We've Just Been Waiting For You

Cherese shares the story of her first encounter with this concept that would ultimately change her life - that someone was just waiting for her. Her situation moved from an impossible road block to the future they had hoped for, to the driving force that effected change for so many others. All because a group of people had unknowingly just been waiting for her.

Hey, friends, this is Cherese Lee and you're listening to the Just Waiting for You podcast. Whether the sun is shining where you are in life today or you're walking through a crappy storm and you really wish you got some rain boots - the power of a story is sometimes all you need for that perspective shift. Hang out with us for a few minutes and find out what happens when you realize that someone is just waiting for you.

It's a story. It's just a story. When our oldest had just turned two, we welcomed twin baby boys. Because that's super smart to have three babies in two years, especially with one of you in a residency program that has you working 100 hours a week (that was before the 80 hours rule). You've just moved to a town hugely pregnant where you know zero people.

This was a great idea. Super, super wonderful planning. When our little ones came into the world, one of them, Luke, had several medical issues when he was born and spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital for really that first year. Late into that first year, we found out through testing that Luke was profoundly deaf and we set out on the path to fit him for hearing aids, do follow-up visits, and our family was adjusting to this idea of having a child who is deaf.

No one in our family was deaf. This was all very new to us. So, I took Luke in for a follow-up visit after he'd been fitted for hearing aids. He was probably, I don't know, nine months old or so, sadly pretty late to be fitted for hearing aids, but we were at a huge university medical center. That's where my husband was training.

And so, the first person into the room at our audiology appointment that day was a student, and she was so sweet and full of excitement as students are. She asked if we had been to tour the deaf schools, yet in the area, there were two and I was like, Oh, you're adorable. This is a baby. And she said, you know, touring both of the schools is a great way to decide on your method of communication.

And I thought, oh, bless her heart, she didn't read the chart. She doesn't understand. She's a student I'm going to cut her some slack. And I said, "oh, I'm sorry, maybe you didn't see. But Luke is profoundly deaf. So, I mean, it's not like we need to go tour multiple schools. We’ll need to be doing sign language".

And she said, “oh, has no one told you deaf kids can talk?” and I was like, “I'm sorry, what?”. No, no one has told me. In my mind, my only reference for deaf people was Marlee Matlin, this gorgeous, completely talented actress who used a lot of sign language. My husband and I are both in health care, but that wasn't our specialty. We didn’t know.

And so, we scheduled tours of both the Sign Language School and the Listening and Spoken Language School. And I'll never forget we were actually touring them on my son's third birthday, my oldest son's third birthday. Of course, we've got the whole family in tow because what else are we going to do with the kiddos? And on the day that we saw the Listening and Spoken Language School, which back then we called oral schools, we went into a classroom and the entire classroom sang Happy Birthday to David.

And I remember looking at my husband as we were leaving. We're going down the stairs and I said, “we’re going to be okay, aren't we?” And he said, “we’re going to be better than okay”. You know, up until that point, it felt like my whole life was going to be about going before Luke and making sure that he felt a part of our world.

No one in our life spoke the language that my child was going to speak, and that was hard. And listen, guys, I had a plan, right? I was going to take care of this. I was going to always shop at the same grocery store. We were always going to go to the same cashier who I, of course, would have taught sign language to so that Luke would never feel left out when she asked how his day was or what he got to choose that day at the grocery store, I had these big plans right? On and on and on.

I was going to snowplow this situation and all of a sudden thinking that my child could speak the language that his family spoke. We really were going to be better than okay. That was one thing we could take off the list of worries, right? So, we enrolled Luke. Yes, I know he was a baby. They had this amazing infant program then he started in their first-ever toddler program.

And Luke was doing fantastic. He actually was speaking better than his twin brother who was hearing - just progressing really well. And it was time for Brandon my husband to finish up his training in Pittsburgh and it was always our dream to go back home. Brandon and I grew up together when we were 14, all our families were back home.

