Lifestyle | Friendship and Language
In Life, I never completely understood how God puts us in a position to minister to others while being ministered to. He shows us his unconditional love through other people. I had always been quiet about my perception of the world, and when I was in college during my early twenties, I had a difficult time comprehending how to use the classroom experience in real-life scenarios.
I was very compelled when I had the opportunity to learn a language in college. How doing so would put me in a position to make a difference in someone’s life. The language I chose, after having a manic episode was sign language. The language of signing — is similar to how beautiful a drum player’s expression reflects the beat of his drum. In comparison sign language is a beat of a drum through hand movements with the same passionate facial expressions. Imagine powerful fingers and hands operating through the tambourine of being seen and not heard, yet understood.
My mom was the first person who sparked the joy of me learning a language as a child. When I was a kid, I was homeschooled by my mother from the age of two all the way to fifteen years old. I was very curious during these precious moments when my mom would ignite real-life experiences of learning in our basement classroom. At times I’d be so curious that I’d open up books to explore the wonders of this world and of signing. Because my Grannie had lost her hearing gradually at a young age which lead to her wearing hearing aids most of her life, it stuck with me when she told me — “I wish I had learned how to sign”. With a great big smile on her face, imagining how much clarity signing would give everyone instead of all the siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandbabies having to yell at her just to be heard. My Grannie instilled hope in my mom so strongly that there was a black and blue sign language book in my homeschool basement. The magical golden book of blue and black cover took me into a world of complete surrender to speaking out loud with my hands.
The beauty and the rhythm of hand movement through different swirls and twirls of fingers to face and such left me inspired to sign to music one day. I practiced the alphabet as a child feeling so excited when I could do each letter with my hands flowing quickly as my heartbeat without looking. What a beautiful language!
The curiosity of learning put me into a position when I went to community college. By then I already had my first manic episode. I had been so lost in my mind from my first one, at 21 years of age, that there was a point where my imaginary mind was certain that I had a twin that I had not yet met that would be able to sign and joke and laugh with me. During my mania of not being able to sleep, or eat — I’d pretend I was signing to someone while I was alone. In the midst of my mind slipping deeper into fear of the unknown this imaginative factory of pretending put me in bouts of hope that everything would be okay.
God works in mysterious ways. I was 22 years old when I took beginner sign language in college. In Colorado being predominantly caucasian, it was always exciting to see hints of diversity in the classroom. However, regardless of the demographics odds, my particular sign language class had an African American woman teaching it. She gracefully and thoroughly taught beginner sign language with such poise that my heart would sing while trying to capture her same slows than quick movement in our practice groups of spelling out words with our hands. This moment of flow and poise and joy and love for a language articulated through face gestures, mouthing partially or not at all, using sound (at times) and beautiful signs and finger(s) to hand to shaking of hands … firm gripping in the poetry of love to letting go to express a word, phrase or voice with hands was like a poetic heartbeat of the mystery of love to another. Like wow! What beauty and joy I felt signing.
I had a beautiful friend that I could practice sign language with named Keziah. She lived very close to my parents and school so I was able to stop by her house and practice signing words, spelling words like my name, and would work on different conversational skills. Keziah was a beautiful Ghanian American with such calming poise and joy. She was elegant in how she took care of her mother while her father was in Ghana ministering to those who had yet to know God.
Keziah told me how she fearlessly would go to small groups and practice signing with individuals from the deaf community in Colorado. There would be a facilitator leading the small group that would help the students practice signing with someone who was deaf. They were inclined to meet people of hearing and assist them by fulfilling their hope to someday become proficient in sign language. Due to her devotion, Keziah was an excellent teacher as she corrected me in the proficiency of articulating expression and balance.
When the semester ended my professor expressed her joy in working with the class and explained that she was retiring. My heart was glad for her and in awe of the profoundness of divine timing–only understood as God’s appointed timing. Her class helped me to become proficient in the alphabet and spelling out words including my name and in basic conversational sign language that I never knew would break barriers of being alone. God specifically had me in that sign language class with the most lovely African American professor for the right timing and purpose. God had a design that I had yet to understand.
