"Alright, are you ready?" an audiologist asks.

"I think ..." Kent begins, hesitant.

Then the audiologist turns on, for the first time, Kent's cochlear implant. "Can you hear anything?" she asks. Kent shakes her head. "Oh, yeah, I do hear a little bit. ... It sounds like aliens."

She smiles but still seems uncertain. There is no grand moment, no tears of joy, no cinematic swell. In fact, when Kent's mother, who is taking the video, talks, saying, "Daisy, I'm so proud of what you've done," her daughter still has trouble hearing her.

Jennie Antonakis stumbled upon the video as she was considering a cochlear implant for her son who, like Kent, had been diagnosed with profound hearing loss in one ear. Struck by Kent's vibrancy and honesty, Antonakis watched video after video. She reached out, and Kent replied right away. Over Zoom, Antonakis asked question after question.

The two became close and planned to meet in person last fall. Then, suddenly, Kent stopped replying. Antonakis later learned that she was filming "The Bachelor."

Watching it air, Antonakis has been amazed by Kent's "incredible vulnerability," she said. While someone else might have hidden their disability, Kent highlighted it. Antonakis and her 6-year-old son, Doni, who now has a cochlear implant, watched together as Kent explained her hearing loss to Graziadei.

"It takes a really special person to be that public about her journey and what it takes and what she's missing," Antonakis said. "That's why it's so important to me, because ..." Her voice caught. "I'm sorry; I'm getting emotional.

"Because she's paving the way for people like my son to be open about it."

Loving the spotlight

...continued

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