Lance Winter
WIMBERLEY — In 2025, Lee Coleé was shocked to find her hearing gone and now, after regaining it, she’s learning to navigate a new chapter.
Recalling the moment her world changed, Coleé said she knew something was wrong when ordinary sounds disappeared — the water running, toilet flushing and familiar background noise of everyday life — one morning.
At first, she wasn't alarmed. She had been battling allergies and infections in both ears and ear problems weren't new to her. Years spent singing in front of orchestras and big bands had already contributed to mild hearing loss.
She expected her ears to heal, but they didn't.
Afterwards, Coleé initially tried to keep anyone from knowing.
She continued coaching voice students by concentrating intensely on what she could see rather than what she could hear. For voice-over work, she relied on the sound waves displayed on her computer screen to guide her editing.
“I guess it worked because no one ever caught on that a deaf voice teacher and voice-over actress was seat-of-the-pants winging it,” she said.
Some clients later told her they were amazed by the quality of the work she produced during that period.
“I think I worked six times as hard to make sure my standards never slipped,” Coleé said, but behind the performance was fear.
After an initial visit to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist failed to resolve the problem, Coleé sought another opinion. A hearing test confirmed the extent of the loss and another ENT ordered a magnetic resonance imaging and a computed tomography scan.
The results brought another shock: Coleé had a brain aneurysm.
She cried in the doctor's office.
The aneurysm had damaged her left ear and nerves associated with hearing, she said, with the doctors noting that it may have been there for years. When her neurosurgeon showed her the small white spot on a screen, Coleé asked whether it was a boy or a girl. The doctor laughed and although the humor was real, so was the terror.
“I never dwelled on the aneurysm,” Coleé said. “I was terrified the rest of my life would be lived in silence.”
They also told her that removing it may impose a significant risk, so Coleé did what performers often do when reality becomes unbearable: She gave it a name — Annie Aneurysm.
Research eventually led her to cochlear implant surgery. Before the procedure, Coleé gathered close friends and family and listened as best she could to every song she had recorded during her career. It was, in some ways, a farewell.
“Everyone knew I was bidding farewell to the singer I was,” she said.
She wasn't, however, saying goodbye to being a performer.
Two days after cochlear implant surgery, despite severe vertigo, nausea and a bandaged head, Coleé had an audition. Unable to safely stand for much of the day, she stayed on the floor until it was time to get ready. She made it to the bathroom, put on makeup and a bathrobe and recorded the audition on her second take.
Her agent laughed when she saw it.
The project was ultimately canceled, but for Coleé, the audition demonstrated something more important: “I still saw myself as a performer.”
Although her hearing was able to be “recovered” through the cochlear implant, it did not restore what she once heard. Instead, Coleé had to teach her brain how to interpret an entirely different version of sound. For example, human speech, she said, doesn't sound human.
“I hear an alien in my head,” Coleé said.
She described it as static with an electronic voice emerging through it. Words came first, then occasional phrases. Depending on the acoustics of a room, complete sentences can still be difficult.
Music remains largely inaccessible. She can experience rhythm, but the technology does not reproduce singing and instruments in a way she recognizes as the music she once knew.
The adjustment requires patience.But so does accepting that some chapters are finished, she said.
Coleé eventually released her voice students, believing they deserved a teacher who could fully hear them. The decision brought financial worries along with the emotional loss, but, gradually, she began looking at her circumstances differently.
She couldn't be the singer she had been, nor could she be the 20- or 30-year-old version of herself she once was. What she could do was decide what came next.
“I can now be that quirky little grandma who bluntly tells you the truth about life,” she said.
This realization helped lead Coleé toward stand-up comedy and keynote speaking, including a program she calls “Mindset: The GPS of LIFE,” a three-step process focused on adapting to new circumstances while continuing to build a fulfilling life. Faith has also remained central to her recovery.
Coleé said she began recognizing that techniques she had spent years teaching students could be applied to her own trauma, grief and changed circumstances, which also exposed the gap between what people saw and what she was experiencing, as many called her brave, while, inside, she was anxious.
That contradiction became the foundation for “Are You Who You Say You Are?” a workshop series Coleé is bringing to Wimberley for people navigating unexpected transitions, self-doubt and the uncomfortable work of rebuilding a life when the old plan no longer applies.
Her workshops are designed for people facing their own disruptions — whether entering adulthood, losing a spouse, changing careers or struggling with self-doubt — with an emphasis on replacing the pursuit of outside approval with self-knowledge and service to others.
Bringing that message to Wimberley is also something of a homecoming.
Coleé has deep ties with the community through her work with the Wimberley Players and the students she coached over the years. She directed and performed in local productions, including a production of “1776” that she said opened the Playhouse on the Square.
Although she still considers herself a performer, Coleé said mentoring others may be closer to her true calling.
“It brings me enormous satisfaction to see my students thrive and be successful,” she said.
Despite entering a new era, her performing career hasn't disappeared. Coleé said she will be shooting a film in Austin. Television viewers may also recognize her from Season 29 of Food Network's “Worst Cooks in America.”
Now, she is experiencing a new normal built not around getting her old life back, but around making peace with the life she has now.
When asked what she would tell the woman who once gathered her family and friends to say goodbye to the singer she had been, Coleé returned to humor.
“Well, at least you don't have to memorize or remember song lyrics anymore,” she said, joking.
But behind the joke is the lesson she hopes to share in Wimberley: “I've come to terms with closing that chapter,” Coleé said. “I never want to be that person who lives in the past … Life is really good right now.”
The community workshop series, Are You Who You Say You Are?, will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20. The series will be held online and is free to attend. Attendees can register by emailing [email protected] with their name, phone number and preferred date. After the initial event, the workshop will continue on the third Friday of each month.