We just wanted to take our kids and raise them there. So, I started calling around to different school systems in the state to find out where would be the best option for Luke. Right? He was going to need support, people who would help him continue to grow in hearing and speaking. And we had some play on where we could live in the state of West Virginia, where we were from.

So, start calling around. And what I found was everything in West Virginia was sign language. Everything. And I remember I called this one deaf educator in particular. She was so kind on the phone, and she said, “well, we have this school where, you know, we will bus him, and we have sign language teachers there”. And I said, “oh, actually, Luke doesn't use sign language”.

And she said, “oh, that's okay, sweetie, we can teach him”. And I thought, “oh, well, that's very kind. But he actually doesn't need sign language”. And her response was, “oh, okay, well, I'll just tell the teacher not to sign to him”. And I thought, oh, here we go again. My whole thing with Luke was trying to make him always feel a part of wherever he was.

Right? And so now we're just going to purposefully not talk to him. And so, my poor, exhausted husband comes home from work that night, probably hadn't been home in a couple of days. And I said, “So I have bad news. We can't go back. Can't go back”. And the look on his face was like "what?" and I said, “we can't go back”.

There's nothing for Luke there. We know the other kids will thrive anywhere, but we can't go back. Okay? So that kind of set for a couple of days. And one night I'm laying in bed, and I start thinking, man, I wonder what other moms in West Virginia are laying in bed right now, wondering what to do for their kid, who's going to help them learn to talk or speak the language their family speaks?

And then I thought, oh, wow, I wonder if those moms even know to hope for that or know that that's a possibility. I didn't know. And I thought, wow, that's maybe even worse. No one's ever told them what their kids could do. So, then my poor exhausted husband comes home from work, and I proceed to tell him,

“Actually, I was just kidding. It's not that we can't go back. It's that we have to go back, and we have to take this with us. Someone has to tell these people what their kids are capable of, and someone has to help that become a reality”. Now. Sidebar that was not me, by the way.

I'm not a teacher. I am not a speech-language pathologist. I'm not an audiologist. I have no training in deaf education. I'm a nurse and I have zero idea what I'm doing other than I just really feel passionate that the state that I love and that is forever home to me is not providing this for its people. So, then my husband, I think, was maybe even more afraid.

I've got three kids. We have three kids who are very young. One at the time still had a lot of medical needs. And I'm going to take some program I know nothing about with me. Great, great idea! So, I start researching. I start going to conferences. Often with baby or babies, and so I start traveling, looking at other schools.

I'm bound and determined to figure this out. So I finally I find a woman who was amazing and started multiple schools in Saint Louis. And I told her my idea and she said, “okay, I'll help you figure out how to get started, but first you have to go and make sure they want this”. And I thought, what?

Of course, they would want this. Never ever occurred to me that people would want this. And she said, “you know, you don't want to spend your life, your energy, your money, any of that on something people don't want”. And I said, “okay, great. How do I do that? I don't even live there right now”. And she said, “you need to have kind of like a town hall meeting and you need to call people that would have a vested interest in this, the people that this would affect the most. You need to ask them to come to this meeting and just ask them if they want it, Cherese, before you go through all of this”.

And I thought, oh my gosh, I don't even like to call for pizza you guys, which back then you still had to call for pizza, y’all. You couldn't even order it in the app. There were no apps.

So, I Google and start looking for phone numbers and I thought the place to start are cochlear implant surgeons, right? These are people who are giving hearing to the deaf, to people who want to be able to hear. I'll start there. So, I cold-called, and I cannot put in capital letters enough how hard this was for me. I do not call people.

I'll talk to you all day long in person. I started cold calling cochlear implant surgeons' offices and I would ask for their audiologist, and I would say, “hey, my name is Cherese, I'm a mom, I live in Pittsburgh, yadda yadda. And I have this idea and I'm going to hold a meeting and I would like you to invite the surgeon you work for, and I would like you to come”.

“And by the way, do you know anyone else who this would matter to you? And if you do, can you give me their phone number?” I'm sure they didn't think I was a crazy person at all. So, I start down this list, and I invite audiologists. I invite neurotologists (which are the surgeons who do cochlear implants.) I get numbers for teachers of the deaf and early interventionists.

