Announcer:
Welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast presented by the National Federation of the Blind, the transformative membership and advocacy organization of blind Americans. Live the life you want.
Melissa Riccobono:
Hello and welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast. I am Melissa Riccobono and I am here with one of my favorite fathers, Anil Lewis. How are you, Anil?
Anil Lewis:
Look at that. You already setting the tone for the podcast. You're one of my favorite moms!
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, well, thank you! Thank you. Thank you.
Anil Lewis:
It is so good to be here. Well, I did wish you happy Mother's Day on Mother's Day, but...
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, you did. Thank you very much.
Anil Lewis:
This podcast is coming out later so happy belated to all of the moms out there that are listening to the podcast.
Melissa Riccobono:
And happy Father's Day to you, Anil, because we're going to have Father's Day at some point during, I don't know exactly when this one is coming out, because we always record a little before everything happens (Melissa and Anil laugh), but yeah.
Anil Lewis:
There you go. And happy Father's Day to all the other fathers. I don't want to just celebrate it just myself.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, no!
Anil Lewis:
I want to share it with other fathers. Yeah.
Melissa Riccobono:
And happy to all the mothers and happy also to all those who don't have biological children, but are fathers and mothers and mentors for children in your lives because that is super duper important. And I know sometimes the holiday itself is difficult. You miss parents that have gone. It can be very difficult for tons and tons of reasons.
And we do want to acknowledge that and say that we definitely see all those who maybe have some complicated feelings about these holidays, but we also do want to celebrate the blind fathers and mothers who are doing this work every day, raising children. And so we have two wonderful people that along with Anil and I, because I'm a mother, he's a father.
Anil Lewis:
And we're wonderful people, yeah (Anil and Deja laugh).
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah. Yeah. So Anil, do you want to introduce the first wonderful person?
Anil Lewis:
Oh, I'm going to introduce this wonderful person and I think we'll trade off a litle bit, but I've known both of these wonderful people for quite some time, but I would like to take the opportunity to introduce Ms. Deja Powell. Always been very vibrant, energetic, young lady, and I've always enjoyed the time I spent with her. So Deja, you want to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Deja Powell:
Sure. Yeah. First of all, I'm really excited to be here. I feel like this is a full circle moment for me because, I'm just going to put it out there. I'm 43-years-old and I just celebrated...
Anil Lewis:
Oh, you're just a baby (Deja laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah.
Deja Powell:
And I just celebrated my first official Mother's Day, which I'll get into more details about that later. And so this is just kind of a different path than I expected to take, but things happen how they're supposed to happen.
So I'm grateful to be here. I have done a lot of advocacy work in blindness and have worked with blind kids for a number of years and have been an auntie for a long time. So I've always kind of had that little bit of a motherly instinct in me.
I just love working with kids in general and getting to know them and understand them. And now I live in Salt Lake City with my family. My husband is in the military and he also works at the busiest emergency room here in Salt Lake City.
So he's very busy and I sometimes am kind of doing a lot on my own and I worried about that as a blind person. So I look forward to talking more about that. But thank you for the warm introduction, Anil. I feel very similar about you and your energy and I'm excited to be here.
Anil Lewis:
Nice. Congratulations to you and Lucas.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, absolutely. And I understand, Deja, because people know my husband also (chuckles), he doesn't work in an emergency room, but he travels a great deal for work. So especially when my kiddos were younger, it still has its difficulties now that they're older, but it's a lot different. And I have to say just a little bit easier in some ways now that they're older, but definitely as they were younger, I can absolutely relate to that feeling like, oh my gosh, it's just me and these kids and what do I do (laughs) and where do I get the energy?
So I get that. But let's not leave the father out of the equation. We have a father who I have known for a long time. He and I served on the board of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children together for a while. So he is not only a blind parent, but he like I has a blind child and I have two blind children and he is a wonderful advocate.
He is the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota. This is Corbb O'Connor. How are you, Corbb?
Corbb O'Connor:
Well, thank you, Melissa. I'm doing great. I'm at my happiest place on earth. I'm at the airport. One of the best parts of my job is getting to travel, but that does mean being away from Silas. But good news is that, so I live with him halftime. Halftime he's with his mom across town just a mile away. And so the weeks that he is with mom make it a little easier for me to do the traveling.
Melissa Riccobono:
Got it. So you also know though then how it is to be the only parent. And Anil, you also know this. So this is actually something we all have in common, but anyway. So should we start off maybe by having you...
Anil Lewis:
I didn't get a chance to brag on my kid.
Melissa Riccobono:
Well, okay. Yeah, you brag on your kid.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah.
Melissa Riccobono:
And then I'll brag on mine and then we'll get to (Deja laughs), yeah. How about that?
Anil Lewis:
We had a little bit to brag on yours. Anyway (laughs), this is the parent bragging competition. All right, let's get ready to rumble!
Melissa Riccobono:
Yay (Anil laughs)!
Anil Lewis:
I am the proud father of now a 28-year-old young man and I can relate to Corbb. Unfortunately, my wife and I, the relationship didn't last, but of course the parenting responsibilities did. And I believe that we were successful in co-parenting and I hope that Corbb is also going to be equally as successful in raising Silas. But Amari came up in the Federation.
I just remembered that that was at my space when I was really kind of growing in the organization. He would accompany me when I was serving as national representative to state conventions. He'd go, he'd come to me national conventions. As a matter of fact, his first national convention, he was two-years-old in Atlanta.
Melissa Riccobono:
Aww.
