where have we failed to love the deaf community and what can we learn from them about how to view our world welcome to the beyond the lines podcast in a world where there are a few loud voices spreading division and hate we want you to know that there are more of us who want unity and love we are part of a community of people who love despite differences and listen to the stories of those who have been marginalized we love beyond the lines of differences so that our lives can be full of diversit
y we listen because we believe in human dignity for all people come listen with us and join a movement of people who are willing to love all people at all times today on the podcast we have two incredible guests and hailey and julia haley has been deaf her entire life and has faced some challenges because of that julia is her mother who has been her faithful advocate when hearing people choose not to listen we talk about the stereotypes that have been perpetuated in culture about the deaf commun
ity and we talk about some of the challenges that the deaf face in getting the services that they need we also get to hear some fantastic perspective from the bible about being deaf i can't wait for you to hear all this and more in the special episode of listening to the death well my name is jonathan miller i'm your designated listener today on the podcast and today we have some incredible people on the podcast i'm really really excited to learn more from them today we have haley who is deaf an
d her mother uh julia who's been with her her whole life and so there's so much we can learn from and that community and what it's like to um to be deaf and so thank you for being here thank you for being willing to share your story today of course i always want to help people understand the situation and what ableism means and i want to help people be more open-minded awesome thank you and i can't wait for people to hear about that we also have september here today she is our interpreter she's
amazing thank you for being here today september you're welcome great well um i've gotten to know you guys over the last a year or so uh maybe almost two years now and i've learned so much from you and i am so grateful that you god put you in my life and i can't wait for people to hear more about that um first off uh let's just i'm kind of i'm kind of the type of person who just dives right in are you ready to dive into this difficult topic i can't wait yes yes let's go let's do it awesome well
um first i'd like to understand your experience just a little bit better haley how long have you been without hearing and what caused that i became deaf when i was six days old and then ever since then i haven't had any hearing when i was a baby i got meningitis i had a lot of other problems too but that was the main cause of my deafness so it was when you're a baby you so you don't really remember ever having a hearing is that correct yeah my mom just told me when it happened when i was a baby
but i saw pictures you know when i was just like a newborn yeah i saw pictures from when i was in the hospital and i was sick i'm just so happy that i actually survived because most of the people in the hospital honestly didn't think i would live wow well we're glad you're here today with us i'm glad to have you here and it's incredible that you did survive thank you so much absolutely um how like i'm not surprised that you don't remember when you're a baby by the way like i don't remember when
i was a baby either so that was kind of a weird question for me that's okay um so my next question is kind of like our society is kind of built for people who have like hearing and seeing and and can have all these dif these abilities but often not a lot of thought is given to those who don't have certain functions what are some of your struggles that you deal with just on a daily basis that people who can hear just don't even think about um [Music] so i used to live in oregon and i can't rememb
er a lot of struggles there but most of my challenges have been in acting [Music] so i have used captions before through [Music] caption i've used captions and interpreters i was mainstreamed in school i don't remember a whole lot of problems though until i moved to arizona and then i did have some challenges here with the doctors and yeah i had some challenges with the doctor's offices as well as i'm trying to remember here [Music] in the actual theater world i do have challenges with that as f
ar as captioning before they used to have interpreters like at gammage but now they're not providing interpreters anymore so i have to like watch the stage and then watch the captions too so it's distracting [Music] but there's a lot more accommodations now that they have like actual kind of like glasses that you put on that you can see captions through like a clear screen almost that's really cool um but the accommodations don't always match but it's slowly gradually getting better gradually ve
ry interesting you mentioned that while you're in oregon right you didn't have as many troubles and then you moved here and it was it was difficult or or there was more issues or roadblocks in your way what why is there such a big difference between states i i didn't know about that [Music] so most of that my mom experienced because i was young so she can talk more about that but i was mainstreamed in school so a lot of the other hearing kids they kind of accepted me and understood i think my bi
ggest challenges are related to the doctors and the medicines so and we moved to oregon we lived here when she was was born and we actually i started researching because that's what i do um trying to find a place or program that would help her a lot of programs are like for the deaf or methodology focused so it was either like oralism like no sign language or only sign language and i was new to this whole thing i wanted something that would just approach my daughter instead of a methodology and
