Author: Jen Coccioletti Vanella

I’m sharing this part of my life because as I’ve traveled the world, I haven’t found anybody like me. There’s a lot of amazing talent to people who have survived bacterial meningitis in infancy. However, I have yet to meet someone else who sees color. Love, Jen “ The 🌈🦋🎶 voice Coach. And special thanks to the helpers, particularly that nurse, who probably doesn’t even remember me who took the time to walk my diva, Toshi up and down the elevators. lol 😂 ❤️

After surviving infant meningitis, a lifelong TBI, and eventual legal blindness, the author explains how her unique brain transforms auditory and sensory data into a vibrant, symphony-like reality. This perspective shaped her journey as a specialized educator who helps others find their own inner harmony. So, something else I thought that would be pretty cool to put in this. Tell me about the Music Handbook, which has lots of support for my students or will, and some other things too, that I, for a reason I can’t quite explain to you, feel like it’s time to publish, is I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself, not my degrees and certifications and people I’ve worked with, none of that nonsense. I want to talk to you about why I see in color or why I suspect I do, because the fact is, the story I’m about to tell you is very unique. I have looked all over the world for people who think like me, and the fact is, I’m an anomaly. So I was born in the early mid-80s, and at that time, there was no vaccine for bacterial meningitis. So when I was two months old, I apparently, according to my grandmother, had a serious rash, you know, under my diaper. And my mother was trying to change me. She realized it was getting bigger and blotchier. And so because her husband, my biological father at the time, was a Navy SEAL in training, we actually went to Fort Dix Medical as we lived in New Jersey, and we were a military family. And even though they didn’t have a baby wing, they took me. And the again conclusion was that I had some form of meningitis. All the things that you would think a tiny little baby would go through with this happened. I had a stroke, I got sicker and sicker, and they decided to keep me there again, according to my grandmother, because they just wanted me to die comfortably. Now, if you know me, the idea of me ever sitting there and just waiting to die is like the most asinine concept on the planet. But it makes sense to me, too. You have a tiny little baby, you have a sickness that’s supposed to have no antidote. And while bacterial meningitis is serious, lots of adults and, you know, more mature bodies and brains survived this. But with a little, tiny infant, the mortality rates were pretty high. So instead of dying, as the old story goes, my grandmother came to come check on me one day at Fort Dix. She walked in and she saw my crib was empty, and she automatically just thought I had died. She told me it was one of the worst moments of her life, and I can only imagine how hard it was. And then a male nurse came in holding me in a pink blanket and apologized if he had frightened her, because he had taken to walking me up and down on the elevators because I would just cry all night. Long and keep all the other patients awake. Apparently I was an opera singer from the beginning. Huh. And so he would just take me on the elevator and ride me up and down and told my grandmother that I was doing remarkably well. They didn’t know why. And while I had had a stroke and I was probably going to have some pretty serious challenges later, he said that, you know, go talk to the doctor about that, that they thought maybe I’d make it. So what ended up happening was I ended up having tbi. And TBI is a form of basically brain damage. And it can mean lots of different things. And they didn’t know with how little I was what it would mean for me. But lots of babies, especially back then, without the vaccine, you know, if they did live, they ended up in wheelchairs or they ended up going deaf. That certainly was not the case for me. But my milestones were weird. Apparently I crawled on my back like a crab before I ever walked or normal crawled. Speech took a while. There were all these milestones and they were all scrambled. And it was very apparent that apparently that I was different. But I can tell you from the perspective of a little girl, around all these doctors and people who kept saying there was something wrong with me, I seemed to see a world that nobody else saw. And I heard things that nobody else seemed to hear. It was very apparent by the time I hit 4 or 5 years old that I had serious issues with my vision. Part of the TBI was that information would actually disappear for me. So doing normal things as I finally hit my milestones, like learning how to climb up a slide or something, was terrifying because the steps would disappear and I’d scream bloody murder. As again, bacterial meningitis did not affect my lungs whatsoever, thank goodness, at least when it came to recovery. So. But I can tell you it was very scary. I can tell you that there were days where there would be grass and there’d be green and then there would be blue and there would be yellow. I can tell you that shapes would constantly change. I can tell you that unless I could hear the world, I really struggled with the visual elements of what was expected of me, even a small child. But it also meant that I could memorize full