Latrea Russ on an Empowered Approach to Hardships and Disability Challenges

  📍  I'm Beth Huddleston, host of the World Circle. Today's guest is Latrea Russ. Latrea is a life coach, speaker, disability advocate, and author. In our interview, Latrea talks about how she persevered through an extremely difficult childhood and the challenges of living with a disability to live a purpose driven, fulfilling life. 

Latrea, it's so nice to have you here. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I want to jump right in to talk about your work. I know you have several things you're working on. You have coaching, you're a writer, you have a company called "More Than My Disability." And I want you to tell me a little bit about all the work you're doing.

I started out as a coach, and then I went from a coach to a writer, and then from a writer I went to a speaker. So they kind of branched off of each other. "More Than My Disability" was birthed, I want to say 2014.  But it wasn't called "More Than My Disability," it was called "Discovering Your Ability." And at that point, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do.

I mean, we all have those phases when we start businesses. And we start it with this grand idea. But we're not really sure how to quite navigate it. So I think that's how I started. I knew what the overall purpose of the company was going to be, but I didn't quite have the bells and whistles and everything put in place.

And I had started working with young adults who were struggling with disabilities.  But as I went on, I saw that there was a greater need for parents. Because in my mind, I'm thinking, I'm a foundation girl. So I feel like if you have the right foundation starting out, it may prevent some of the issues that you may encounter later on in life.

It's not going to cure everything. No, it's not. But I feel if you just at least get that chance to build that foundation, it may help with some of the things that you will encounter. I'm also a teacher. So what I was noticing was that a lot of the kids that were in my class had some sort of a disability, but did not have that beginning structure as to how to cope with or manage having a disability.

And then they didn't have it, and the parents didn't have it.  So I said, okay, this is something that I might be able to tap into. Because not only was I a child with a disability, I've got that firsthand experience. I understand what it's like to be 3, 4, 5, 6 years old, having a disability and the things that you go through.

A lot of times, with children, they don't quite know how to verbally express what they're going through, so they express through actions.  But at the same token, I'm also a parent  of a child that has a disability. My daughter has ADHD,  as well as some other psychological things going on.

So I understand it from a parent perspective, as well as a child perspective. And so, that is what led me in the direction of where I'm at now with "More Than My Disability," because for me, it's about letting children and parents know and understand that you are more than what your disability says you are.

You are more than what your label says that you are. There's so many times when a child, and to be honest with you, a parent may know that their child has a disability or has a delay or what not but that parent will not get that child tested  just based off the mere fact that they don't want that child to be labeled disabled.

And I talk about this somewhat in one of my books about how a disability carries this negative connotation with it. And because it carries a negative connotation, we have parents that will not get their child tested. Know that there's something not quite right, but will not get their child tested because they're afraid of that label.

So, for me, what I hope to do in my company is to show them that, okay,  we're going to work from where your child is.  Your child is not going to be in the same place as everybody else, but we can work from where they are. We can strengthen them from where they are. And that helps the child, and it also helps the parent too, because it gives the parent an opportunity to see that someone actually understands what they're going through on a day to day basis, like when you have a child that's on the spectrum and you're trying to get grocery shopping done, and that child's just having a rough day, so he's having a meltdown in the middle of the store because he's overstimulated, or he just doesn't want to be there.

And if you've ever seen parents in those situations, they become embarrassed, and they become ashamed. Because they're like, my child is doing this in the middle of the grocery store, and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to stop it. I don't know how to get the attention off of that situation.

So I work with parents in that respect as well. In terms of writing, the first three books I wrote were workbooks that I used in various workshops that I do within "More Than My Disability." They were talking about the emotional barriers of disability and how in order for us with disabilities to get to a certain point in our lives, we have to learn how to remove those emotional barriers.

I had three workbooks about that. And then I went on to write another book called "Green Tea and Other Forms of Meditation." Now, Green Tea was the title that I was given when I was nine years old, and I was in the hospital, and I had just gotten out of surgery. And I'm just sitting there, a nine year old, just sitting there watching TV.

And it was dropped in my spirit, "green tea and other forms of meditation." Now at nine, I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this? I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this.  I just tucked it away. And that was the title of my second book. My third book was "Intimate Conversations with God." I'm a very spiritual person. I believe that I would not be anywhere as to where I am now without God, or without God being in my life the way that he's in my life. I'm also a Sunday school teacher as well. We always have this conversation about prayer and about how to pray.

