10 Unheard Facts About A Deaf and Hearing Couple
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Have you met a deaf and hearing couple before? I’m guessing not! And that’s why I want to give you sneak peek into what’s it’s like!
My husband is 100% deaf and prior to meeting him, I didn’t know one ounce of sign language, let alone ever met a deaf person before. But, I have to say, it’s been the best journey I’ve ever been on.
I know so many of you are super intrigued by our relationship and I know it’s not something I talk a lot about on my platforms. So I thought I would dedicate this episode to sharing more about our relationship and answer all your questions!
To hear more about our relationship, check out...
Episode 1: How I Stopped Hating My Body and Finally Embraced My Real
And to hear more about my hear of “singleness”, check out...
Episode 29: 10 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner
Sign up to learn more about Joshua's Sign Language online course here.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human, you're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. A podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get in, let's go.
Hello, and welcome back to the Embrace Your Real podcast. I am so grateful that you are spending some time with me today, wherever you are in this beautiful world, whether you're walking, you're jogging, you're cooking, you're cleaning, you're traveling, you're working out, thank you for spending some time today. Now, if you clicked on this, you probably already know what this podcast is going to be about. It's 10 unheard facts about a deaf and hearing couple, which is my relationship with my husband.
I know many of you guys are super intrigued with my relationship with my deaf husband. It's not something that I talk a ton about on my platforms. I've talked about it before, but I thought that I would dedicate this entire episode to sharing more about my relationship, because it is a huge part of why I am where I am today. It's obviously very intriguing for many of you guys who maybe have never even heard this kind of perspective from a deaf and hearing couple, and some of the things that we go through or things that may look a little bit different from a traditional hearing relationship. Before I dive into the episode, I love sharing reviews with you. You guys know they mean so much to me. Today, I want to share one from Teeny Tina. She says, "What a blessing, thank you for opening up your heart to the world and letting us know we are not alone in our day to day struggles. You are so inspiring and speak to my soul with every episode I listened to. Thank you for being so real and honest."
Now, before I share these 10 things with you, I want to give you a little backstory on how we met. For those of you who don't know, Joshua and I actually met on Instagram, which is crazy, but we met on Instagram like in the dinosaur days. We met on Instagram in 2012. When you were using Instagram, literally for just the filters, or at least that's what I did, because I had a Facebook account. I was in college, I had a Facebook account, and I would use Instagram for the filters. Then I would like screenshot it, or I don't even remember. I maybe posted it and it saved to my phone. Then I would use the filtered photo for Facebook.
That's why pretty much I had Instagram for, for the majority of my college years, that it was even a thing. But we ended up meeting on Instagram. I actually talk more about our story in episode one. Be sure to go back and listen to that if you haven't already. But essentially, what had come into play was, when I was first getting into health and wellness, I had an interest in it all throughout college. You guys who have listened to some of my episodes, you guys know that I had a pretty unhealthy relationship with cardio, and exercising and under eating. I went into Instagram and I wasn't really using it for fitness primarily at all. It was just lifestyle stuff. I was a manager at a salon. It was just like life stuff.
Like I said, photos that I wanted to filter. Anyways, I started getting this mysterious man that started liking my photos on Instagram every so often. For those of you guys who don't know, I also, at that time, had committed my life to a year of singleness. I actually shared this in episode 29, 10 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner. I shared this exact story of just committing my life to the Lord and just being single for a year, and really leaning into that relationship, getting to know myself more and just really relying on God. Having God be my main source of satisfaction instead of finding satisfaction in men or other people liking me or whatnot. That whole year I just felt like the word was speaking to me. Your love story is going to be one that there's no doubt about it, that I brought you two together.
That was something that I always heard. At the time, I also had a husband journal, and I was journaling every single, I would say every single week. I was not consistent on a daily basis by any means. In that journal, people always ask me like like, what did you write? I basically just wrote prayers to him. I wrote things about my day or about my week, or things that I was praying for, for my future marriage. It's just a bunch of random things that I feel like the Lord gave me in that journal. I did feel crazy writing in this journal because I had no idea who my husband was. I heard that word from the Lord, but other than that, I really didn't know anything else, which was crazy. Basically, this mysterious man started liking my photos on Instagram, and back and forth.