Anil Lewis:
And I had some Federationists that were tag teaming, babysitting him during the sessions that I wasn't able to really take him in hand. But I'm very proud of him. And I think that had it not been for the National Federation of Blind, I would not have been able to, one, gain the custody at the time. And then two, I don't think I would've had the confidence to really be. And I think I'm a pretty good parent. You guys have to ask Amari for that (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes. Well, that would be a great podcast someday, having kids of blind parents on. That'd be really, really cool. Joanne Gabias gave, actually, she's Joanne Williams now, but she gave one of my favorite convention speeches ever a few years ago when she talked about being a sighted daughter of blind parents. So maybe we do that someday. I need to brag too.
I have a 19-year-old, an almost 16-year-old and an almost 14-year-old. Fourteen year old Elizabeth is going to be starting college. College, oh my gosh (Anil laughs), high school. High school. Baltimore City College is the high school she got into. So that's why I said college because (laughs)... Anyway, Oriana, who is almost sixteen, she and I and Mark are embarking on a brand new journey this fall.
We are going to homeschool her, which I never thought was going to be on my bingo card, but for many, many reasons we decided that that would be the best course of action for her in the next couple of years for her junior and senior year of high school.
And she also knows that she has to get blindness skills training after she graduates high school and before she goes to college. So we've made that clear and so that's another part of the plan. And then Cynthia, our oldest is nineteen and taking a gap year trying to figure out exactly what she wants to do as far as making her career and her dreams as either a creative writer/filmmaker/storyteller.
There's so many things she wants to do and she's just trying to figure out how to make all those things happen. So that's been really fun. And speaking of national convention, our kids have been at the national convention as they were growing up as well.
And we have a little question here on our outline, "What's your favorite story or memory about your kids?" And I guess I would say very briefly that some of my favorite stories are actually from national conventions.
I remember Cynthia being little and loving to help us marshall. She loved to yell, "General session this way!" or whatever it was that we were yelling.
Anil Lewis:
Just yelling. That was the thing. Yeah, just yelling.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, the yelling. Exactly. Also, she was maybe a year and a half, not quite. And we were at a hotel in Dallas and there were stairs and I kept saying, she was in the backpack on my back and I kept saying, "Oh, we got to find the steps. Where are the steps?" And then I found them and I said, "Yay, there are the steps." And so then Mark and I tag teamed.
So Mark took her and he had her in the backpack and all of a sudden he got to the steps and she yells out, "Steps, steps (Melissa and Anil laugh)." He was like, "Why is she doing that? " I'm like, "Oh, because I taught her that, I guess, because I was so excited when I found the steps." And now I would say it's so fun watching Oriana and Elizabeth now that they are older and of course they're blind kids.
So having them find their own place in the National Federation of the Blind has been really cool. Oriana's place has become an NFB camp where she provides a lot of childcare for kids and really loves that. But she's also now on the board of the Maryland Association of Blind Students and she's been planning events with them and just helping her leadership skills expand.
And Elizabeth hasn't quite found her place yet, but she's a worker and she really has loved working in the presidential suite of all places. And so it's been really fun watching our kids come into their own as they grew up in the Federation. And Deja or Corbb, do you have a favorite story or a favorite memory that you'd like to share?
Corbb O'Connor:
I do. And one of the things I was planning to mention was actually that experience with Cynthia at the national convention, at the risk of sounding like, "Oh, I remember back when (Melissa laughs)." One of the things that encouraged me about being a blind parent was seeing Cynthia running down the aisle of national convention with a leash backpack on.
And it was you or Mark, some number of feet behind her, but seeing the energy that kids bring to our convention brings me such joy. And I will say as someone who didn't grow up around lots of little kids, I was nervous about lots of parts of being a blind parent, but seeing other blind parents out there and whether it was talking about how they were working with the hospital during the birthing process, Melissa, you and I had some good chats about that some eleven years ago, but also I think as I think about my kid, the thing that I love the most is getting the chance to teach him about new experiences.
I travel a lot for work and I love the story that his grandfather told me about when Silas and he were going through TSA at the airport and my dad said, "Oh, Silas, you'll need to put your cane on the belt with the bags." And Silas said, "No, I don't. It doesn't alarm and it doesn't collapse so I can take it with me (Melissa laughs)."
And my dad said, "You haven't seen self-advocacy until you've seen, I think at the time, a four or five-year-old tell a TSA agent how they should or should not screen his cane (Melissa laughs)."
Anil Lewis:
How about that?
Corbb O'Connor:
And for me, it was nothing that I had directly taught him, but clearly he had observed it with me and his mom and traveling and knowing that there were things that TSA could ask about. There were things that they could do to make sure that we're in a safe environment, but there were also plenty of procedures in place for how he could retain his independence as a blind kid traveling through the airport.
Melissa Riccobono:
I love that. Deja, how about you?
Deja Powell:
Yeah, so I have just recently adopted my little girl last summer, but I've had her off and on since she was one-year-old. And so she is used to seeing me with my cane. She's used to being around blind people. And I think that's been the funnest thing for me to watch is when they ask this question, the first thing that popped into my mind is the little skills.
And my daughter is sighted, so she is not blind, but the blindness skills she has picked up over the years always makes me smile when I see it. She is the first person that can tell you, "Oh, you need to go east down the street (Melissa laughs)."
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh I love that.
Deja Powell:
And then you turn right and then it's on the left. She is so good at giving directions to people and she's nine-years-old and people will look at her like, "How do you know north, east, south, and west?" And well, her mom was an orientation and mobility instructor (chuckles). So, she's gotten really good at being able to give people directions and remember where things are.
She's the first person in our group to be able to tell us where we parked in a parking lot at a grocery store. She's just very, very in tune with that. I think it's because that's something that I have always demonstrated in front of her and she didn't realize she can pick up. She is also a world renowned Uber rider at this point. She knows all the rules. She knows how to use the app.