And throughout the class, I would ask my Sunday school students to pray. And they would be like, Ms. Latrea, I don't know how to pray. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. And so, I broke it down to them. Having a conversation with God is just like having a conversation with your mom or your dad.

I said, sometimes adults make it more  intricate than what it has to be. I said God already knows your heart, so when you're going to Him and you're talking to Him, He already knows what's in your heart. So you can have a conversation with Him like you would have one with your mom or with your dad.

I said, all prayer is is  just an intimate, private conversation with God, and that's how I came up with "intimate conversations with God." It has some of my prayers in it that I prayed during a rough time in my life, and things of that nature. Then I've been in a couple of anthologies.  My latest book, which was the hardest book to write, just chronicalized my life.

Not my whole life, but a good chunk of my life. And I did it that way so that if I ever decided that I wanted to write a sequel to it, I could. I would have enough room to write a sequel to it because not everything was packed into that book. But the book just follows my life from birth to having a disability to  being in foster care to just outside of all of that living life and learning how to accept myself and learning that I have a voice and learning how to use my voice and so on and so forth.

All of this work that you do with disabilities, and you talked about being in the hospital, you talked about being able to relate to children with disabilities, and also their parent. You were born with a disability. Can you tell me about that and how that manifested itself in your life on a physical level and on an emotional level? 

Okay, yes. I was born with a rare genetic chromosome syndrome. It's called Pfeiffer Syndrome. And what it is, is when the bones in your body don't quite fuse properly in the way they're supposed to fuse. For me, it was my skull area. In my skull area, my bones did not fuse properly. So I had some areas in my skull where there were like, I don't want to say holes. 

But there were areas where there was no bone. So I had some areas or some spots in my skull where there was no covering. Cause the primary purpose of your skull is to protect your brain from any type of damage or what have you. So when I was born, I had areas in my skull where there was no protection.

My brain was exposed, if you will. It also causes visual loss, hearing loss, and that's basically it.  Throughout the course of my life to try to correct this problem, I've had... Whew,  35 to 45 operations. I've had my forehead rebuilt. I've had foreign objects, foreign substances put in my forehead.

They rebuilt me a forehead. I've had the bridge of my nose redone. Because when I was born, my nose sunk in, so I've had the bridge of my nose redone. I've had eye muscle surgery done where they were trying to find a way to strengthen the muscles in my eye in hopes to correct my sight, but that didn't really work anyway.

I've had mouth surgery because when I was born, my jaw and my chin was pushed back. It made it hard for me to eat.  I've had my jaw broken and realigned.  You name it, I done had it.  Physically, it has been a lot. It has been a lot. Yeah, it's been a lot physically. And that's why I hold so close to my faith.

Because without it, I have no clue  of where I would be. Emotionally, I would say it has been difficult as well. Because many of these operations and surgeries I've had, I had when I was a kid. So I'm talking four, five, six, seven years old. And as a kid, you don't understand, you just want to go play, you know what I'm saying?

You don't want to be in a hospital connected to all of these tubes when you really don't understand why. All you know is you're sick, or all you know is you have an infection, or all you know is you're different from the other kids.  Now, at home with my family, I was no different.

I was just Latrea, but it wasn't until I got out, got to school, and got into mainstream culture that I realized I was different. And the kids would look at me, and the kids would point and stare, and kids are kids, you know what I'm saying? They don't understand. They don't really have an understanding as to, at least back during that time.

Now, I think they're more understanding about it now than they were when I was a kid. And they would point and they would stare and I remember we would be in school, and we would play games like ring around the rosies and things like that. And nobody wanted to hold my hand because they were so afraid that they would get what I had.

Not understanding that you can't get what I had by touching me. But again, we're five, six years old. All they know is she looks different, and I don't want to look like her, so therefore, I'm not going to touch her. And I will say that emotionally, I think it scarred me more emotionally than it did physically, if I had to say that.

Because a lot of those scars I carried with me well into adulthood. And I tell people all the time, It's one thing when you're physically scarred, because when you're physically scarred, you can put some medicine on it, put a ointment on it, put a band aid on it, and sooner or later, it'll heal. But an emotional scar, there's no real Band Aid you can put on that. There's nothing that you can really do for that to heal other than go through it and feel what you need to feel in that moment. And sometimes that's easier said than done. A lot of the emotional scars I carried with me for a very, very long time. There were times when I thought I would wake up one day  and look like everybody else.

