

I became a better version of myself only after going deaf. I had found my purpose in life. I realized my purpose on this earth is to inspire others to overcome and not just survive, but THRIVE!

My memoir, Adaptability, is my story of transforming pain into purpose. There is evidence in numbers that society is open to receiving my heartfelt message, as the book quickly became an Amazon best-seller.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Adaptability Resiliency
Resourcefulness

Here’s my secret sauce: adaptability is a verb. When situations are hard, you must remember to stay fluid and move through them, not just get through them. When we stay still and dwell on what’s wrong, we get stuck. Learning to navigate uncomfortable moments makes you unstoppable.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
The most impactful thing my mother ever taught me was the art of delayed gratification.

As a single mother of two, living off a teacher’s salary, my mother seldom had the freedom to splurge on unnecessary things for us.

If I wanted something, say a name-brand backpack for school, I’d need to pay for half of the item with my own money. That meant I would need to save up for the backpack, and only when I had enough money to pay for half of it, then she would take me to go buy it.

It was never like the quick click of Amazon. This concept of delayed gratification is so foreign to our younger generation, and yet it’s such a rich lesson in hard work, gaining financial independence, and personal empowerment.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Megan Anderson, Graphique Fine Art Photography

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