In episode 235 of the Say It Skillfully podcast, Molly sits down with Giselle Nissenbaum, an oncology clinical social worker who specializes in gynecologic cancers, for a warm and candid conversation about what it really means to listen.
Giselle shares how she lost her hearing suddenly and completely as a child, the grief and isolation that followed, and the years it took to learn to hear again with bilateral cochlear implants. She explains why activation day isn’t the movie moment people imagine (it took a year and a half before she could tell a doorbell from a ringing phone), and how lip reading, double the schoolwork, and her mom’s unshakable faith carried her through.
She also opens up about moving from wanting her hearing loss to be invisible to wearing it with pride, why advocacy is mostly education, and how a therapist who noticed her laser-focused attention helped point her toward a career built on connection. Giselle talks about meeting patients at every stage of a cancer diagnosis with humility and curiosity, the imposter syndrome of her early days, and why she now focuses less on saying the right thing and more on the relationship. Along the way, she shares the creative workaround that rescued her pandemic year abroad teaching English, when masks took away the one tool she relied on to communicate.
Heartfelt and grounded, this episode is a reminder that listening is so much more than hearing, and that you don't need perfect words to be a good listener—just care, curiosity, and kindness.Â