She knows what to say to the driver when she gets in. We've taken a lot of Uber rides together and it's funny because she'll say things like, "Do you know that my friend has never been in an Uber before?" It's kind of this strange thing for... I don't think she realizes that that's not kind of a normal thing for most kids.
And so that's been really fun watching her kind of pick up on things that you might not pick up if you didn't have a blind parent around. And it's really fun to see that and her interactions with people with disabilities or mobility devices or something like that and how it kind of just doesn't phase her much at this point.
I see other kids' reactions. Her friends will say, "Why does your mom have that?" And she thinks it's such a silly question. To her, it's like, well, she's blind and that's how she gets around. And she's kind of annoyed when they ask (chuckles).
She's like, "It's not that big of a deal. Why are you asking this question?" But it's been fun to see her pick up on those things. I know it's because she's been around other people who have to find alternative ways to do things. And so therefore she's picked up on a lot of those techniques, which I love.
Corbb O'Connor:
You know what's fun about that, Deja too, is that it's so often I feel like it's such a mixed experience where I had the chance one day, this felt really good as a blind parent when there were a couple of parents, Silas's friends that couldn't make it to school on time for pickup.
And I said, "Hey, we're going back to my house. Do you want to just pick your kid up from my house?" And that friend of Silas's was so excited that we were going to take the bus home (Deja chuckles). We've never been on the bus.
Melissa Riccobono:
Aww.
Corbb O'Connor:
And Silas is kindergarten, Silas saying, "Can't we take an Uber (Deja and Melissa laugh)?"
Anil Lewis:
There's so many experiences our kids have had as a result of our blindness and our involvement with the Federation that many of their peers have not. So Deja, in your description, you've been parenting, Ava, I mean, you're saying this is your first Mother's Day, but you've been parenting her for quite some time now. How long have you been parenting her?
Deja Powell:
So she's nine-years-old. She just turned, well, she's about to be ten in August. So we actually adopted her four days before her ninth birthday, which was kind of fun. We almost got a court date on her birthday, but it got moved, that just happened to be that way.
Anil Lewis:
Lucky for her, she gets birthday gifts and adoption gifts. That's good for her. She planned it that way.
Deja Powell:
But moved early. So she has her own special adoption day and then she has her birthday that we get to celebrate. So that's really fun. But we first picked her up. She's from Louisiana and at the time me and my husband were living in either Utah or Washington State and she is my husband's niece.
We were aunt and uncle for many, many years, but she would come and spend every summer with us because my husband and I kind of had a feeling based on family circumstances that she may end up with us. So we wanted to make sure she knew us, she felt safe and comfortable around us.
And so that's why we kind of got her off and on for about seven years. And then she came and lived with us permanently when we lived in Seattle on an emergency basis and has never left since.
And so it has been a very up and down journey for sure. She has a lot of stuff in her past that she's working through and that we're trying to help her work through.
But it's been nice in the sense that me and my husband had that perspective to say, "Hey, this might happen down the road and we want her to feel comfortable and safe with us." So off and on we have fulfilled that parent role over the years.
Anil Lewis:
That's very nice. I mean, she's blessed to have you because I know how much you have wanted to be a parent.
Deja Powell:
Yeah, I have.
I think that's wonderful, but that also explains to me, as we were talking earlier, why she's already acquired your fashion sense (Deja and Melissa laugh) and all those things. Yeah. Very nice.
Yeah. I was just going to say, it's funny because she's a nine-year-old kind of acting like a teenager already (Melissa laughs). And she'll see me come out and say, "Oh, what are you wearing? Are you going to wear that outside (Melissa laughs)?"
Anil Lewis:
That's your child (laughs).
Deja Powell:
And then the next day she's in my closet searching for my clothes and my shoes. And I'm like, "If I'm so unfashionable, why are you always in my closet?" Type of situation. And I hear that's very normal...
Melissa Riccobono:
Very.
Deja Powell:
With little girls. But yeah, I never know where any of my high heels are. They're always in her room in her closet. She takes some, wears them around the house constantly. And so that definitely got passed along at some point (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Well, she and Oriana should meet because Oriana is my fashion child, much more fashion conscious than I am. I like to look nice, but she kind of takes it to a whole new level.
Deja Powell:
Yes!
Melissa Riccobono:
And I've been told that she's very good at it because when you want to trust a person and I'm like, "Are you sure?" And people that I trust fashion wise are like, "Oh no, no, no. She's right on. She does a really nice job."
Deja Powell:
That's awesome.
Melissa Riccobono:
So they should meet sometime. Elizabeth, no, Elizabeth has no interest (Deja and Melisss laugh) and Cynthia's kind of somewhere in between. Anyway, we are having a great time, but we do need to pause for a message. So let's do that and then we'll come back and continue this discussion. You're listening to The Nation's Blind Podcast.
Message:
Make a difference with the National Federation of the Blind's Keep NFB Advancing Give 25 campaign. Each year, thousands of Federation members and friends contribute to support blind people, but we still need your help to fund our programs in 2026 and beyond. When you give 25 dollars between May 15 and July 7, you're entered into the "Keep NFB Advancing" drawing.
Each 25 dollars increment is a chance to win. Your support helps us continue to build a network that advances the lives of all blind people across America. You could win prizes like round trip transportation for two to the 2027 NFB National Convention, hotel accommodations, registration, banquet ticket, or 2,000 dollars cash. And you can double your dollars up to 25,000 dollars thanks to a gift from Aira, the visual interpreting service.
What a chance to win a BrailleNote Evolve from HumanWare? Become a Federation connector. Ask friends and family to contribute before national convention and indicate that you prompted their giving. The Give 25 Drive supports the Kenneth Jernigan Fund, Sun Fund, tenBroek Memorial Fund, and the White Cane Fund.