I just start calling everyone and when I talk to them, I say, oh, bring your friends. Anyone who works for deaf kids. And they all were really kind. No one ever committed to anything. I don't blame them. So, I travel to West Virginia. My parents, like I said, we're still living there. I use our credit card to fly this wonderful woman in from St. Louis who agreed to come for the meeting.

Y’all, I pick her up from the airport and I take her to TGI Fridays because I think that that's very fancy and what professional businesspeople would do. God bless my sweet little soul.

We go to T.G.I. Friday's and kind of go over the agenda for the night. And she says, “listen, here's how it's going to go. I'm going to show a video of the kids at our school, of them talking and kind of what this looks like, then I'm going to explain our program and go over kind of what a program like this is, and then the floor is yours”.

And I thought, oh, okay. And I said, “what if no one comes?” And she was like, “well, then there's your answer, right? There's your answer”. Okay. So, I drop her off at the hotel. My dad meets me there, it's his lunch hour and I realize that I need to pay for this woman's hotel room. And my dad reaches out of his pocket for his credit card, and he says, “let me be a part of this a little bit” and pays for her hotel room.

It was huge. I thought my parents probably thought it was crazy. They were definitely worried about my sanity before I ever even, you know, went down this path. And I asked the lady at the desk, I said, “I spoke to someone on the phone, and they said there was a room I could use for a meeting tonight. Can you show it to me?”

You guys, I thought, (oh, well, I'd gone to T.G.I Fridays for a business meeting.) but I thought that when you use a room in a hotel room, like when you say I want to have a meeting, that there would be like this beautiful conference table and all these chairs, and it would feel very official. Well, she takes me down the hall, we open the door, and it is a literal hotel room that just has no furniture in it - these yellow walls.

And I was like, “where are we going to sit?” And she's like, “oh, honey, I'll get you a folding table and some folding chairs”. Like, this is going to be amazing! So, we leave there. And my dad was just like me, and I think, hmm, I probably should have some sort of refreshments, right? So, I go to the grocery, and I get a fruit tray and a cheese tray. And this is my professional setup.

So, I head back that evening for this town hall meeting, and I start setting up, which basically consists of taking the lids off the plastic fruit tray and cheese tray in this hotel room on a folding table (definitely looks like a trap for something). So, one by one, people start to come in and by the time we're ready to start the meeting, there are not one but three neurologists and three cochlear implant surgeons.

There's audiologists. There's so many people that there are a couple of women standing in the doorway and there aren't enough chairs. And I thought, oh, okay, here we go. I introduce myself; I tell them my crazy idea. Gene talks a little bit about the school and what it looks like, and she shows the video The lights are out, the videos going on, on her laptop.

And at the end of the video, she turns the lights on, and she looks at me and gives me the nod. Floor is mine. And I look around at all of those faces, and I come back to the faces of the surgeons across from me at this folding table with no tablecloths and untouched fruit trays and cheese trays. And I say, “well, what do you think?”

Silence. And I'm thinking, what I think is I really would like to dig into that fruit tray. Continued silence. And then one of the surgeons pushes his chair back from the table, crosses his legs in his arms, and he says, “I think we've just been waiting for you”. And I think, oh, crap, I actually have to do this.

And honestly, he was right. Over the course of the next few years, I did meet all those moms who didn't know what to dream for, for their kid. Who didn't know this was a possibility. And all I had to do was just show up that night. I had no idea those people were waiting for me, but it turns out I was waiting for me too.

I was so tired of feeling helpless in this situation with Luke and feeling like my whole life would be a snowplow just to pave the way for him. And so my question to you today is, who is just waiting for you? Who is it? I mean, that day in the audiologist's office, who knew I was just waiting for a student who was really excited about what she did?

Someone out there today is just waiting for you to do exactly what you were just going to go about and do anyway,

Thanks for joining us. I hope you allow yourself to feel the things today and then have the courage to ask, “But what if it looks like this?”

Go forth and show up for life my friends. Someone is just waiting for you.