And that day never came. It never came. And so one day I just was like, you know what? I gotta work from where I'm at. And that's what I tell my clients. We gotta work from where we're at. That doesn't mean it's not gonna get better. But if we work from where we're at, we can improve ourselves.

And that's what I had to do. I had to work from where I was. I was never going to get up and look like anybody on TV. I was never going to get up and look like the average person. I just wasn't. That wasn't the hand I was dealt. But I was still dealt a hand that I had to play regardless of whether I liked the cards or not. 

In addition to this, what you're talking about now, the emotional and physical difficulties of having this condition, you also mentioned you were in foster care and you had some difficulties in your family life. Tell me about that. Aside from disability issues, you're also dealing with some home life stuff.

So what was that like? Yeah, yeah, I had a lot going on. It's crazy because my mom was addicted to crack and my dad was addicted to alcohol. And when you're a child growing up in that type of environment, and I can say this now because I'm an adult, but as a child, you think it's a secret. You think that nobody else knows but you.

And you work really hard to keep this secret. And to this day, I don't know why I thought it was a secret. But, yeah, it was a secret. I thought it was a secret. We never had any money. We never had any food. My mom was getting assistance from the government by way of food stamps. And what she would do is she would sell the food stamps for money to go and buy drugs.

We got put out of houses and places like we would have homes and stuff and nobody paid the rent. So you can't live nowhere for free. So we would get put out. I remember one time in particular, I want to say I was in the fifth grade. I  was in the fifth grade.  And we had been living in this particular townhouse for a while.

And my mom still had her drug problem. My dad still had his alcohol problem. So one day, I came home, all of our stuff was sitting outside. They had took all of our stuff and put it out on the curb. I'm sure you can imagine being a kid, getting off the bus,  and seeing all of your furniture and all of your toys sitting outside  on the curb. 

And the kids are pointing and laughing, on top of having a disability, okay? The kids are pointing and laughing at you because your furniture and stuff is out there on the sidewalk. And you're like, what in the world? I remember that distinctly because my dad had to sleep on the couch outside to make sure that no one stole our stuff.

Because at that point we didn't have any money to put it in storage. I remember times being put out and we had to walk the street. Now by this time, I had a sister. We had to walk the street at night. I know firsthand what it's like to be homeless as a kid. Having to walk the street as a kid. 7, 8, 9 years old. I know my sister was 2.

And she couldn't walk a lot. So I remember having to put her on my back and carry her. And I remember one time in particular, my mom took us to one of her friend's houses. Now, she dropped us off at her friend's house while she went to go find drugs. Me, I didn't know this person. I'd never met this person a day in my life.

She knew them. But I didn't know them. And I remember that night like it was yesterday. I was so tired. Oh my goodness. My legs were numb. I was so tired. And my sister was tired as well. So I told her to lay on my lap and go to sleep. And the people in the house told me, Oh, you can go to sleep too. I don't know you guys like that.

I'm not going to sleep in here. I don't know you. I'm not. I  don't feel comfortable doing that. I think I stayed awake that whole night. And I remember sitting on the couch, falling asleep and waking myself back up because I didn't know where I was. I didn't know my surroundings and anything could have happened. 

Yeah. Yeah. Ugh, those kinds of things, homeless, walking around at night, you have this little baby sister, your parents are not paying the rent. Do you notice I guess emotional scars that have come up in your adulthood where you just notice something pop up and you remember that trauma, do you notice things like that?

Not so much of that, I have habits that I have developed out of that trauma. For example, I can remember a number of times of coming home and there's no food. Like, opening the refrigerator and there's absolutely no food in the refrigerator. So now, when I go grocery shopping, I overshop. Sometimes I overshop things out of the fear of not having a lot. 

Let's see what else. The same thing with money. I try to be... I'm not going to say I'm frugal because my husband would disagree with me on that one. But I find myself buying stuff because as a kid, I wasn't able to. So as an adult, I buy stuff that I probably, I'm going to be honest with you, I probably don't need, but because as a kid, I wasn't able to, as a kid, I didn't have the latest clothes and keeping up with the latest fashion and all of that.