You can choose a fund when you donate. To enter, visit nfb.org/give25donate. That's nfb.org/give25 donate. Call 410-659-9314, extension 2430, or send a check to National Federation of the Blind and mention #Give25 and the fund in the memo. The winner will be announced July 8, 2026. Thank you for your generosity.
Melissa Riccobono:
All right, and we are back. So let's keep talking about these great things. The next question I have here is what is your favorite part about being a mom or dad? Corbb, do you want to start us out?
Corbb O'Connor:
I think the thing that I love to watch is you were talking about the fashion sense and I think for Silas similarly and the creativity that he brings and the fun connections that he brings into the world. I think at the beginning I was very much wanting to be the fact-based dad. Maybe it's because it's just my personality to be so focused on the accuracy.
And my dad gave me a suggestion at one point where Silas pointed out something on the street said, "Oh, those are the old silos they used to use for storing oil and gas." My dad said, "I'm pretty sure they stored grain in Minneapolis after all (Anil laughs)." And it's like, "No, no, that used to be ... " And so instead of getting into an argument to just be like, "Wow, and what do you think they did at that time? How do you think that worked?"
And going down a little bit of that imaginative world is something that's a stretch for me, but a good stretch for me and one that I really enjoy at one of his school events from the Waldorf School, one of the retiring teachers gave a presentation. I remember one of the lines really sticking with me, which was the point of growing up is to be a kid. It's not to grow up.
Anil Lewis:
How about that.
Corbb O'Connor:
And get older. Nice. And so to really focus on what is it that we get to be in this world of make believe and this world of knowing just enough to be really dangerous, but be able to be so creative in the process. And so to be able to just really lean into that are the things that I've found that I enjoy in addition to, of course, the surprise morning cuddles before we get ready for school.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, I wish my kids still cuddle (laughs). Mine don't usually anymore. I miss that a lot. How about you, Deja?
Deja Powell:
Yeah. So I think the best thing about motherhood in my opinion so far has been watching your child grow and change and develop into the person that they are. I think that has been something that's been really fun and hard sometimes, I'm not going to lie, watching them kind of learn the hard lessons watch, but also watching them learn things that work for them and things that they're interested in.
And that has just been such a fun part of parenting for me. Someone once told me that parenting sometimes feels like you're sitting on the floor and you're looking up at somebody doing a cross stitch and if you've ever seen a cross stitch or heard what a cross stitch looks like, it makes this beautiful picture out of string at the top. But on the underside of a cross stitch, it looks like a hot mess.
It just looks like a bunch of string everywhere and it looks messy. And I for the longest time was only looking at things from that perspective, like all the things I'm doing wrong, all the things that I am messing up on all the time and it just looked like this hot mess and being able to stand up and look at the front side of the image and see that you're actually creating something that looks like something beautiful has been a really good kind of metaphor for my parenting and has really helped me kind of step back and see that maybe what we're doing is taking effect.
It just sometimes feels as a parent that it's messy. And I don't think that's any different for a sighted parent either. I think we all as parents feel like we might be messing our kid up or we might be making too many mistakes or whatever.
At least that's been my journey through it. It's like, "Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done this. I should have responded differently." But being able to see how our relationship has developed over time and how we're now able to communicate some of that stuff and how I can tell in those moments as a parent that what I'm doing is working or not working and not beat myself up for it but find an alternative way to do it. It's kind of very similar to blindness in the sense that we have to sometimes find different ways...
Anil Lewis:
Figure it out...
Deja Powell:
To do things. And I have to do that a lot with my daughter because even though we're similar in a lot of ways, we are also really, really different in a lot of ways. And so I realize she is not going to be a clean, organized person like I am.
And no matter how many systems I have in place, items are not going to be put where they're supposed to be put and I have to let that go and just appreciate where she is and figure out a way to do things differently. And I think that's been the funnest part of parenting for me is just watching her turn into the person that she is and being okay with that.
Anil Lewis:
And don't give up hope because you're planting those seeds. She might flip in her teens and be the organized person.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes! You never know.
Deja Powell:
Yeah, yeah.
Corbb O'Connor:
Deja, it reminds me of, I'm a member of the Mankind Project. And one of the definitions that we often talk about is we say that "Power is giving up the control that I think I have to reveal a vulnerable truth." And I think it strikes me so strongly about what you're saying, that it's about saying that we have this vulnerable truth of "I'm frustrated by this mess in your room and that makes me anxious" and less of the control that, well, "I can help you to be organized so that I'm less anxious." I think it forces me on a daily basis to shift that mindset because my kiddo and I are so different in so many fun and frustrating ways.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah. And I would echo that. That's been my joy being a parent too because kids just see the world in a different way. I remember one morning I was just so frustrated, got a little late start, Amari just wasn't cooperating and we're running late and I got to do all this and I'm rushing and he's doing everything else, but what I need him to do and where he finally got to the door, we're finally getting out, we step out on the patio and he says, "Daddy, wait." And I'm like, "What (Melissa and Anil laugh)?!" And he says, "Listen to the birds."
Melissa Riccobono:
Aww.
Corbb O'Connor:
Oh man (laughs)!
Anil Lewis:
It changed my whole day. I was like, wow. Yeah. And they look at the world in a way that makes it fresh and living in the world that I live dealing with advocacy issues. And sometimes you're predisposed to be a little cynical about things and always looking at what could potentially be the worst case scenario around things. And just having that new innocent perspective was really helpful.
Melissa Riccobono:
I love what all of you have said and I just want to take it a little bit further and not only is it making sure being gentle on ourselves when we don't feel like we're doing enough, but also just realizing this is our kids' journey, this isn't ours. I've already grown up. I've already done the homework. I've already done the projects.