um there was a program in boston and there was a program in portland oregon and we chose to move up there and there was just a very inclusive community wow you know the school she was in had a deaf class but the people you know they did activities together the church interpreters i had other parents like hearing parents of deaf children and other deaf adults around and it just it was easier wow and i don't know if we just got lucky into where we were we just ended up in a good place yeah so it f
elt better because there was like a more of a community that understood and was that kind of gathered around you in oregon exactly i'm not really sure why i came here with big expectations um it's the fifth at the time anyway it was the fifth biggest city in the u.s arizona's gonna have everything and we got here and we couldn't find really community and we couldn't find the resources and church was completely different you know it was all kind of separated and it just was different it wasn't re
ally set up so much for that and that's phoenix tucson there's the arizona school for the deaf and it could be completely different there um i just know the phoenix area gotcha and our experience yeah do you like how connected you are you with people kind of across the u.s is this a you know is this kind of a hodgepodge of places where there are really great uh deaf resources or is it um you know or is it really hard to find it in certain places or what's that like honestly i'm not really sure a
bout like the whole us i know that washington dc is very inclusive there they have rochester institute for technology there for the deaf so that's where your data streamed in d.c [Music] but yes gallaudet was one of like the first big deaf schools i think they had the first stuff professor there as well i don't know all the information about their history though but i know that it kind of like all started there you know deaf culture here in the united states at least and then francis where yeah
yeah and francis where like sign language actually started and moved to the united states it was in france is that what she said yes oh yeah cool so asl is originally from france interesting i didn't know that because it's the abbreviation is american sign language isn't it i think what happened was there were two men from france they traveled together on a boat and while they were traveling they were teaching sign language um they were traveling with someone who was deaf and they were really st
ruggling so they traveled and while they were traveling they were teaching sign language interesting i didn't know that history and it's that's fascinating moving on to some kind of more more of your experience like it sounds like um you had some difficulty with like uh the medical profession but otherwise um you you were able to make good relationships in school you were able to you know do a lot with what people with hearing uh can do did you ever face um like stereotypes that people who didn'
t know you um believed about you or that any roadblocks you faced that just was just um yeah yeah there was one specific example it was like in 2018 it was the first time that we went to fan fusion it was like a comic-con in phoenix but a problem came up because he called us that we were hearing impaired but we were trying to tell him no we're deaf and we prefer to be called deaf but he was insistent that no we're not deaf we're hearing impaired like that man he had more right to label us so he
thought that that was the appropriate term even though we were saying no the appropriate term is deaf like you know like he just wasn't open-minded i guess yeah yeah it was yeah well yeah that was a situation where somebody who was hearing and um he had said something about haley being hearing impaired and i we explained that preferred to be called deaf and he explained that he would prefer to call her hearing impaired um it was like yeah he said because it is a medical condition and it can be f
ixed and so therefore it's not deaf it's hearing impaired and it was one of those where you finally just had to he wasn't open to hearing yeah and so you just kind of had to say because usually we try to educate it's about educating people people just don't know but sometimes people i like that too right you know so that happened and i know you talked about like people not expecting you to be able to read not expecting you to be able to do a lot of things because you're deaf i'm not my staff but
i know most people are shocked but people say that deaf people can only read up to a fourth grade reading level like that's it and that's not true wow that's not true at all [Music] so my mom always tries to challenge me to keep reading improve my reading level and i love to read that's great yeah i love to read too and that's a weird one that i would how does that have to do with hearing at all it doesn't make sense like where did where do you think that comes from do you have any idea why peo
ple think that i'm not really sure but i know that movies sometimes have given like a bag stigma you know deaf and dumb um a lot of like the old movies have portrayed deaf people as stupid baseball player oh i don't know about there's a baseball player that is deaf his name is dummy hoyt they called him dummy oh they labeled him as deaf and dumb they called him dummy hoy but he was actually really smart so most of us deaf people around here are smart hmm yeah that i i could see how that would be
a really painful thing to even just see a a person who is in baseball who's in the the light and uh for you know society to see and they they label him with something that is derogatory and mean spirited when it's not true at all yeah it's interesting though that back in the day they used to label it as deaf and dumb that was just normal oh it's just a normal phrase that people would say deaf and dumb you know 100 years ago way back when i don't know but now that's not appropriate i hope that p
