The Bachelor's Daisy Kent has explained how losing her hearing at age 15 was the "loneliest pain" she's ever been through.
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Alongside a montage of Daisy's 2023 operation and enjoying life with a cochlear implant, she began in the lengthy caption, "I was told once that God was doing something special with me and that there was no doubt that one day my ears would pop and I would hear."
"Losing my hearing has been the loneliest pain I have experienced," she continued.
"I pictured myself in a glass box since I was 15 and I'm pounding on the walls screaming and terrified. People are looking in at me and they can't hear me. I can't hear them. I am alone with one of the most dangerous things -- my thoughts."
Arguably Joey Graziadei's The Bachelor frontrunner, Daisy said it's easy to recall that "feeling of confusion" and how she was "quite frankly pissed off" at God as a teenager.
"I didn't understand how if God was real, why He would take away something I loved most," Daisy admitted.
But the bachelorette chose to look on the bright side, revealing, "Losing my hearing helped me see my ability to connect with people. It unlocked the ability to feel more, love more."
Daisy thought she had once lost herself and who she wanted to be, but she assured her followers that's not the case.
"I didn't lose her, I was just a girl who was kind to everyone but herself. Losing my hearing taught me how to fall back in love with myself," Daisy wrote.
"I'm not going to say it's okay, because I would be lying. I'm still coping with that and I know it will take time and understanding. Losing my hearing has given me the ability to look at myself and realize how strong I am, how capable I am, how I have the ability to take something difficult and create something beautiful."
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Daisy shared how God broke her down in order to build her back up.
"And as hard as it's been and as much as I've wished and prayed and cried it away, in this moment I wouldn't have had it any other way," the bachelorette insisted.
"I used to go to bed terrified of what tomorrow would sound like, what tomorrow would bring. I'm not scared anymore, I'm excited. I'm not walking around existing, I'm living."
While deciding to get a cochlear implant was hard for Daisy -- because "it's scary" and she felt like her "faith had failed" she preached to her fans that "big decisions can't be made out of fear" but rather love.
"So I made it out of love and the best possible outcome, I made it through faith," Daisy said.
"What a miracle it is that I live in a place and time where beautiful minds were created who could help give me the ability to hear? Miracles, I'm learning they lie on the outside for everyone to see but also even bigger within."
Daisy isn't sure why "this mountain" was placed in front of her to climb, especially considering it looked "impossible," but she said her hardship has been pushing her towards her "purpose" every single day.
"I decide to show up and live this chaotic beautiful life I was given. Getting a cochlear implant has been well painful, exciting, new, confusing, funny, strange, difficult, frustrating, and beautiful," Daisy went on.
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Daisy concluded, "And, much more than my ears have popped."
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Daisy also recently fired back at trolls criticizing her "vocal fry" and how her voice sounds when she talks to Joey on The Bachelor's 28th season.
Daisy posted a video explaining how this criticism hurts her, and she captioned her post in part, "Going on #thebachelor was hard for me bc I knew not everyone would react to me with kindness & understanding."
Daisy opened up to Joey on The Bachelor's 28th season about a health crisis she had endured for years, which included gradual hearing loss and how a cochlear implant -- which Daisy got in March 2023 and activated the following month -- changed her life for the better.
Daisy began having stroke-like seizures when she was 11-years-old, but doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her for years.
Her health worsened to the point where she had to move in with her parents.
"I physically just laid in bed all day. I couldn't get up. My head always hurt. My ears would ring so loud and I had vertigo all the time," she recalled in a TikTok video she posted earlier this month, adding, "It got really bad, to the point where I wasn't even functioning. "
She was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease at age 21, and she eventually went to an inpatient treatment center in Germany to treat her symptoms.
After more than a month of injections, infusions, whole-body hypothermia, plasmapheresis, an endoscopy, a colonoscopy, and more, Daisy finally felt better and was able to begin living a normal pain-free life.
Daisy, however, didn't regain her hearing, and so she received the cochlear implant and now rocks it as a fashion statement.
Joey told The Bachelor cameras how he was so impressed by Daisy and her ability to overcome such adversity, while also turning challenges into positives.
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When Daisy showed Joey her cochlear implant, he called it "beautiful," and The Bachelor star told the bachelorette that he found her inspiring.
"Daisy is resilient... and to have that be the person that you're with, it's a huge trait that you can look to," Joey said in a confessional, adding, "I can see Daisy being someone I end up with at the end of all this, and it's exciting!"
Daisy founded a nonprofit organization called Hear Your Heart in April 2021 to support children with autoimmune disorders or hearing loss, and she also wrote the book Daisy Doo: All the Sounds She Knew to help kids discover "the beauty of" her "favorite sounds" thanks to a cochlear implant.
Daisy was just shown traveling to Montreal, Canada with Joey and his remaining bachelorettes on The Bachelor's latest episode. She appears to be a frontrunner to win Joey's heart on Season 28, and she recently thanked Bachelor Nation for everyone's support.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