Anil Lewis:
(Laughs) Wait, I hope people think I have too (Deja laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
You have. You have. And so even when it's hard, even when I wish I could do all the hard things for them, I know I can't and I also know I have to just step back and let them be themselves.
Let them make those mistakes. Let them do the things that they feel they have to do because they're people. And it's also a lot about trusting my own heart, taking Oriana out of school. There was a lot of sleepless nights. Is this really the right thing? Is this really the right thing?
And then realizing, you know what? Every other time that you've followed your heart and not necessarily your head and just known from instinct what it is that your child needs, you've pretty much always been right. And so, okay, let's take this leap of faith. Let's do this.
And I love watching them become what they're going to become, but I also love that still underneath there, there's still that little child. So just a really quick story about Cynthia. She went on a trip to Massachusetts with one of her friends a year or so ago and she came back and she was doing her laundry and she was doing it very late at night and our washer and dryer are on our second floor outside our bedroom.
So I wake up around 10:00 and I hear clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk in the dryer. And I'm like, "What in the world?" And I just rolled back over.
Well, Mark wakes up, he can't stand it. He goes and turns off the dryer, just turns it off, doesn't look in it, just turns it off, goes back to bed. Cynthia comes down, realizes her clothes are still wet, turns back on the dryer. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk (Deja laughs).
So I finally go and I look in the dryer and lo and behold, what's going clunk, clunk, clunk? Well, it's all the rocks and seashells that Cynthia (Deja laughs) collected from the beach in Massachusetts, put in her pocket, and forgot to take out. And it was like, okay, number one, two of you, why couldn't you, either of you have looked and made it stop going clunk, clunk, clunk?
But at the same time, oh my gosh, she's still in there. That little girl that has always collected rocks, seashells, pencil caps, whatever. You never knew it was going to be in Cynthia's pockets as a little girl.
And it almost brought me to tears in some ways, just like, oh my gosh, so much has changed, but she's still in there. And I love finding those little glimmers of the more things change the more they stay the same.
Anil Lewis:
What I love most about all of these stories is they are not blindness stories.
Melissa Riccobono:
No. No, they're just, yeah.
Anil Lewis:
And I love that we can get to a space where parenting is parenting. Yeah, we have to do some things differently, but I think that's really a good takeaway for this one. And Melissa I think you have an article you want to reference from the Monitor from Bruce Sexton that kind of makes this point.
Melissa Riccobono:
Bruce Sexton is a blind father. He's a disability rights advocate and he's a strategist and he does all sorts of different things, but he had an article in the Braille Monitor for Father's Day and he said, "I parent the way any father does through love, through effort, through showing up even when it's hard. My blindness doesn't change that. It changes the way I do some things, sure.
It forces me to problem solve in ways most parents don't have to, but it does not shift the weight of responsibility from me onto them. My children do not carry me. They walk beside me and if the world wants to keep telling stories about us, let them, but let it be this one." I just, so beautiful. Do either of you have any thoughts, Deja or Corbb about this quote?
Deja Powell:
Yeah. I think for me as a parent, I think one of the biggest things that has been a realization for me is I honestly thought the blindness part would be a bigger deal in my parenting. And not saying that I don't have my struggles and I don't have moments where I'm trying to figure out how to do this as a blind person because I certainly have those moments regularly, but I have found that the blindness part has not been my biggest challenge.
It's being a parent and it's been talking to other parents who aren't blind or are blind either way. It doesn't really matter. It seems that we're kind of all trudging in the same waters and we're all kind of trying to take on that responsibility of a parent. And I think that one of the things that stood out to me in that quote was the part about my blindness is not going to be something that my child needs to take on or to be able to take care of me.
I think it was kind of the direction that it was face pointing. And that's always been something that's been a priority for me as a parent is wanting my daughter to know that guess what? I am blind, but I'm going to be there. I'm going to show up at all your performances. My daughter is a competitive dancer now and we're in the middle of competition season.
And I can tell you that as a blind parent, there may be nothing in the world more stressful to me than trying to navigate a dance competition with the music and the kids everywhere and trying to find your spot to the auditorium and then trying to make it backstage to help them change their costume.
The anxiety level I get is through the roof. But the thing is, is I've had to find ways to deal with that on my own and let my daughter know that yes, I'm blind, but I'm going to be back there.
I'm going to be helping her change her costume. I'm going to be out in the audience watching her dance every single routine. And I think Anil, you mentioned this too. It's about showing up.
It's about showing up for our kids and showing them that the blindness aspect, that's not going to change the fact that I am your parent, that I am going to be there through the good and the bad and the blindness factor, it just becomes so small to them when you do show up in those ways, no matter how you have to show up.
Anil Lewis:
Well said.
Corbb O'Connor:
Yeah. Deja, for me, I always bike road as a kid a lot and clearly that's genetic because Silas loves it as well. Fun enough, his grandparents actually restored my old bike and gave it to him as a present one year. So it's really bringing back memories. But I think for me, the hardest part was, how am I going to go biking with him? At the early days, it's easy enough to walk beside him, but once he gets going and now he's eleven.
And what I think is striking to me is that there was another parent who offered to go biking with him and his kiddo and they had a great time, but Silas told me the other day that he enjoys going together even if all he's doing is riding really slowly next to me while I'm walking. He said, "I just want to talk."
Anil Lewis:
Nice.
Corbb O'Connor:
And for him, whether it's, he does love long walks too, but I think it's also, for me, it's not about whether I can actually be on a bicycle next to him. We could probably do a tandem, and maybe he could drive it, but I don't feel like that's a position that I need to put him in, especially because really for him it's about just being on his bike and being out together exploring.
And even if he's just walking with the bike or he's biking really slowly, that we're together is the part that he's talking about and remembering.
