Love Is Never Silent

Morgan Stein
Love is Never Silent

“Love is Never Silent” is a television film based on the life of a normally functioning woman, Mare Winningham, with deaf parents.   She spends most of her rough childhood being her parent’s only connection to the hearing world.   After years of struggling for the happiness of her parents, a close family friend awakens Winningham making her more aware of the importance of her own happiness.   With this in mind she chooses to get married to Frederick Lenne.   This greatly angers her parents because they knew their daughter would be less involved in their life.   This leads them to completely end their relationship with their daughter.   Although after Winningham gets married she is happy, she begins to feel guilty as her parents continue to express bitterness towards her.   This also makes Winningham realize how big of a role she played in the lives of her parents.   Winningham then chooses to try to rebuild the relationship she once had with her parents.   If Winningham was not there for her parents they would have no connection to the hearing world in any way.   This made me gain a greater appreciation for the deaf community.   In addition, Winningham’s birth to her first child was an example of how the hearing culture is slowing being introduced to the deaf society, like myself.   I feel that the title of the movie serves as a great theme to the movie.   If Winningham never realized how much she cared about her parents, she would have never made an attempt to be there for them again leaving them in a silent world.   The love the family shared makes the silence of the deaf community more valuable.   If there were no people that cared about bridging the gaps between the deaf and hearing societies, such as Winningham, deaf people would be left in their own world oblivious to anything around them.