About Stephanie
Lived experience guiding awareness and understanding.
Stephanie Todd is the Deaf founder and voice behind WovenAware.
She is a reflective writer, creator, and awareness advocate whose work is shaped by lived experience, identity, and a deep commitment to understanding how systems, communication, and everyday interactions influence people’s lives.
Her work centres on the Deaf experience while exploring broader themes of access, belonging, identity, and awareness.
To explore the thinking behind this work, see How Awareness Unfolds.
A Lived Experience Perspective
Born in Bermuda and raised in the UK after moving for Deaf education at the age of five, Stephanie’s life has been shaped by navigating hearing-dominant systems from an early age.
Growing up Deaf in environments that were not designed with accessibility in mind meant constantly adapting – lipreading, interpreting context, filling in gaps, and learning to survive in spaces that did not always fully include her.
These experiences shaped her understanding of communication, power, and belonging. They also shaped her awareness of how systems – educational, medical, workplace, and social – influence not only access, but identity itself.
Her perspective is grounded not only in personal experience, but in a wider commitment to recognising lived realities that are often overlooked.
The Journey to WovenAware
WovenAware began as something much quieter.
Before there was a platform, there was Becoming Aware – a personal journey of reflection.
After years of adapting to inaccessible environments and internalising silence, a period of deep reflection and healing led Stephanie to reclaim her voice through writing. What began privately, as a way to make sense of lived experience, slowly became a daily practice of awareness.
Becoming Aware was not created as a campaign or a brand. It was a space to notice patterns – in systems, in relationships, in identity, in power.
Through storytelling and reflection, Stephanie began to see how everyday interactions shape access and belonging. Writing became a way to move from survival toward clarity, and from silence toward intention.
Over time, that personal practice expanded. The reflections began to connect beyond the self, into community, culture, and systemic awareness.
WovenAware grew from that foundation.
Today, WovenAware brings together lived experience, systemic insight, and personal growth – creating space for deeper understanding and meaningful conversation.
Motherhood and Motivation
As a mother of three, including a Deaf son, Stephanie’s work is also deeply personal.
Watching her children navigate the world has strengthened her commitment to building spaces where Deaf identity is honoured, not corrected or overlooked. Advocacy exists not only in formal settings, but in everyday moments: school meetings, medical appointments, workplaces, and community spaces.
Her writing is shaped by the belief that access is not a favour. It is a right.
And Deaf identity is not something to overcome; it is something to celebrate.
A Reflective and Deaf-Led Approach
Stephanie’s work is guided by a Deaf-centred perspective and a reflective approach to awareness.
She explores experiences with care, recognising the emotional and social impact of communication, inclusion, and exclusion. Rather than focusing only on what happens, her work also asks how those experiences shape people over time.
Her work seeks to:
explore systems and barriers with clarity and insight
share lived experience with honesty and care
encourage reflection and deeper awareness
support greater understanding between the Deaf and hearing communities
Awareness, in her view, is not a single action. It is an ongoing practice.
Beyond Content Creation
Stephanie’s work extends beyond storytelling.
Through WovenAware, she contributes to conversations around accessibility, inclusion, identity, and systemic awareness. Her platform bridges lived experience and wider social reflection, offering insight that is both personal and structural.
She is intentionally building WovenAware as a long-term platform for education, dialogue, and systemic awareness.
She no longer writes in isolation; she writes to ensure Deaf lived experience is recognised with clarity, depth, and respect.
Stephanie’s reflections on Deaf identity and lived experience have also been featured on The Limping Chicken, where she shared her journey of finding her voice as a Deaf storyteller.
Her work continues to evolve as part of an ongoing journey of awareness and growth.
An Ongoing Journey
Stephanie approaches awareness as an evolving process, one that grows through learning, experience, connection, and reflection.
Through WovenAware, she invites others to explore awareness alongside her, creating space for understanding, courage, and meaningful change.
Awareness is not a destination.
It is a way of being.