eople don't say deaf and dumb i mean yeah i didn't know i didn't know that was something that people said back in like a few whatever amount of time it was but it shouldn't have ever been said would you mind talking a little bit about ableism uh right now and um how it's a system of prejudice and uh really nobody's talking about it that much in the as far as like the mainstream media or or anything like that what is your experience with with ableism and um has gone in your life and i know our li
steners really appreciate just hearing whatever you know and uh however way we can correct ourselves if we're not in that or how we can educate ourselves probably like my most like my biggest challenges is i mean my challenges with the medical field is probably my biggest challenge like the emergency room for example you can't just like automatically arrive and there's an interpreter there i mean they will provide an interpreter but most the time it's vrs which is a video relay service but it's
not always just readily available you know even for appointments like doctor's appointments um i always prefer an interpreter but if the interpreter cancels or they can't find one sometimes they're not willing to find another interpreter and with a video relay service sometimes the internet's bad or it's not accessible at that time i can see how these things like can be really scary if you're going to the emergency room you want to be able to tell them what's going on what's wrong but if you can
't or they don't have anybody who understands yes what do you do that was we i took her to the hospital once because she was having chest pain and we went in there and they um we needed she asked for a live interpreter um because that usually holds more weight than like me saying she needs it but if the actual person says and they didn't have one and they said you're gonna have to wait so they had her just sitting in the waiting room with chest pain um because there was an interpreter available
and i finally just took her and said okay and i just started driving and i called 9-1-1 and said we we're having she's having chest pain i can't get the hospital to to work with her and the fire department came and met us in the parking lot at food city and um and helped and worked with her and tried to see what was going on literally had to go drive and call 9-1-1 to get her the help she needed i went to the hospital again [Music] they said that there was like a limited amount of time for the i
nterpreters like a set amount of time so after 5 pm they don't provide interpreters this is like at a hospital where you stay like a behavioral health hospitals and i've heard horror stories of what happens to deaf individuals that go into a behavioral health situation really wow a horrible horrible and i know there was a one woman that sued um one particular hospital because they will do that we'll have give you an interpreter from you know nine to five and then we no longer provide services af
ter that and you've got somebody in in an emotional you know situation and i'm sorry you can no longer speak to anybody after five o'clock wow um and worse than that i mean i've heard about people being put in restraints um and and the deaf speak with their hands and you put them in restraints and they no longer have language i am trying to remember another situation too we went to a church event yeah it was a like a women's event and i was so excited to go but we had a problem with the interpre
ter there too [Music] but um the interpreter cancelled and my mom was willing to jump up and interpret the whole event for me [Music] can you imagine that she was willing to interpret it was karen kingsbury and we had asked for a interpreter and they said of course and then when we arrived they're like oh she can't they canceled we're sorry wow and i had to do it and i am not an interpreter you know tell us a little more about that actually what's the difference between somebody who can speak am
erican sign language and an interpreter like september it is different so like i always say i'm a mom who signs and i can do some asl um i have a good vocabulary so i'm a mom who signs but an interpreter no timber what do you how would you explain that okay haley said that she's okay if i speak so an interpreter has to focus on like different functions of sign language so we are hearing the english but at the same time we have to process it in our brain and translate it to sign language which as
haley mentioned is closer to french than english so the syntax and the grammar are different i often explain it like it's closer to spanish like how they flip their noun their verbs their adjectives kind of the sentences are backwards so we are translating it in our brain and then putting it out in a different language but at the same time we're still hearing the english that's being spoken so that is just like a totally different skill set than a person that can just sign you know yeah that ma
kes total sense actually you keep talking about the theater and i never i haven't asked you about it i would love to hear more like what do you do with your acting and what do you do with in the theater and um you know i would love to just hear about that part of you yeah yeah so before i moved to arizona we were looking for something to do that was um free because we didn't have something that we could afford yeah something we could afford and go out and do you know we had just moved to arizona
so we didn't have a lot of money so we were looking for something cheaper to do and i noticed a sign that said detour for scottsdale center of the arts and i was wondering what that was so we went there and i was fascinated and then the second time we went i wanted to join but there was a problem i was in high school so i couldn't fully involve myself in that yet we waited but we kept going to the shows and then in 2016 i graduated and in the summer i immediately started practicing with detour
