My mother has to be one of the strongest people I have ever met in my life. As I look around my big, beautiful house, filled with luxurious items that entail a lifetime of hard work, trials, and tribulations, I can't help but admire Deeadra Morrison. The success she has seen has been hard earned, and it hasn't come because she cannot hear or in spite of the fact that she cannot hear. Her deafness is merely a physical characteristic of Deeadra, like being tall or being short. However, her deafness has had a significant impact on her life and has helped her become who she is today.

Imagine not being able to hear. Actually try to envision what it would be like to live in a totally silent world at all hours of the day. You can't hear your baby crying, you can't hear the phone ringing, you can't hear the car behind you honking the horn, and music is completely out of the question.

"It really isn't that bad," Deeadra says. "It seems weird to me that everyone else can hear," she continues, with a laugh. The yellow leather couches that wrap around the elegant living room we are seated in are centered around a 60" plasma screen HDTV. The air smells of vanilla scented candles mixed with pot roast being cooked in the kitchen that sits adjacent to the living room. The sun setting over the mountainous horizon sets a great mood for a serious interview as rays of sunlight make their way into the living room, unimpeded by curtains. Deeadra sits directly across from me so we can sign across the room, her head held high, sporting work pants and an elegant feminine top. Deeadra was never a big woman, but always had a presence unparalleled by any woman I have ever met in my life.

Her mother was the same way, once she set her mind to a task she didn't stop until it was completely taken care of. "My mother had the shock of a lifetime when she found out I was deaf," Deeadra recalls. But my grandmother didn't abandon her, in fact it was quite the opposite. Grandma learned sign language, and learned it so well that she eventually became an interpreter for the deaf. "My mother really pushed me to be a good person and to work hard, she taught me so much. I know I wouldn't be where I am today if my mother wasn't there for me," Deeadra says, a proud smile etched across her face. Simply put, many deaf people cannot speak. Some make noises that resemble animals, some chatter unintelligibly, some stay completely silent, and still others can speak some English but mispronounce words or have a noticeable distortion in their voice.

Deeadra is one of the rare deaf people that can speak the english language flawlessly. "It was not an easy task, it was actually the most difficult thing I have ever had to do in my life," she says with a grimace. She described to me animatedly through sign language how her mother would play a game called "school" with her several times a day. Grandma would pick up a ball and say "this is a green ball." Then she would pass the ball to Deeadra, who would repeat verbatim what grandma said in English, sign language, and finger spelling. "She would also tell me when I was speaking too loudly, too softly, if i was making noise when I wasn't supposed to be, if my voice was too high or too deep... it was a complicated and tedious process that was very hard for me," Deeadra recants, "But it paid off in the long run and I'm glad I went through it," she concludes.

What people go through in their life helps define who they are and who they want to be. Going through something so profound as being deprived of one of your senses for an entire lifetime is enough to seriously impact who you become. I am proud that my mother is who she is today and I wouldn't have her any other way. When I asked her if she would gain her hearing back through magic if she could, her answer was "hell no."