Anil Lewis:
Nice. I love the way you just said that in considering a tandem that's not a position you want to put him in. I think a lot of people don't see it that way. Of course, society, of course, sometimes looks at our kids as taking care of us, but I think it's also important to recognize that there's a responsibility that comes with parenting.
And I guess I'm just highlighting it that resonated with me that you recognized that it wasn't a matter of an accommodation. It was a matter of you don't want your son to be in a situation where he is somewhat responsible for your safety. That was an interesting kind of interpretation of that particular scenario that I thought was really powerful.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, no, I agree. And I love how both of you talk, or at least you, Corbb, talk about another parent who steps in because I do think all parents need a village. I would assume, Deja, that some of your dance experiences, there are probably parents that feel, even if they can see, equally as lost.
Deja Powell:
Yes!
Melissa Riccobono:
Equally as anxious. And so I hope that you've been able to find some of those parents or that parents that are really confident and have been to different schools or different places are willing to help in a nice, genuine way and not a, "Oh, you poor thing way," but more of a, "Oh, hey, I'm going backstage. Would you like to walk with me? It's over here, it's to the right," or whatever it is.
And I have found that having blind parent friends has been so important because they're the ones that can help me with those practical solutions. "Okay, now my child is walking. What do I do? How do I keep track of my child?" Okay, luckily this hasn't happened, but my child wants a driver's license. "What do I do? How do I find people to help them drive?" Whatever it is.
Then my sighted friends, they're the ones that always give me the reality check in the best way because so often it's so easy to feel that everything your child does must be because you're a blind parent.
My child went through a phase where she was very sneaky. She was sneaking food and cookies and I would catch her and oh, and I just thought," Oh my gosh, it must be because I'm blind and why is she taking advantage of me in such a way?"
Anil Lewis:
She's a kid.
Melissa Riccobono:
Woe is me. And then my friend Alex, who has sighted kids and who is completely sighted, her husband's completely sighted, it's like, "Oh, my kids, they just keep sneaking these cookies and I don't know what I'm doing wrong."
Anil Lewis:
That's what they do.
Melissa Riccobono:
And it was this huge light bulb moment of, "Oh my gosh, this has nothing to do with blindness. This has to do with being a parent." And so I love the thought of that village and I've always fallen back on that even with things like daycare, like helping my kids learn to write their letters.
Of course, I was able to help the little ones that were blind write in Braille and I was able to help all of them with their reading because either Cynthia used print and I used Braille or the girls both and I both use Braille or they use print because they're dual media learners. But as far as the handwriting, the cutting on the lines, I was like, you know what? That's where I ask daycare.
They went to an in-home daycare. I said, "Could you help work with them on this? This is something I'm not good at. Handwriting, could you just work with them on this? I can't see their handwriting." I wish more in society all of us had more of that village because I look at when I was growing up and all the moms on the street where I lived, very few of them worked.
They were all kind of in it together raising all their wild (laughs) children and the stories that I hear and yet all of us felt safe because there was not just one house we could go to. There were many houses and there were many other kids and we really had a village. I wish there was more of that for both blind and sighted parents.
Anil Lewis:
We have a little bit of time left. Want to try to get in two quick things. So we're going to put this as the rapid fire round. Do you guys have advice that you would give to a parent, someone who's getting ready to be a parent? What's your quick advice?
Deja Powell:
This is Deja. My quick advice would be don't put so much pressure on yourself. I think particularly as blind people, we feel the need to do everything independently, to show people that we can do stuff, to prove something to the world. And I went into motherhood as like, I have to prove that a blind person can be a good mom.
And that's too much of a load to bear, quite frankly. And so it goes into a lot of what Melissa was saying too, is reach out for help. It's okay. And it's okay to make mistakes and just try not to put so much pressure on yourself to be the perfect blind parent because I don't know that that exists and it's too much of a burden to bear.
Anil Lewis:
That's good. Cobb?
Corbb O'Connor:
Agree with you entirely on that one, Deja. The thing that helped me a lot was my friend CJ Fish and I would go to the blind parents meeting at national convention long before either of us were blind parents and just being in the room with other blind parents and we didn't have specific questions, but just observing what are some of the things that other parents are doing sometimes things that we would then sort of snicker to ourselves about and go, "I hope I don't do that."
And we did (Melissa laughs). But just to be around some of those folks and some of the questions that they had and think about before Silas was even in utero, I had some ideas about how we would handle school homework because I was around blind parents who were having those conversations with their seven to 10-year-olds and just being able to feel comfortable and to get to know a community like Deja was mentioning was really helpful.
And I would also say that we as an organization many years ago put out a publication that's as relevant today as it was then about parenting without sight. And there are just some absolutely beautiful and touching stories in there.
I won't spoil the ending for you, but the one from Gary Wunder about teaching his daughter to drive and negotiate her first car, those are some of the most touching experiences and just having both, not just the practical but also the what will life look like for me as a parent, conversations I found really encouraging.
Anil Lewis:
Very nice. How about you, Melissa?
Melissa Riccobono:
I have two quick ones and the first one is one that everybody says, but it is so true. Enjoy what is. Enjoy the now because the now becomes later way more quickly than you think and kids change, things change so quickly. And before you know it, that little girl that asks you to sleep in bed with her every single night and you think, "Oh my gosh, I just want to go to bed in my own bed just once this week."
And I don't remember the last time she's asked me to lay with her and I miss that now. And you don't think you will and I get that, but try (laughs) just try and know that every season will pass.
And the best thing is if you feel like you messed up today, you know what there's always tomorrow and you can always be vulnerable and you can always share in a way that your child can understand and say, "You know what? I didn't do so well yesterday. Let's start over."