i went straight there and i've been there ever since [Music] if anyone wants to go we do have a show coming up soon awesome oh the name of the show they're doing is the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee i don't know if i have that right that's a more recent show it's a long name and they're also doing once upon a mattress yeah but do you remember like your first time i'm not a member of the doctor i can't remember the exact dates for those upcoming shows but i can let everyone know yeah so
if anyone wants to see him i could put him in the show notes too if people want to go check it out i've been to one of your shows and that was really cool how did you feel the first time you went in to rehearsal i feel like they accepted me i felt included not just because i was deaf but there's lots of people that are in the show there's blind people there's lots of different disabilities that are included in detour so but i'm deaf so i felt accepted [Music] i was really nervous when i first st
arted though that people wouldn't understand my sign but then sam came and she knows sign language so so she pulled me right in and she taught other people to no sign so we just all connected and i've been like family since wow how long have you been a part of detour 2015 to so i guessed almost seven years seven years great that's awesome and amazing it's always important for where whoever you are whatever you have going on in your life that you find community and it sounds like detour is that f
or you in many ways [Music] yeah i'm always excited to go every thursday i'm excited for that amazing um moving on to kind of another question thank you for sharing that with us today that was amazing um love to hear about that and i hope people can go check out your show um i think it'd be really cool for them um i've recently personally uh kind of moving on transition i don't know how to transition but i'm just going to uh but i've recently discovered that my son um he's not neurotypical and s
o he has his own challenges to face that um you know neurotypical children might not have to face and my wife has spent countless hours just we just only known for about less than a year now uh just re researching and going through all these different assessments and doing all these different struggles just it's a struggle and often the system we've found is not built to be necessarily helpful um julia as a mother can you share about your experience as haley's mother what are some of the biggest
barriers that you have faced and difficulties that you have had to face in order to get healey what she needs and we've talked a little bit about the um the medical field but also socially and academically and all those different things what are the challenges that you've faced i think like when we thought talked about like academically and socially the first thing that actually came to my mind was spiritually oh yeah um because i was you know i was a new christian basically in 2002 and i wante
d her to be i wanted her to be involved with that with church and different things and as a deaf child deaf children don't learn i think it's called incidental learning like a hearing child will hear what's going on around them and they will learn stuff you have to be really mindful with a deaf child so i wanted her to have that around her i wanted her to have movies and tv shows and those kinds of things and the first thing i came up against was like christian dvds and christian shows and more
than any other dvd movies shows i would try to find christian dvds weren't captioned and that was really difficult i mean i would email i would you know now it's facebook or messenger i do things like that um but that was the hardest thing to find which was really heartbreaking because to me that was the most important thing was for you know as opposed to watching um mad max or or watching you know yeah something that so that was a problem um church events like haley already mentioned like they
didn't really seem to take seriously um sign language interpreters moving to arizona we had to really church shop and trying to find a church that was bible-based and had sign language interpreters was very difficult when we were in oregon again we had a she had a deaf youth group so that also matches this socially right she could go to her youth group it was def teen quest um youth for christ did it so she had her social group every week they got together and she was also learning about jesus a
nd it was a wonderful thing and when we moved to arizona they didn't have they don't have anything literally not one deaf youth group wow in the state of arizona so there's something right there you want your child to be around other people you want them to be able to and i couldn't we actually finally i ended up teaming with deaf teen question youth for christ and we started our own ministry here um and that's another long story but that was really really difficult and very hurtful because it's
like the people who i felt should have been christians christ followers should have been the ones the most supportive and the most helpful and and above all love others and that was where i was finding the least amount of support and help and that was that was the hardest thing for me to deal with academically i've heard a lot of horror stories we were really lucky again in oregon yeah it was there but you know trying to get what you need you know you do an individual iep i can't even think wha