It was, I think a few months, I went to his page. I saw that he had some pictures with dogs. He was big, he was tall. His name was Joshua, which I have another crazy thing, when I was writing in my husband journal, I felt like the Lord spoke, "Your husband's name is going to be Josh, going to have four letters. His name's going to be Josh." Which at the time sounded absolutely crazy. I'm telling you this. I even feel crazy saying it because it all came true. But then on the flip side, I'm also like, the Lord is capable of anything. I hope that just His message encourages you and inspires you to know to, stay true to what you feel in your intuition and what you feel the Lord is speaking you and guiding you in.
Because He truly has the last say and he weaves everything together and his perfect timing, even when it sounds crazy in the moment, even when you feel absolutely alone or you feel crazy speaking it out, just trust and know, and keep praying, and keep walking in faith, because the Lord's timing is incredible. Anyways, back to it. I was like, who is this man? He is so cute. He works out. He has dogs, which is huge plus in my book. Back and forth a few weeks, and then, lo and behold, I think it was about a month later, I got a friend request from him on Facebook, and I was like, this is the mysterious man from Instagram. I don't know. I immediately took it to Google and was like, all right, Google, what do you got to tell me? Because I got to stock this man, and I need to know everything about him.
Is he even real? You always have these questions like, I don't know, I'm looking at it his photos. He's so cute, he loves dogs, he's working out, he's big, whatever, all these things. I Google him, and immediately, I came up with a page full of search results on him, and they were news articles. Basically, Josh was the youngest pro motocross rider back when he rode motocross, which was his whole first, almost half of his life. From age seven, I think, all the way to 23, he rode motocross. He went pro in motocross at 15. There was an article there, and it was just highlighting him and how he had overcome adversity, and how he was born 100% deaf and overcame the odds. Just incredible, incredible stories.
Then in college, he went on to win Colorado Strong Man. There was a news article with a very smoking hot picture of him right after the competition of him winning Colorado Strong Man. Again, just highlighting his story. I'm sitting in my bed. You guys, this is like 12:00 AM, I'm sitting in my bed and I'm just bawling. I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy is so inspiring. Who is this guy? He's still a mystery, man. I am always, typically not the shy type. By this time, if you listen to episode 29, I talked about how it had been a year of me committing my life to just being single and learning and growing in the Lord, and understanding who I am as a woman. That had pretty much ended about May. It was May or June.
Then, I saw him in September. It had already been at past a year and I'm like, okay, I got to Google this man, found all those search results, and then I ended up just Facebook messaging him. I said, "Hey, I just want you to know that your story is so inspiring. Thank you for doing what you're doing." It sounded crazy. I felt a little crazy just messaging him. But his story is that, at that time he was actually driving home from the gym, and he, at the time, had a challenger. He was going really fast on I-25, which is our main highway here in Colorado, and he pulled over the car and immediately responded back to me. Then from there, we actually had ... I don't even remember the exact times, but a few days later I think he asked me to Skype.
I immediately said yes, my intuition and everything in me was saying yes, but then my brain and the logical side of me was like, you've never, ever met a deaf person in your life. You don't know sign language, how are you going to communicate? But it was like, I felt so much peace in the moment. Even leading up to it, I felt so much peace. I think it was 10-15 minutes before I was supposed to get on the Skype call, I had so much doubt and insecurity, but I decided to continue to trust God, and I just told God like, all right, God, if you really want me to be meeting this man on Skype, then I just ask that you intervene in our communication because I have no idea what I'm doing or how I'm going to talk to him. Lo and behold, we ended up talking on Skype for, it was like seven or eight hours. It was the whole entire night. That actual night, I was heading out the next morning to go to New York with my sister, so I was packing in.
At the time, I was living about two hours from the airport. I pretty much stayed up all night, and then I just drove to the airport. Then we texted throughout that whole time. Then, on my way back, he asked me, the day before I was getting home, he asked me, "Can I take her out on a date the night you get home?" I immediately, again was like ... I had been texting him, but texting is a little bit different, because you don't have to rely on sign language. There's no real language barrier other than just, it's texting. There's no sign language needed, nothing. Again, I felt this overwhelming peace. I said, yes. Then, I ended up meeting him that day that I got home. Again, crazy small world. My sister was there. I was actually at one of her friend's houses, and he came and picked me up, and my sister was like, "I want to go outside and make sure he's legit and real."