I had the privilege and honor one summer to go to Italy. A few years had gone by since the sign language class and I was 25 years old and had transferred from community college to the University of Colorado Denver. I was in the Television and Film program. One morning I was inside a class focused on how the logistics of producing films and the process of pre-production. In this class, I had the honor to be presented with a presentation from a professor of photography about a trip that would be taking place after the spring semester. This summer trip would be a month-long explorative trip abroad experience in Italy while learning about the founding fathers of photography. I was sold on going. The prerequisite was to take a black and white photography class first. Afterward, I would get the chance to go to the country of vineyards and the heartbeat of Michaelangelo; Florence, Italy. The credit for taking black and white photography was my golden ticket.
The following spring semester I worked intentionally for that opportunity. I was able to not only complete the black and white darkroom course but also applied creatively to scholarships which gave me enough money for the trip. This helped with my financial expectation. I saved enough to purchase the flight tickets with my own money. God is so faithful because I had put in the work to reach my goals, he also blessed me beyond anything I could imagine.
While I was in Florence Italy I was with a group of wilden’ roommates. It had been at least three weeks into the photography program. I was so focused on the need to cut my synthetic box braids to shoulder length, and I had been wanting to break free from the group to do so. After one of my classes, which was taught by the husband who was a photography professor. I joyfully and hopefully broke free from the group — knowing my braids needed attention. As I traveled solo in Italy, with my long wayward synthetic braids blowing in the wind and in need to be chopped down for a shoulder-length look. I took it upon myself to find an Italian hair beauty supply store and buy a pair of hair scissors. As I navigated myself to this off-the-wall stoned store, rich with the history of travelers I could never grasp. I walked inside and with my broken nonexistent Italian words, I uttered in English {Lord please forgive me} that I needed hair scissors, kindly to the shop owner. As the owner of the shop showed me what was available I noticed that there was another black woman in a group that had approached me. She was deaf but could utter words. It appeared at first she was just asking about my hair but right away I was put into a position to be open to the hope of something else.
She signed to me with so much joy that I too was joyful! This solo friend of mine had turned out to be in the same boat as I was, just sick and tired of her group. She signed to me and told me that she wanted to shop and that she was happy to see me because… we got each other. She expressed her stress of being deaf as a black woman, she was on a whole nother level of experiencing or seeing and finding discrimination in the most hurtful ways. Through face and mouth and eye gestures, which I had yet to fully observe through the extent that she could. We went to the high-end stores which were near the glorious architectural Dome that basked in the sunlight during this Italian summer. She and I walked into the high-end store, after store, and then lastly walked into Louis Vuitton. While inside, my lovely friend walked in feeling proud and excited to buy an LV purse and I was put into position as her translator of sorts… still was rusty.
As she immediately picked up body language and movement she began to sign and use the vocabulary of disgust on how the Italian employees would position themselves as a defense from us to purchase a bag, that she had wanted to see. After exposing the store to be racist, we left with her acknowledging that the employees were awful.
The last shop of frustration was when we entered a pastry cafe full of abstract yet profound displays of mouth drooling assortments. These pastry assortments were so diverse it was like a “Little Princess” (the movie) feeling for me. As we looked around I became enamored in the frustration of being deaf, while inside a pastry shop. And as a black woman while everyone spoke instead of signing.
My broken translation to sign to English yet sucked at the Italian language too… the dynamic of everything put me in a position to see life in a world of complete backwardness. That the bible verse about asking and you shall receive was more like a how can and do I ask for what I need in the real world without judgment of the outcome. My beautiful deaf friend left the pastry store and taught me a new word and it wasn’t the type of hole that one would stumble on. And I knew what it was like to trip over the pot hole because my thick sandals ensured I did so at least 3x a day… those dang holes. As my friend and I walked out her experience put me in a state of complete learning yet unlearning. That being deaf is beautiful through language and power of intricate quick precise hand movement of poetic mystery to others who are of the hearing world. but it’s also considered as a disability to the world — when I felt most free to express myself with my hands as if it were a beautiful click of self-discovery.
Similar to my friend, I too had a disability but of having a mental illness. It was something I could keep silent about, as long as I took my meds and as long as I paid attention to mood swings and such through proper diet. In everything, my mind would drift. If I forgot to take my medication with the late nights at times being out. But yet I had something to disguise my disorder. Signing to a world that is ignorant to the deaf community … was a raw, obvious, and constant rejection of not being the same.