The other thing I would say very quickly is making sure that if you think you'd like to be a parent and if you are young and listening to this, or even if you're older, making sure you have the best blindness skills you can have before a child comes into your life. This is why we don't put our foot down about too much in the Riccobono house.
We really do try to let our kids sort of find their ways, not that we don't have rules, but this is like a non-negotiable and both Oriana and Elizabeth know it's a non-negotiable.
You will go to training and that's because we don't want them to be in the position where all of a sudden they lose more vision later in life. They have little kids, they're really struggling, they don't know what to do.
And once you have those children in your life, it's much more complicated to be able to take that time that you need on your own to get those really good skills. So I would just say if you can, and if children are in the mix or even just marriage or career, you're never going to go wrong with taking the time out for yourself to get those blindness skills.
Anil Lewis:
And a compliment to that message is sometimes being a blind parent makes you acquire skills that otherwise you wouldn't have as a blind person (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Sure.
Anil Lewis:
The advice I always give is non-blindness, especially if you're talking about newborns, sleep when the baby sleeps (Melissa laughs). That's what I tell people all the time. Anybody think about being a parent, sleep when the baby sleeps and don't worry about what your house looks like.
Those are two things. But with respect to parenting overall, again, my best advice is parent authentic to the way that you parent. Hearing advice from other people, make it authentic to you without going into a whole lot of detail. I'm not a timeout parent. I can't do timeout as a strategy in parenting.
So I have to find a way that my parenting is authentic to who I am because one of the key things about raising a child is you have to be consistent with the way that you raise them. They have to come to understand because they're going to test the boundaries like we were talking about earlier, they're going to try to sneak those cookies, et cetera.
But they have to understand what are going to be the consequences of certain behavior, what are things that are the common expectations for them and that kind of thing. So be consistent in the way that you're parenting, but try very hard to be authentic to who you are. But overall, I think the best advice I can give is parent through love.
And if you do that, then you won't be worrying about, oh, I did the wrong thing or the right thing because you did it out of love and the intent was there to make sure that they could be the best person that they can be. So give yourself some grace and parent out of love.
Corbb O'Connor:
I would say do it through love. And somebody gave me this advice from I think the NOPBC board and Melissa, it aligns with yours around, there will come a day when you will bathe your child for the last time.
There will come a day when you will cuddle them in their bed because they fall asleep one last time and you won't know when that day is. You'll know eventually, but you won't know until it's too late. And so a few weeks ago, Silas was super sick and it had been a long day and he got out of the shower and goes, "Dad, would you dry me off?"
Melissa Riccobono:
Aww (chuckles).
Corbb O'Connor:
And my first instinct was to be like, "No, I got busy." And I thought, "Ah, this might be the last time." And I don't know if it is or not, but as you're parenting through love, I think when we think this could be the last time and I won't know until it's too late, what would I want that experience to be, has been a helpful reset for me.
Anil Lewis:
Very nice, very nice. I would like to add this as the takeaway piece for this. We talked about how parenting as a blind person is really not too much too different. But to bring this back to the whole Federation component, I think there's on aspect of blindness that does make it difficult to be a parent and that's the recent delay in the Title II regulations around accessibility is we move into a world that requires you to have access to these digital assets, not just as an individual, but also as a parent.
I can't imagine how some of the parents now dealing with the technology that their children are using in school in a space where it's inaccessible creates a problem. Have you guys run into any situations where the inaccessibility to that digital environment makes it difficult for you to parent?
Corbb O'Connor:
I'll say for me, working in the digital accessibility space, this has been something that I have observed from both sides, one in working with vendors who produce this technology and one is a parent trying to use the technology. And whether it's my son who is the 11-year-old accessibility tester who tells me sometimes, "Yeah, I tried to use voiceover on my iPad and nothing's focusable."
And I say, "Wow, what a great 64,000 dollar word for an 11-year-old to know about a digital technology." But I think for me, it's things even like the permission slips that get sent home and it's the IEPs that get generated, the individualized education plan that says these are the services that a kid with ADHD will get or a blind kid will get. And I read enough of that document to know, okay, this is generally what we have.
I didn't know for six months that there was also a couple lines in there that the district had snuck in that we hadn't talked about that absolved them of a lot of responsibility because of the way they had defined a free, appropriate public education and saying that we meet that need through large print.
Melissa Riccobono:
Wow.
Corbb O'Connor:
And no, no, my kid's a Braille reader, but that one line changed the understanding of the document and we're in the midst of mediation with the district to change that. But it's those one line in a document can make the biggest difference.
And when we don't have equal access to the paperwork, even if theoretically the teacher of blind students said, "I made the PDF accessible." If you miss that one part, you've missed the whole context (Melissa laughs).
Anil Lewis:
How about you, Deja?
Deja Powell:
Yeah, there's a lot of examples of this. I feel like almost everything now is done through an app of some kind through the schools. That's basically my only communication with her teachers or schools. She goes to a no homework school, so nothing gets brought home. Everything's on the app.
Anil Lewis:
I'm so jealous.
Deja Powell:
And it can be really difficult to navigate and keep track of her grades and how she's doing in school. And so parent-teacher conferences felt like this huge shock to me every single time because I don't have access to this particular app that they use or whatever. And so it's frustrating.
But I've also found in an area that I am really struggling with is my daughter also has ADHD and there was a lot of testing and stuff that went into her receiving this diagnosis. I remember them saying, okay, her pediatrician handing us a document saying, "Each of you need to fill this out independently without the help of your spouse so we can see what each of your perspectives are."
And realizing that there was no alternative option for me to do it independently, I would've had to have used somebody. And it's such a sensitive thing to go through those documents and things like that to have her tested.
And so I'm finding it as things become more and more digital, as things become more and more, we got to keep things private and all this kind of stuff. It's becoming challenging as a parent to be able to stay on top of everything with accessibility.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah. And to clarify, I was jealous of the no homework, not the technology.