My sister walked outside and she's like, "Oh, Josh." They had lived in the same dorm building. In college, she knew who he was. He knew who she was, and it was just this small world. Anyways, that's how we met, which is crazy. Then over the course of ... gosh, we dated in 2012. We started dating September of 2012, and then we got engaged in 2014. We dated for two years before we got engaged, and we actually got engaged on our two year meeting anniversary, which was really fun. That's how we talked and I go more in detail about our first date in episode one. Be sure to go back and listen to that. But again, on our first day, it was like God's hand was over that day.
I don't even remember it entirely because we've now been together, what? Eight years, which I know sign language. He reads lips really well, which is huge. That's a huge part of our story, is that, he grew up mainstream. Nobody in his family is deaf. There's actually a really crazy story that I actually probably want Josh to share because his mom actually had a dream that she was going to give birth to a deaf boy and ended up learning sign language. Crazy, crazy story, but I will let him speak on that. Hopefully, we'll get him on a podcast sometime, and maybe you can have an interpreter or a video, YouTube, I don't know. Something. We'll figure it out.
But he speaks really well. He went to speech therapy for a good portion of his life. 14 to 17 years, he went to speech therapy. He was in mainstream school, and so he reads lips really well, which was huge on our first date, just because, with me not knowing sign language, that was already one barrier, but he's really, really good at reading lips. I don't know, you've ever tried to read lips. Now that I've been married to him, I've actually experimented it before because I really wanted to know what it was like. I put EarPods in my ears, and I tried to go, I think it was like a half a day without hearing anything and just trying to read lips. It is so difficult. It is so hard. It is such a scale and it's incredible. It is incredible.
Anyways, I'm going to dive into the 10 things about our relationship. Number one, we have to take our phone everywhere in the house because otherwise, we can't communicate to each other from room to room. This is a really funny joke that we always talk about, because if I need something, I text him. Can you imagine going to the bathroom only to find out when you're finished, you don't have any toilet paper, or when you're in the shower and you're looking over the rack and you're not seeing a towel? Those are some examples of why I either need to have them Apple watch on me at all times, which thank the Lord the Apple watch is water resistant, because I have used the Apple watch more times than I can count, just like talk to text.
I don't know how of you guys have used the talk to text on Apple watches, but it's not great and it's really hard to backspace. You just have to send it and then it doesn't make sense. Yeah, so that's really important that I take my phone everywhere. Literally, everywhere, into the bathroom, all of the things, because if I ever need to contact him, if I yell for him, he's not going to hear me. It's like something totally new. I know a lot of couples, they probably already take their phone everywhere, but maybe not for the means of necessary communication, but needless to say, wherever I go, I have my phone. It's pretty funny though, because Josh can literally yell like Julie anywhere in the house. He gets stubborn sometimes and he won't text me.
He'll just wait for me to come. Now, if he does that and I'm in the middle of something, or I just don't want to get up and go downstairs, I'll text him back like, "What do you need? Is this really important?" That's pretty funny. But many people ask us, how do you communicate on a day to day? I sign and talk to him, because like I said, he reads lips really well. Then he primarily talks to me. I very, very rarely see Josh signing to me. That's just how he grew up in his household of, he talked to his parents, and then his parents signed and talked back to him. He has learned both. Yes, we text sometimes, but primarily it's face to face communication and all of that. Really interesting there, but I will say that Josh's first language is still sign language. That's his primary language, but to pretty much everybody, with the exception of his deaf friends, he talks. He doesn't sign.
All right, number two, we learn something new every day about our unique culture. I think it's really cool that we have such unique cultures. Even though he grew up primarily in a hearing world, he's still deaf and he still has deaf friends, and he's still very educated about the deaf culture. For example, I was in King Soopers. This was probably a couple of years ago now, but I was in King Soopers, and I started dancing and Josh looked at me kind of crazy. Kind of crazy, but was like, this is normal Julie. He was like, "What are you doing?" He asked if I was playing music on my phone, because I oftentimes just has random music or podcasts running on my phone. He never knows, so he'll start talking, and I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, hold on." I got to press pause or whatever because I can't hear him.