So I guess you could say I kind of make up  for it as an adult. I know it sounds crazy, but I kind of make up for it as an adult. So you also ended up in foster care. Tell me about your individual experience with foster care, what that was like for you and your sister. Okay, I'll say this,  and I want to make sure I'm putting this out there.

I'm speaking from my own personal experience.  I've known people that have been through the system that have had entirely different experiences than what I've had.

But, to me, it just seemed pointless. It just seemed pointless because to me, it was like, it caused more harm than good. Now, my mother, yes, my mother used crack, she was a drug addict, there were times we didn't have food, there were times that we were homeless, and so on and so forth.

And it's going to be weird when I say this. Some would say not having food and not having a place to live is a form of abuse, which it is, but  to the level of abuse that I experienced in foster care, never did any of that stuff to me. When I say the level of abuse I experienced, I want to say I was in six different homes. And one home in particular I remember.

Now, I'm used to being treated weird by children, because that's just what children do. I'm used to it.  But I'm not used to being treated like this by adults. This particular woman  couldn't stand the sight of me. Could not stand the sight  of me. Of how I look. So therefore, she would make me sit in my room. From the time I came home from school until it was time to eat,  I had to stay in my room. I wasn't allowed to stay in the living room with everyone else  because I look different. To  take it a step further, I wasn't allowed to eat on regular plates and use regular silverware. I had to use plastic forks and plastic bowls and plastic stuff.

Stuff that could be thrown away. Which if we go back to the emotional side of that, that sent me a message that I wasn't worthy, I was only worthy enough to be thrown away. That sent me the message that me being who I am was not enough.  I was not worthy.  If I'm not worthy enough to eat off of regular dishes, then I'm not worthy enough to be considered a regular person.

And that was the message that I got from that experience. I remember, we went to the mall one time, and it had to be about 80 degrees outside. Maybe a little more. It was summertime.  She was taking her biological daughter to the mall. And neither one of them wanted to be seen with me. So they left me in the car.

I sat in that car for about three hours. And my sister sat there with me. And I remember, I wished they had took her. You could leave me. I understand. But they didn't have to leave her too. They could have took her with  them. But instead, they left both of us  in the car, for a good three four hours because they didn't want to be seen with me.

I've had other situations where I was not allowed to use the bathtub. I was only allowed to bathe once a week.  Every other day, I had to do what's called a bird bath. And I would have to wash up and clean.  During that time, I would go to school smelling. I would go to school with dirty clothes on.

And, unbeknownst to me, the teachers were calling services like, okay, what's going on? She's coming to school smelling. She's coming to school with dirty clothes on. What's going on? And, so I got removed from that home. And I went to another home where I would later be adopted. Now, the bad part about this home was the man, the father figure in that home was sexually molesting my sister.

And he sexually molested my sister from age two all the way up to nine. So I guess it's weird because you think you're at a place, a safe place, and you can finally  breathe and be a kid, but then you find out that your sister's being sexually molested. Ugh, and that's in the adoptive home that you had?

Yes. Oh, jeez. See, what people don't understand about predators, is predators do something called divide and conquer. And me and my sister, we have always been close. When my mother had her, it was like she became my baby.  I taught her how to read, I taught her how to tie her shoes,  I taught her how to count, I taught her how to add and subtract.

She became my baby. And it was drilled in me from the time that she came home, she was my responsibility. I was supposed to look after her. She was my sister, it was my responsibility.  So, when we got to this particular foster home, what they did was they started separating us.  They created a gap between us  so that he could molest her and they kept me busy doing other stuff.

And I remember when it started because I don't care where we went, my sister always slept with me.  She had a bed of her own, but she never slept in it, she always slept with me. Even when we were still with my mother, she always found her way into my bed. I remember when we moved to this particular foster home, they wouldn't let her sleep with me.

And I remember many a night of her crying because she wanted to sleep  with me.  And that was her comfort, that was how she knew she was safe. And the reason they wouldn't let her sleep with me was so the man could come in and molest her. I'm  so sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just, it's awful. It's awful. It is.

And these places that you're supposed to be going from an unsafe place to a safe place. I'm sure in some cases that it just does not happen.  But what I will say is I find it more prevalent for people with disabilities and we make up, I want to say 30 percent of the foster care, and that number may have changed, but last time I looked we make up at least 30 percent of the foster care system.