t that stands for right now um individual education thank you my son's doing those two now okay yeah and trying to get what you what you need and as a parent you know your child and trying to get those needs met a lot of times they don't hear you with at least our experience with her being deaf the expectations were extremely low right and i'm like you know she can do this this and this you know i want support for these things and they're like well you know we found typically that you know as a
deaf child she doesn't really need and it was like that was a problem i'm the kind of person that researches i'm the kind of person when somebody tells me she can't or i can't um i don't do that very well i was really shy before her and then it was like wait a minute what um so you know and i would tell this to any parent with a child with a disability is know the law know about the ada know um your rights your child has um and that was really hard for me to be tell people doctor's offices no re
ally you need to get an interpreter and they'd be like well you know we don't usually do that and i'm like yeah you know i understand that but the ada says that you it's required for her to have an interpreter wow i had to do that for events you know having to tell people no you know she wants to come see this show she wants to go to this you know this women's event a christian woman's event she needs an interpreter and while the ada says um and having to explain that to people and that's it sho
uldn't have to be that way it sounds exhausting to have to do so much work just to get um to feel included to make sure that haley feels included that sounds like absolutely exhausting and having to be like i don't want to have to like you know i could feel this like i don't want to have to you know bring the law into i just want it to happen let's just like i don't want to force this to happen i don't want to have to do that that's not i can tell that's your heart yeah i just yeah and i never s
tart that way i never ever start with okay you know you have to kind of push it to where i explain now this is why you know it's really important for her to be involved she needs to know what's going on and i i will i always i've always done it that way but when it comes to push comes to shove and they you know it's like okay well here's the law and still being nice about it and i still assume that people just need to be educated now you're right that's not my personality yeah i don't want to ha
ve to do it that way but i i will if i have to very few people i think actually want to have to like strong arm others to be like no this is just something that we all need you know we want to be included we want to be you know and i and people aren't educated i have a question for you in that a second i just when you're talking about ieps like this is not just a deaf community thing either it's uh my wife is now part of a bunch of facebook groups that are people with disabilities and uh who hav
e ieps and um i think this uh she read the story of this one little girl who was in a wheelchair and had autism and um and they she was doing really well in school so they said well we don't need an iep anymore and and the mother's like no the reason she's doing good is because she has an iep you know why why take that away now and so it's it's a constant um a burden and it's a lot of work and i know you do it out of love and you love haley in it but it's exhausting too and um my wife and i have
just begun that and my wife's doing most of the work so i you know she's finding community though that is so smart too is to find other people that are have gone through it before you you know and and are going through it now that you can get that's been invaluable to me to ask people questions so good for her yeah doing that right because like you said you had to do so much research and educating yourself because nobody just says and here's the bullet list bullet points of all the things you c
an do and have and all the laws and all the things that you know you are entitled to and nobody does that yeah not really anyways some people like you who have been through it might do that for somebody and oh yeah for sure um and so i'll put your email in the show email in there and i'd be happy to yeah i'm just kidding along those lines of education um what are some of the haley julia what what are some of the best ways that people can start educating themselves on um what deaf people face um
and what you know people who just with disabilities face on a regular basis what are some ways that they can you know without having you to answer all their questions right here right now what are some ways that they can just start immersing themselves you can't know all things it's not possible but what are just some ways that people start wetting their toes and understanding a little bit more so the top of my list is is not a disability um i think that's a negative stigma um deaf people can do
anything just help help each other i love how you told me that before it's like just help each other um and i think of like when you say how do people educate yourself that's a big part of it right there educate yourself um i think for a lot of people we learned in 2020 and 2021 um all of a sudden like having the blinders off as far as racism and not i didn't know what i didn't know right and it's the same thing i think with ableism you know you don't know what you don't know and so being humbl
e um you know reading talking to people um having your mind open to to things i think is just that's how is huge um and then when you start knowing when you educate yourself educate the people around you when somebody calls somebody like the r word right i don't know if everyone knows what the r word is um you're looking at me blankly yeah i'm not sure um people will still use the word okay um it's like tell that person it's like no no you know that's not you know that's that's not a word we use
