Taylor Swift: You Need To Meet This Fan Before She Loses Her Hearing

Taylor Swift has helped many young people reach for the stars. She’s met fans with cystic fibrosis and invited autistic children to her concerts, and now she has the opportunity to change another young life. 12-year-old East Maitland, Australia-resident Jorja Hope has received a diagnosis of bilateral inner-ear loss and is dealing with slowly deteriorating hearing. Jorja has turned to Taylor for comfort as doctors have spent many difficult months attempting to save her hearing. And who wouldn’t? Swift is amazing. “The thing about Jorja, she takes everything in stride,” her mother Mel, 34, told Refinery29. “When she found out the hearing loss was going to be permanent, she didn’t understand what the specialist was saying. We were riding in the car when I told her. She went quiet, and she had tears in her eyes. She said ‘I won’t be able to hear Taylor Swift sing.’ We had a laugh about it. And then the next day, she said, ‘Life goes on.’” The idea for the project came about when Jorja’s twin sister Chloe told her mother that it was great that Jorja got to see Swift in concert but, “Can you imagine what it’d be like if she got to meet up?” Mel warned Chloe that it would be pretty much impossible, but Chloe went ahead and made the Facebook page anyways. Jorja cried when the page went over 1,000 likes — she doesn’t let the girls use the Internet until she’s back from her job working for the Community Housing Provider — and the page now hovers just under 2,000. Jorja has taken heart from all the fellow hearing loss sufferers that have reached out as the page gets more attention. “I’d be meeting her for everybody that’s supporting me,” Mel says her daughter told her. Though Swift’s reps have yet to get in touch with the aptly named Hope family, it may only be a matter of time.