And what people don't understand and realize is  that when you make a decision to take in a foster child, you get a stipend, and that stipend is supposed, I'm stressing this, supposed to go to the care of the child, whatever the child might need, clothing, food, whatever that child needs.  That's what that stipend is supposed to go for. It doesn't.

It doesn't. I'm just going be real. It doesn't, but that's a horse of another color. For a disabled child, they get more than what an average child would get. A lot of times you'll find adults that will, and I hate to use the word target, but they will pick children with disabilities just because they know that they'll get more money for that, and they'll take them into these homes, and they'll treat them like garbage.

And that's one thing that I really, along with disability, I really advocate for that. That's why when I work with my parents that have children with disabilities, I say we've got to get this together. Because if you give the state any indication that you are unable to take care of your child, they will take your child,  and they will be in a worse off situation than they will have ever been with you.

So that is why my work is so important to me, because if you don't got to go to foster care, that's not a place you should go. It really isn't, especially  if you have a disability, it really isn't. And in your case, you had biological parents and then were taken from there and obviously it wasn't a perfect situation there. That's understood, but I can also understand how it could be difficult to be taken from that home and put into a different home.

It's not your parents. You don't know them and move from home to home and as a child wanting to return to your biological parents. And was that your experience? Yes, that was my experience. I remember. It's just so funny. I remember I just kept saying, I want to go home. I wrote a poem called "I Want to Go Home."

And that's the one thing people don't understand. No matter how bad the situation is, no matter what it looks like on the outside, it might look crazy. It might look dysfunctional. It might just look like a total train wreck from the outside. But on the inside, that's that child's parents. That's the only parent that that child has ever known, no matter how dysfunctional it might seem.

That child's always going to want to be with that parent, and it might not be the best choice for them right now, but in that child's mind, that's my mother. Even though she does drugs, I know she's gonna figure out how to take care of me in some way, shape, or form. And, that was my thing. I had to take over a lot of the responsibility of the household when she started using drugs really bad.

But, in my mind, I was like, I can't let nobody know what's going on. Because if I let somebody know that she's strung out on drugs, then they're gonna come and take us, and we'll never see her again, and that's my mother. So you know that the situation that you're in is not a good situation, you know this.

This is not rocket science. But at the same time, you also know that's my mother, and she loves me and I love her, no matter what it looks like. No matter what it looks like. And that's all you really know at that point.  If you were to ask the average foster child would they want to say with their mother or parent versus going to a home of the unknown, nine times out of ten, they would probably say they want to stay with their parents.

No matter how crazy it might seem or might look, they would say, no, I want to stay with my mom, and that was my experience. So then you got to a point where you ended up in a home where you were adopted. What was that like when you now have this adoptive set of parents and a biological set of parents?

Oh, that was difficult because my adoptive parents, or at least my adoptive mom, when she adopted you, she became your mother. And it was like, you couldn't tell this woman that I was not her child. Whether she gave birth to me or not. My biological mother, who, again, was still on drugs, carried a lot of resentment, a lot of hatred about the fact that we ended up in foster care or what have you. 

And my biological mother, at that point, was playing the blame game. She was blaming everybody else but herself. It was everybody else's fault. It wasn't her fault. So they used to get into it a lot because they both wanted control over the situation. And a lot of times, I would say all the way up to adulthood, I was stuck in the middle.

And I always thought I had to choose one or the other. If  I chose my biological mother, I would be hurting my adoptive mother's feelings. If I chose my adoptive mother, I would be hurting my biological mother's feelings, so I had always struggled with that. Oh my goodness, that was such a hard thing to struggle with. Because I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

My mother was my mother, and she would always be my mother. And my adoptive mother was my adoptive mother, and that would always be the case there. In my mind, I'm like, can't we all just  get along? Can't we all just... have a kumbaya moment and say, okay, you know what, she's both of our daughters and we're going to share her equally. Could never do that.

No. No.  No. Never. My adopted mother passed of COVID and my biological mother is still alive now, but they never made amends. So with all of this stuff, and it's a lot, let's be honest, it's a lot of stuff that you have gone through, okay. And in one of your books, the one that's your memoir, you talk about hearing God's voice.

And I know you said in this interview as well, that you're very spiritual and you feel like that got you through, but you talk about some specific times of just hearing what you characterized as God's voice telling you things will get better. Can you tell me a little bit about how that presented itself when you were going through these really difficult circumstances?