As my friend was mentally drained, and so was I, we walked away far from the cafe to sit down at an Italian restaurant that she expressed she would pay for dinner. I never knew what honor was until I found myself sitting before a princess as I was a princess. So we set there in peace.
Years later, basically to current time — it was December of 2021, so last month (as I write this in January 2022) I found myself in the mental hospital again after five years. While I was there and entered on my first sunset day. I was met by two young women, in their early 20s, who were sitting in the dining area of this mental hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Somehow my manic mind was not only inspired with connection but with seeing no RACE… it no longer was a barrier to me. In my new mental state, racial differences were not the focus that defined my identity. It could no longer become the divide between all humans in America — And the world.
We were all one messy intricate family that had been dealing with the pains of hate deceit, shame, and evil. We come from survivors of multitudes of the same story of surviving from the evilness when the mind is pure hate – rejecting love.
In the mental institutat, I was in front of two young black women from different backgrounds. The 20-year-old woman who was of American-Ghanian heritage later became a roommate of mine in the women’s mental unit. At this point of first meeting her, she and I connected signing the alphabet. As we were on this topic of sign language that miraculously was brought up by curiosity. Never knew this moment was in preparation.
When I had been in the mental hospital for a couple of days, an older man named David had shown me bible verses to review and who had put me on assignment to color unfinished coloring sheets he requested for me to complete which was a daunting task considering the details in the sheets were of animals clothed in tribal patterns of more shapes, twist, turns and obstacles that couldn’t be done with just 7 markers…
As I walked looking at who was in the hallway of the individual rooms which had at least 15 rooms separated by female and male… for obviously mental health reasons and boundary reasons. As I found David standing in the hallway, which is the same name as my youngest brother who was 12 years old at the time, this older man looked like my Grandpa (my Dad’s Dad). With zero teeth like him but with South African heritage, he was clearly mixed just enough to be the twin version of someone I trusted; my Grandpa.
David was standing in a hallway with a young man which I made a mental connection to how last night the nursing staff were preparing for his arrival and I heard them announce, “James would arrive soon”. As I was standing next to David the next day he introduced me to James but with the excitement of connecting good people.
James was so beyond excited to meet and see me. his eyes lit up and were so joyful as David explained to me that James was kind and a good person. It was like God gave me a friend! I was honored. By this time I was in my 30s it was five years after Italy and 8 years after sign-language class in college. Beholden after all those years, I found myself before James. A deaf kindred spirit.
James taught me, unconditional love. That knowing what I had gone through didn’t matter as much as being near someone with a similar soft spirit. I was sitting before a brother of like-minded perspectives and ideas that were so intentional of God. For James to be healing from a mental illness situation a few days after I was admitted… James was the number one companion years after my 1st manic episode at the age of 21 years old. Obsessed with the idea I’d be signing with someone of a like-minded heart full of love. I expressed to James in my sound mind of perspective that I feel like a poet similar to our biblical patriarch of David (spelling out his name and pointing to myself) and then I told James that I too felt like Queen Esther from the line of Judah chosen to be Queen as a jew in the midst of Hamen trying to destroy the legacy of God’s people. James gently and intentionally put his hand on his heart and then his hand on my shoulder deeply breathed in and out while nodding his head in a peaceful acknowledgment that going forward my worries and cares and uncertainties would be given to God.
That what will be in life will be like the song of the daughter asking her mother… what will she be?
The signing wasn’t the beauty it was the complete awareness my deaf friend had that he could see that heart of love in me. Before I would utter a word, he would already know that I was healing too.
After being discharged from the mental hospital and weeks after healing, I met a woman named Natasha at Denver Beacon, a church of profound believers in Denver, Colorado. She introduced herself to me during a woman’s group meet-up. Later, we met outside to go on a walk with coffee in hand at Wash Park. I told her of James and the profoundness of what he meant to me while in the mental hospital. Natasha told me dead straight in my eyes that she had thought wisely of sign language based on the question of, “How would we accommodate those in the deaf community?”. So that they could receive and perceive a message as a hearing person would. I acknowledged the truth in that.
Later on my own, I daydreamed of my professor at the community college of Aurora. That she came to mind. Retired for eight years at this point. But with such peace, I knew as James would tell me Breath!
And my thoughts drifted into knowing God would work it out. He always had and he always will work every single detail out.