I'm like, "No, no, no, my favorite song is on in the store." He looked at me like, wait, what? They play music in the stores? I'm like, yeah, about 99% of stores have background music. They have an intercom where they call people. He was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. It was just another example of him learning something new that he didn't know. Growing up, he always just thought that everything was silent because that's his whole world. Pretty funny. Then another example is, I think it was about a year into us dating or a little bit less than a year, he was introducing me to a fellow deaf friend, and he said, this is Julie, and her sign name is, and then he signed my sign name.
I had never seen that before. I had no idea that that is common for a deaf person to assign a specific sign name to a person based on their relationship or something that signifies them for that other person. When you're introducing someone in a hearing culture, where like, hey, this is my friend Jolene, or this is my sister, this is my whatever. Josh said, "This is Julie and her sign name is this." I had never seen that before. I thought that was really, really interesting. It's just incredible to know that there's so many rich values in cultures. When you surround yourself with other cultures, you'll get to immerse yourself in that and learn something new. There are so many other things that we learn on a day to day basis of just like, he's always asking how to pronunciate certain words. Or, for example, he had mentioned, "I really need a grassland cutter." I was like, "What is a grassland cutter?"
I'm racking my brain, I don't know what a grassland cutter is. He was talking about a weed whacker. But in the deaf culture, they're very, very visual, and it makes sense, a grassland cutter makes sense to name it that. It's just funny because he'll name certain things that I've never heard of. But once he says, we figure out what it is that he's talking about, or vice versa from me to him, I'm like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. Really interesting. Again, we learn so much on a daily basis. Number three. This is really funny. Three weeks after we started dating, Josh actually played a prank on me that he was actually hearing. It sounds crazy now that I even fell for it, but we were driving back from church one Sunday afternoon. As I typically do, he always is like, "Turn on the music," because he likes to hear the beat.
But I didn't know that that's why he always encouraged me to turn on the music. I thought it was just because he was like being nice and saying, if you want to listen to music, you totally can. I'm like turn on Taylor Swift. I cranked up the volume. As soon as I started singing the song, I looked over and Josh was like patting the steering wheel exactly to the exact beat, thing for thing. I'm like, oh my gosh, I looked over at him and I'm like, can you hear this? He looked at me with one of the most serious faces I had ever seen on him, and he was like, "Yes, I'm really sorry." In fact, he said, "Abort mission, abort mission." I'm like, oh my gosh. I freaked out. In this moment, it was like everything that I knew and had started to come to terms with of him being deaf and me being hearing, and us figuring this out, I freaked out. I had tears welling in my eyes.
I told him to pull over, and I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you. I can't trust you. I need to get out of this car. Immediately, he looked at me, he's like, I'm just joking. I'm just joking. I can feel the beat. Exactly, whenever you turn the music up, I can feel the beat. I don't know why it didn't dawn on me that he could feel it, but it was so funny. I will never forget that day because I immediately, everything that I had known up until that point, I felt it was crashing down on me. Number four, every time we're in a drive through, I lean over and I talk into the speaker, because typically Josh is always driving, which I'll talk about this later, but Josh is the best driver I have literally ever driven with in my life.
It's crazy. But the first time we ever went through a drive through, I didn't even think anything of it. I leaned over to Josh and I signed and talked to him what I wanted to get. Then I grabbed my phone and I started scrolling like typically would with someone that's driving. Typically, they're in charge of the drive through. Immediately, tapped me on my shoulder, and he's like, "Julie, I have no idea how I'm going to do this. I'm like, "Oh my gosh," I turn off my phone. I was like, "I'm so sorry." I didn't even think about it. It's things that you don't think about. Every single time we go up to a drive through, I lean over and I ask him what he wants, and then I order it. But it's really funny because half of the time, people, when we get to the window, they're used to it or they've seen it before, or they just put on a really good facade of like, oh yeah, this is all cool, even though it's not normal.