Deja Powell:
I know right? Me too. I'm like, what? Yeah.
Corbb O'Connor:
Laney Feingold says accessibility is not like privacy or security. Laney says accessibility is privacy.
Melissa Riccobono:
IS.
Corbb O'Connor:
Accessibility is security.
Deja Powell:
Exactly.
Corbb O'Connor:
And no more true than what you just described, Deja.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah. And see, I've been really lucky because my school, the schools that my kiddos now, one of the schools does most of their stuff on Instagram, which I think is ridiculous for any parent because many people don't have Instagram and they do send emails out, but it's kind of after the fact. Anyway, that's a whole other thing.
Anil Lewis:
Now President Riccobono has schooled me on the social media terminology. It's called Insta.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, Insta. Okay (Deja laughs). Well, I always embarrass my children and I started calling Tik Tok the Tok just so I could embarrass them.
Deja Powell:
Oh no (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
And so now I call Instagram the gram just to be silly.
Anil Lewis:
Good for you. That's what being a parent's all about. Good for you.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, believe me, I embarrass them all the time by my... Sometimes because I do know and I just want to embarrass them and other times because I really don't know the slang term (laughs). Very, very clueless.
But anyway, I just want to say quickly that I have been really lucky because we just got some psychological testing done for all three of our kids actually and all of the forms were accessible.
Anil Lewis:
Oh, wonderful.
Melissa Riccobono:
Mark and I were able online to do all of them, but there is one medical portal and I'm actually working to get my kids other doctors because this portal for this place that says, oh, "We treat everyone and everyone is valued," their portal is completely inaccessible. And so anyway, that is really frustrating.
Anil Lewis:
We'll continue to work on that. That's why the Federation's still fighting that. So we're coming to a close. I just wanted to thank both of you and give you an opportunity to say whatever closing words you might have since we started with Deja, let's end with Corbb.
Corbb O'Connor:
Closing thoughts are that I have a friend, Chuck Allison, who says that parenting is the beautiful struggle. And now I have this image of the underside of a cross stitch to bring that together. And I think that I have found parenting to be something where I thought I would be in the educator role. I often find myself in the educated or schooled role by my kiddo.
Anil Lewis:
Amen.
Corbb O'Connor:
And it's even things like watching how little he cares about gender other than to recognize somebody's preferred gender. It just isn't even something he thinks about. And my parents mentioned they had a similar experience with me when it came to race, growing up that they said, now who is that again? Is that the Black kid? And I said, "The what?" I had no idea.
He was the one Black kid in the class. It was descriptive, but it's not something I care about. And I think the same is true of whatever the topic is, I'm learning more from being a parent and it's something that I have enjoyed the connections that it has brought for me with others around the world really as a parent.
Anil Lewis:
Very nice. How about you, Deja?
Deja Powell:
Yeah. So when I was going through the adoption process with my daughter, I had a lot of fear around this notion that maybe a judge was going to look at me and say, "You're blind. I'm concerned about you being a parent." And the reason I thought this is because it's happened.
It's not an absurd thing to have to think about, but it's something that did cross my mind that I would walk into that courtroom and with my cane and something would be said about the fact that I'm a blind parent. And so there's always that little bit of fear in the back of your mind, especially when you're going through a court process like that.
And ours was very messy and just took a long time. And so I thought one more setback might just push me over the edge at this point. But luckily that didn't happen.
And I think the biggest thing that I got out of it is when we were sitting in that courtroom, we had a female judge and she said something along the lines of, 'No matter what is going on with people's physical appearance" or whatever, she said something along these lines, she goes, "You are obviously a better mother than she could have ever hoped to have." And that...
Anil Lewis:
So sweet.
Deja Powell:
That struck me really hard because I think sometimes as blind parents, we worry that our blindness is somehow going to give our kids a different life or set them up for failure. These are all things I thought of early on before I joined the NFB and started meeting really, really great blind parents.
And so I think it's an important thing to take away is that parenting is just hard in general and blindness is just a characteristic of you and it doesn't have to define your parenting.
I think that's a big lesson that I've picked up from this is the majority of my problems have nothing to do with my blindness. It's I'm flying by the seat of my pants trying to figure out how to be a mom.
And so putting that into perspective and realizing that that's just part of the process, that's just part of the journey and there are lots of ways to do things and with the right resources you can reach out and figure out how to do them. That's not the hard part.
Melissa Riccobono:
And no kid comes with a manual and every kid is so different, even if they all three come from your body (laughs).
Deja Powell:
It's amazing, yeah!
Melissa Riccobono:
They are all incredibly different (laughs).
Anil Lewis:
Go ahead and expound on that, Melissa (Deja and Anil laugh).
Melissa Riccobono:
Well, I have the very sensitive kiddos, Cynthia and Ori and then Elizabeth, who she has a heart, but it comes off in a different way. They are all so different. So different.
Anil Lewis:
I guess that's where I'd like to close. I think all of those comments are well made. And I think that what we as parents... Well, I'll say it this way. Being a parent I think is the greatest responsibility that I have ever had, but it's also brought me the most joy in my life. And I think that a lot of that is because... Well, I mean, it just is. There's no real justification for it, but this has been a very good conversation.
I'm hoping that our listeners really benefit from this and hopefully we'll be able to share it more broadly so that other individuals who are considering being parents or who are parents can really benefit. And then hopefully the conversation will continue that we can really expound and grow and give more people confidence and comfort in being parent. But until then, I'll just tell everybody, remember, you can live the life you want.
Melissa Riccobono:
Blindness is not what holds you back.
Announcer:
We'd love your feedback. Email [email protected] or call 410-659-9314, extension 2444.