now and explain to them why um so speak up for other people for christians um read the bible see how jesus you know it i don't know when was it the 70s 80s i don't know i wasn't a christian until 2002. but the what would jesus do right what would jesus do you know when you're encountering people that are different than you differently able what would jesus do you know the bible is full of stories of what he did how the lord looks at people who are differently abled and jesus was always right th
ere just loving people and um it's kind of the same i mean it not kind of the same thing it's the same thing we're supposed to live like jesus there's a verse um ephesians oh boy 410 that talks about um we are all created we are all god's workmanship that means everybody and look at everybody that way we're all creative for good works there was a woman last night at a detour get together that said the most beautiful thing i've ever heard about this kind of situation when it's loving loving beyon
d the lines she said what she does she plays the flute and she said what she does is she closes her eyes and she closes her mind and she listens and opens up her heart and then she plays her music then she goes on and i just was like wow and that's what i would say to people it's just don't you don't know you know what i mean close get rid of that close your eyes just open your heart and love people i think that is the key to understanding the rest of humanity in general you know because the rea
lity is no one is exactly like you um even if they try to be because you're in a certain group or something and just opening up your heart and listening to their particular perspective and where they come from is is so powerful so thank you for sharing that and also one more thing uh julia gave me a ton of resources to put in the show notes so go check those out in your own self-education before we finish oh yes of course [Music] so before we finish i had two bible verses that i wanted to share
like stories [Music] [Music] is that okay yeah okay okay she's um exodus 411 is what she said was talking about then she said then the lord asked moses who makes a person's mouth who decides whether people speak or do not speak hear or do not hear see or do not see is it not i the lord uh i remember the doctor i'm going to summarize this other one it's um 31-37 jesus healed a deaf man so the gist of that story i don't want to read the whole thing this time but the gist of that story was jesus wa
s walking through town and he saw that there was a man he was deaf and he was struggling and he couldn't speak as well [Music] so jesus decided to help that man what was that word mom it's like a oh it's a i believe a greek or a latin word and it means that his mouth was opened [Music] so it means that jesus helped him and he was immediately able to hear and speak but it was an interesting story because in my perspective that whoever helped that person he also helped everyone in the area [Music]
okay i'm sorry the interpreter misunderstood so in the story jesus helped that man but he also helped everyone in the area a rabbi a judge and it wasn't like that jesus was like there was something wrong with deaf people in general it's not that he went in and said there's something wrong with deaf people jesus approached this one specific person and helped this specific person and then the rabbis tended to judge all deaf people and the pharisees and stuff but she wants that scripture to be und
erstood is it's not jesus feeling like deaf people need to be fixed it's about jesus helping this particular man smile yeah i just wanted to kind of clarify that story that jesus wasn't specifically saying deafness needs to be fixed but jesus in my opinion was helping that specific man and his experience yeah thank you for sharing that i i think those are really good things for us to think about um that i you know i'm not being deaf uh don't understand or don't see that perspective and i really
really appreciate you sharing that thank you so much yes of course anything that i can do to help everyone awesome well i love your heart haley thank you for being here today and thank you for everyone for being here in this podcast yes you're welcome and thank you everyone for watching us yeah and thank you jonathan for being willing and wanting to learn more and for this church for being willing and wanting to know more that's huge because not every person not every church is like that so that
's important to say that too well you're welcome and i'm glad to be a part of it and i'm glad to be a part of what god's doing so thank you um that is it for us today but uh before you the listener go uh please consider giving us a review on itunes or spotify or wherever wherever else you can figure out how to review us we believe strongly what we're doing here at beyond the lines and would love for people to join this movement of listeners who are willing to love beyond what we already understa
nd beyond the lines that we draw in the sand where we we were like that's too hard to understand we're gonna walk behind that line and we're gonna love people so by giving us a review you can help us uh spread the word and help people know about it also share this episode with or the whole podcast uh with your friends if they you think they can uh grow from it i would really appreciate that we all would um yeah we record here at central christian church in phoenix arizona our community here is p
ursuing the mantra of love beyond which calls us to empathize with people who are different and build bridges of peace if you're interested at all learning more about our church check us out at central az.com we have online services as well as a bunch of different locations in the phoenix metro area if you're local we'll see you next at next episode of beyond the lines until then start loving beyond your lines thank you everybody
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