Finding Courage, Finding Self: A Conversation with David Cohen

On this month's myFace, myStory podcast host Dina Zuckerberg is joined by David Cohen, recipient of the 2024 myFace Courage Award. David talks about the dark twists on his journey of hope to acceptance of his life with Pierre Robin Sequence to who he is now. He shares what he thinks should be happening to support children and adults in the craniofacial community.

Dina Zuckerberg: Welcome to myFace, myStory: Voices from the Craniofacial Community with your host, Dina Zuckerberg. Hello and welcome to Dina Zuckerberg: Voices from the Craniofacial Community. I'm Dina Zuckerberg, your host and director of family programs at myFace. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. Like many of us in the community, I have a craniofacial difference. I was born with a cleft lip, a hearing loss, and no vision in my left eye. myFace, myStory is about people like us being seen and heard about, sharing stories within the craniofacial community and with others. This podcast episode is made possible through support from the Integra Foundation committed to improving lives. By the way, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening through Apple Podcasts, click subscribe now and we'll keep you updated on future episodes so you never miss out. And if you're a fan of myFace, myStory please rate and review the program on Apple Podcasts so we can get a message of inclusivity and empowerment to more people. As we begin National Craniofacial Awareness Month I'm very excited about my guest today, the recipient of this year's myFace Courage Award. David Cohen was born with Stickler's Syndrome. One of the primary symptoms of Stickler is Pierre Robin sequence, a rare genetic disorder that stunts the growth of the lower jaw causing the person difficulties with swallowing and breathing. By the time David was 10 years old, he had undergone more than 10 craniofacial surgeries to correct this issue. David, welcome to myFace, myStory.

David Cohen: Thanks for having me, Dina.

Dina Zuckerberg: Yeah. So David, you've been on a very long what we like to call a journey of hope, which includes not taking no for an answer when the US Navy turned you down for service. So can you share with us, David, your earliest memory of knowing you had Pierre Robin sequence?

David Cohen: My earliest memory is probably, and this is thanks to the capturing of it when we did myFace video, but it was probably my second jaw distraction surgery when I woke up in the hospital.

Dina Zuckerberg: And can you say a little bit about what that was and what that was like?

David Cohen: I was about eight years old, if I remember correctly. It was my second jaw distraction surgery. And at that time in my life, honestly, the biggest challenges were the mental health aspect and the isolation that came with it. I remember being in second grade and always being taken out of class, being sent back to school after the surgeries with jaw distraction devices and people, especially the other kids not understanding what was going on. I wasn't able to play with other kids my age. So the isolation that comes from that was probably the biggest challenge. But I had a loving family and I was lucky enough to have the incredible angelic team of doctors and nurses that I had. So we get through it.

Dina Zuckerberg: So what were some of the challenges you faced in school? Did kids bully you? Did they stare?

David Cohen: Absolutely kids bullied me. At eight years old, people don't understand what compassion is. People don't understand what looking past physical appearances looks like. So having metal devices on your head, it just calls me back to a specific memory when I was in a playground in Central Park and kids kept their distance noticeably saying that I had lasers on my head, looking like an alien. And it's incredibly isolating, especially for a child that young when you don't understand end that it's not your fault and you internalize it. So it creates a bunch of shame messages that become part of your being. And also there's a lot of internal resentment both towards yourself. For me, resentment towards my family and towards, especially my mother as an older kid came up like, why was I born this way? And I wasn't even able to process that and that didn't even come out until I was 24 years old, which is how old I am now. So it really does create, using a building reference, it creates a building on a very, very rotten foundation that it takes a lot of work to clean out and rebuild.

Dina Zuckerberg: So how do you think those experiences shaped your identity as a person?

David Cohen: Well, it's still an emotional journey, and it is very much about resilience and that the challenges that I had as a child have given me some of my best, but also some of my worst qualities. I'll start with the worst, so I can leave the note on a positive one, but I was very emotionally immature and I'm learning now how to properly handle my emotions also back then and until very recently, I felt like I was a burden and I was just work for the people around me. And I am starting to learn that that's not true. We need to accept who we are. We need to accept that our craniofacial differences make us assets, not liabilities, which I'll touch on in a little bit with the military, but we need to realize that it's who we are, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. That's something I'm still working on now.

Dina Zuckerberg: Yeah, I can relate so much to what you're talking about in terms of the resilience and how, I think because of our experience, we had to constantly, I don't know if fight's the right word, but to push ourselves in a way that I think others outside of the community may not have to do in the same way always.

David Cohen: Absolutely.

Dina Zuckerberg: And I think that it is so much more about the emotional. I mean, somehow for me, the surgeries, it was sort of less about the surgeries, but more about the emotional piece, the social emotional piece that we have to contend with, I think in a way that, yeah, others don't.

David Cohen: Surgeries are physical, surgeries are physical pain. They are tangible. They are finite in time, and they pass. When you heal, you stop hurting. It's over. The emotional piece is the untangible, the emotional piece, the incomprehensible, because it's not visible. For the listeners who have seen the video that was aired at the gala where I was presented with the Courage Award, I touch on a piece of self-harm. I started self-harming when I was 10 years old. And the reason why I started self-harming is because I was no stranger to physical pain because of my surgeries. Whereas the emotional pain that we were dealing with, that I was dealing with was uncomfortable. It was strange to me, and I didn't know when it would end. So a lot of people who self-harm, the reason why a lot of people self-harm is because it takes an emotional pain and converts it into a physical one, one that's tangible, one that you have control over. And that was one of the biggest things that I had to kick. And one of the biggest things that was detrimental to my self-esteem was the fact that I was still self-harming. And while it helps deal with the emotional pain, it also reinforces it. So in order to stop, in order to help yourself heal, you first have to let go of those negative patterns that reinforce that negative pain.

Dina Zuckerberg: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So how did your family, because I really believe that when you have a child with a craniofacial difference, it does impact the whole family, including the sibling. And I know you have a sister. How do you think it impacted the rest of the family?

David Cohen: So my sister was born when I was six years old. Part of that resentment piece that I touched on earlier, especially if the sibling does not have a craniofacial difference and is born, as I like to a boring normie, it creates that resentment towards your sibling as well. For me, what it looked like was when my sister was born without a craniofacial challenge, to me, when my parents now are paying attention to this seemingly perfect newborn baby, that gave me the message that I only get the attention when I'm sick. I only get the attention when something is wrong with me, because at that point, I wasn't going through surgeries. And then to reinforce that message when I was eight years old and I had my second jaw distraction surgery, the attention went from my sister straight to me because we were doing the video, I was in and out of hospital. So that sort of was the nail in the coffin for that specific shame message. It also created a lot of resentment towards my sister because she, to me, to the six-year-old me, she was the one who took away the attention, the love from my parents. And the reason why it's stronger for people in the craniofacial community is because the attention that we need is so much more because there's a medical aspect to it. So the delta between the attention that you have and the attention that you don't, between, to boil it down into simple terms, sick and healthy is huge. And when you throw a sibling's birth into the mix of that, that is an existential factor that is, for us, makes it very easy to just zero in on that and use that as the cause of that [inaudible 00:12:59]. And in turn, to go back to your question, Dina, in turn, that causes a lot more stress on the family because now there's a innate sibling rivalry that it's not solvable by an existential solution. I mean, my relationship with my sister only started getting better when I left for college at the age of 17, the better half of 17 too, I was almost 18 when that happened. And we have a lot to work on. There's 18 years, or rather 12 years of trauma to work on that, that we need to sort of unbuild and rebuild.

Dina Zuckerberg: Yeah, I think trauma is very real for people especially in the craniof