I can remember a time where I was being wheeled into the operating room, and I was tired. I was just physically, emotionally  tired. I was about ten years old. And I was like, I can't do this no more. I'm tired. I don't want to do this no more. And I remember saying to God, I'm tired of going through this. I'm tired of doing this.

I'm just tired. And he said to me, the same way I'm talking to you, hold on. I got you. And at 10, you're like, okay, you say so. And then, as time went on, I found myself in another situation. In a particular foster home, I was being punished for something. I don't even know why I was being punished. I had to stand in the corner, and I had been standing there for so long that my legs were numb and I was just like, God, how much longer do I got to go through this? It's crazy. I can't do this anymore. And again, every time in my life, I would get to that point that I felt like I was ready to give up and I couldn't do it anymore, he would always come back and reassure me that he had me and that he was in control and just to hold on and to be honest with you, that's all I had to hold on to.

I didn't have anything else. Because what I was seeing, it wasn't getting better from what I was seeing. And the things that I was experiencing wasn't getting better. So I was like, okay, all I've got to hold on to is God telling me it's going to be okay. He got me, I'm going to be all right, and I'm going to get through it.

And I held on to that for the last 28, 29 years of my life. That is what I held on to. And that's all I held on to. That's all I had. I didn't have anything else.  Yeah. Yeah. And so the other thing I want to ask you is, related to all of this and going through all of these extremely difficult life circumstances, when you look back now, what do you think you learned, in what ways do you think you can use that, you know, to be of service to others?

I've learned that we're a lot stronger than we give ourselves credit for. I think that the obvious concept is to quit when it gets hard, because no one wants to deal with the hard stuff. The inclination is, oh, it's hard, okay, so I'm gonna quit. But if we just press a little more, we're a lot stronger than what we believe.

And it's crazy because we just sit back. And this is for anybody. You can sit back and look at your life and look at all the things that you've gone through and be like, whoa, I've gone through a lot. I'm not crazy. I'm still very sane. But wow, I've gone through a lot. And that's because God supplies us with the strength that we need to get through what we need to get through.

And that's one thing that I had to learn is that you can get through it. And we rely so much on what it looks like. We rely so much on what we're seeing with our eyes. And it might not look like you're gonna get through it. It might look like all hope is gone. It might look like a despair is all around  you.

But I promise if you keep on pushing through, you're gonna get through it. Because what is your alternative?  To stop? That's the only alternative. Okay, I give up. I'm going to stop.  But then guess what? If you give up and you stop, you will get no further than what you got.  And things will still be going on around you, but you won't get no further than what you got because you made the choice to give up.

And you really have not made that choice. Talking to you today, reading the things you've written, you have taken what has been so very difficult and you have turned it into really good work. Really good work. Work that you're putting out there and also just living your life. You have energy, you're enthusiastic about what you do.

That's even different than just saying I'm gonna push through, that's turning it into something. And again it goes back from working from where I'm at and I tell people all the time I could sit in a corner and I could cry about everything I've ever dealt with in my life. Baby, I'd be sitting there forever.

I would never get nothing done. And the world would just continue to keep going around, and I'd still be sitting over here in this little corner, crying about what I shoulda, coulda, woulda did, or what somebody did to me, or what somebody said to me, or how somebody hurt my feelings. It happened. There's nothing that I can change.

There's nothing that I can do about it. It happened. And I believe, and I said this in one of my speeches, I believe everything that I went through was to push me to where I'm supposed to be. And I tell people all the time, if you're going through something, you're going to something. If you're going through something...

You're going to something. You're being pushed to something. You're being pushed to something greater. You're being pushed and made and molded to handle whatever bigger is for you. We don't go through things just to sit in it and say, oh, woe is me. No, you go through it to get to it, to whatever it is, because whatever it is for you may be different for somebody else.

Whenever I'm going through something, I say, okay, God, you're getting ready to take me somewhere. You're getting ready to take me higher. You're getting ready to connect me with somebody that's gonna need this struggle. See, sometimes we get so wrapped up and so caught up in our struggles and our trials and our tribulations that we think it's about us.

It don't have nothing to do with us  at all. It has something to do with the people that we were called to help. We are all called to help somebody.  We are all called to shine our light and show somebody else the path that they're supposed to follow. But how can we show somebody else a path if we've never walked down a path? 