musicals. By the time I was 4 and 5 years old. It meant that I could hear grown ups all the way, you know, down the hallway at the school talking about me through a door, which as I got older, got really annoying. I couldn’t believe how many people thought I was just. Well, there were lots of labels since it was the 90s, early 90s, you know, mentally retarded was thrown around. Sigh) Jenny is different. Jenny is slower than the other students. And I can tell you at the time, glasses were a game changer for that, as some teacher had the insight to actually say, wait a second, maybe this little girl can’t see. Then that’s what was kind of fascinating about this whole thing for me is I’ve always seen in color, visual information has always been missing pieces of information. But you give me a pair of headphones, a calm space, and a chance to just slow the information down. I can teach the blind to hear and the deaf to see. And I have been doing it ever since I can remember. So the things about me that are unique, I guess, is I’m a very patient teacher because I am a special education to higher education story. So I started off in the depths of Edu and music because again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my hearing was my special gift and it was my ticket out of a pretty bad situation. Because while I grew up as a learning disabled individual, I also lived in a very abusive and very toxic environment and biological family, except for my grandmother, who I didn’t see all the time. So, you know, there was a lot going on with that too. And I think actually when I really push back and consider it from a neurological stand standpoint, I think that’s one of the reasons that after COVID 19 and me getting sick, my vision got so much worse. You know, let’s flash up 30 years. And what ended up happening was I woke up after being sick from whatever happened to me with COVID And it was about two weeks and I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t breathe properly. A big reason I designed a lot of the breathing tutorials that I created was to help other people recover because I knew what it was like, right Again, by listening, not by looking. And glasses no longer worked. So the left part of my cortex and being able to see through and use the frontal and temporal lobe, and I’m just kind of like rattling off the science right now in my head. But the long or the short is that’s why I see in color. That’s why lighting hurts my eyes so much, which is a diagnosis I’ve seen in the Netherlands, Germany, and a couple other places with bacterial meningitis. And to this day, you know, as a grown, married, successful woman, I can tell you right now that I do not see what other people see. But you want to know what’s kind of amazing about that? I can take my ears and compensate with that part of my brain to make up for what I don’t see. Long ago, I turned the world into a symphony. Cacophony was the vacuum cleaner. Hated the sound of the vacuum cleaner or the coffee grinder or the toilet. 🚽 And it all got put into cadences and harmonic structures that please pleased my young ear. And those songs have stayed the same and vibrant and true as I have reached 40 years of age. My world only makes sense when it’s controlled. The colors are as organized as they can be, and I can take those harmonic and inharmonic polyphonic concepts that are life and structure them into the symphony of my soul. It’s easier to be able to associate information, especially in foreign languages. And I am also considered a savant. I can listen to different noises and ideas and give you an assessment real quick about what’s going on. And that has also included being able to hear things like fiberglass that MRIs weren’t picking up in people’s, you know, voice boxes and throats. And sometimes it’s as simple as having someone come in for an audition to come work with me. And their TMJ gets set off on the left side over by the velum in the tongue 32 times. And the coffee cup that they’re holding, they’re nervous because they keep tapping their fingers on it. And that’s what it is to be a savant, too. You focus on all this auditory information. So, yes, that is my story, at least so far. I am a vocal trauma learning disability specialist who has all the certifications and degrees in the world, but truly understands because she’s been on this journey. I sing and relax and teach other people to do the same. Same. I unleash hearts for educational purposes in the sense of being able to find things inside themselves that maybe need a different perspective and teaching plan that other teachers perhaps haven’t been able to accomplish. And I’m different. I can’t go to the grocery store by myself, always successfully, because there is no rhythm.🥁 People blindly look into their phones and sometimes they don’t see a woman in her prime with a cane the way they would see an old lady. So accidents can happen. People don’t always mop the floor properly when you go to Aldi’s. So if there’s a puddle of water and I haven’t heard them squeeze that water from the mop, I probably don’t have a prayer of being able to walk through without a little bit of help and support, which my husband lovingly provides. But yes, if we don’t document these stories, at least pieces of them, how are we going to be able to reassess how we see bacterial meningitis? How are we going to be able to do that with many other things too? But that’s all for now. Thank you.🙏