If we've never had to go through the trenches, if we've never had to climb the mountains, how can we tell somebody else if we've never done it? It's funny because I remember when I first started "More Than My Disability," I was like, lord, this is so hard, so difficult, and it was difficult because I was trying to do it like everybody else was doing it.

You're on social media, and social media can be a curse and a blessing sometimes, depending on how you look at it. And you're seeing all of these, get rich over here, and I coach this, and I do this, and I do that, and it just seems... From the outside looking in, it just seems so easy for them. So I would always ask myself, it's so easy for them, but why am I struggling?

And again, God said, because you have to look at the population that you're called to. The population that you're called to is not an easy population.  And another thing, He gave me this metaphor of a door. Anybody can walk through a door. Anybody can turn a knob, open a door, and walk through the door.

Easy peasy. But it's another thing to actually create a  door. So when you're creating something for somebody to follow you, it's gonna be hard. It's going to be difficult. You're going to be stressed, you're going to have times you want to throw everything in the trash, you're going to have those moments, because you're creating something for somebody to follow you, versus walking through something that's already been created. 

I want to shift gears and make sure I ask you this before we finish the interview,  in your book, you've talked about misconceptions about people with disabilities. And I want to ask you about that. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions? One of the biggest misconceptions is that we do not want romance.

That we are not romantically inclined. We don't desire affection. We don't desire love from another person. That just the love from our parents and our caregivers is enough. No, it's not. It's not. People with disabilities have human emotions, have human feelings, just like anybody else. Now, sometimes they might not always understand them, and they may not always know how to express them, but they're there.

They want to know that they're cared about, and they're liked by another person. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. That's the most humanistic quality that a person can have is the ability to understand that I want love from another person.  I wanna be somebody else's person.

And growing up, that was something really hard because it was like people would look at me and automatically assume,  oh, she has a disability so she doesn't think about getting married and she's not gonna have any kids and this, that, and the third. I'm like, says who? Who said that? I want a person for myself like anybody else does.

I want to have children like anybody else does. I think that is one of the biggest misconceptions that they have about people with disabilities. That we don't desire love. That we don't desire companionship.  And you mentioned in your book that you found your person, you have your husband and you have a daughter, and you've, I'm sure, been able to apply a lot of the things you've learned in your own experience to your parenting of your daughter.

As a matter of fact, my daughter will be 18  in December, which is crazy. And I've tried to pass a lot of my life lessons on to her. The thing about my daughter is that, and this is just a wonderful thing about children. She doesn't see what the world sees.  She just sees her mom. That's it. She just sees her mom.

And even the kids that I teach. I'm just Ms. Latrea. I'm not Ms. Latrea with the big glasses. I'm not Ms. Latrea that can't see. I'm not Ms. Latrea that can't hear. I'm not Ms. Latrea that looks funny. I'm just Ms. Latrea. That's all I am. That's what I am for them.  I'm Ms. Latrea that gives them hugs. I'm Ms. Latrea that when they cry, I wipe their tears. I'm Ms. Latrea that talks to them. I'm Ms. Latrea that helps them write their alphabet. That's the Ms. Latrea I am. But everything else that this crazy world sees, they don't pay no attention to it. And I think that's why I've always had a fondness for children.

Because they don't see what we as grown ups see. They don't care. As long as you treat them...  with love and respect, and you show them that you care about them, that's all that really matters to them. What you look like really does matter to them. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that you convey in our interview today?

Just keep pushing. Especially on the days when it's hard. On the days when it's hard, those are the days you push the hardest. Because those are the days that you're being tested the most. Keep pushing. Because if you push long enough, and you push hard enough, you're going to reach the other side.  And when you reach the other side,  oh, it's going to be so worth it. 

It's going to be everything that you went through to get to that other side, it's going to be so  worth it. It's almost like climbing a mountain. You start climbing this mountain, and this is a big mountain,  and you're climbing, and you're climbing, and you're like, oh, my legs are tired. I want to stop. I can't do this anymore. I want to stop.

And you keep saying, I want to stop, but you don't stop. You keep going. Every time you say you want to stop,  you go a little further. And then, when you reach the summit of that mountain, and you're overlooking everything that you had to get through to see the view,  it's going to be so worth it.

That's, it's awesome. It's awesome. I so much 

appreciate you being here and sharing a part of your life and life lessons and all the stuff you're working on. I just really appreciate you being here. Oh, well I appreciate you having me, thank you so much.