Then the other half the time, people are so confused why I'm talking. Typically, in that moment, it's one of those things where I don't feel the need to, every time we go somewhere, I'll be like, "Oh, this is my husband, Josh, and he's deaf." Having to reintroduce that whole thing. Typically, if I just signed to him intentionally, they'll ask, most times, "Do you need a receipt?" I'll sign, do you need a receipt to Josh, and they'll see that. Then it's this unspoken thing. That's the thing that we do because I just feel like it's unnecessary to always say it to people and people will catch on. Most people catch on pretty quickly. Other times, people, they give us really dirty looks, and that's something that I've had to learn.
Josh has dealt with his entire life of just discrimination and people not really knowing how to deal with it or being rude or just don't really understand. It's like they've never been taught it, which rightly so, previously before I met Josh, I had never met a deaf person. We hit all sorts of looks. That's for sure. Number five, the first real trip on we actually went was two years after we got married. Basically, the reason why, this is not really related to deaf and hearing, but this is just a fact about us is, for those of you guys know, we have started Ledbetter together when we were dating. Then, when Ledbetter started growing and business started growing, we basically like, we were so young. We were young entrepreneur and we really didn't have a work life balance, which we're still figuring that out to be honest.
Basically, we didn't really go on our first trip until after we were two years into marriage, which is something looking back on, for those who are just dating or those who are new in marriage, if I could tell you one piece of advice, it's to really, really prioritize those moments. It doesn't have to be a lavish vacation. It doesn't have to be this extravagant thing, but really prioritizing that energy expenditure with your significant other is so important. That's something that we realized is, we work together physically, we're together so many hours out of every single day, just simply because we both work from home. He does a lot of the backend systems of our business. Physically, we're together all day, but that is a totally different thing working, versus, okay, putting work aside and let's actually start investing in ourselves and in our relationship.
Definitely something, just encourages you guys that are young, or maybe you're trying to enhance your relationship, it's so, so important that you commit to doing more things together that actually is requiring both of you to have energy invested in one another. Number six, close captioning is mandatory for every single show that we watch. Prior to meeting Josh, I never watched any show with closed captioning. Now, we don't even go a single minute without close captioning turned on. It's actually crazy because I feel like now more than ever, we're so distracted and there are so many other sounds going on, that a lot of people actually have close captioning in their houses, but growing up, we never had it. It's so cool though, because I feel like I am not a natural reader.
I didn't really grow up reading books. I grew up listening to things. I'm much more of a visual learner. I love watching like documentaries and watching things to learn, but I am trying to become better at reading later, now that I'm about to turn 30, which is crazy to say that, and close captioning has helped so much. If you are trying to enhance your reading skill, closed captioning will literally help so much. But one thing on this that we didn't, or I didn't ever realize, is that prior to 2005, closed captioning, or even before that, or a little bit after that, closed captioning was sparse. Not everything was mandatory in closed captioning.
Now, I think that there's Netflix and things like that, there's mandatory closed captioning, and now there's smart TVs and things like that. But for a good part of our first couple years of being just in a relationship and wanting to watch older movies, I know I had a huge DVD collection, and I think I may even had some BHSs. That's really crazy to think about. But there were a few movies, specific movies that I wanted to watch, and then we found out that they didn't have closed captioning. That's crazy, and something that I never even thought about. Then you'll also notice that I never ever, ever put out a podcast without having a transcript. I do that for a reason, because I just think it's really important for accessibility reasons that Josh, and the greater deaf and hard of hearing community, and people who just prefer a transcript in general have access to that.
It's super easy nowadays. There are so many transcribing services, pretty much everything has closed captioning. Luckily, it's been a lot easier in terms of accessibility. But it is that extra step, even when, I remember when I was first planning out this podcast, I told my podcast producer Chelsea, I was like, "I need to have a transcript for every single podcast episode, just because I really wanted to make sure that it was all inclusive."
Number seven, both of our dogs are actually fluent on sign language. From the moment that we got Macro, our English cream Golden Retriever, we knew we wanted him to be fluent in sign language. He is pretty much fluent in any sign language, any command that you can think of, just because he was taught that at 10 weeks old when we got him. Its actually really wild how fast dogs respond to sign language. It's very, very interesting. Then Koa, we rescued him. He, I think was 20 weeks old when we got him. We started teaching him sign when we first got here, just because every single day I signed to Macro. Sometimes I'll speak and sign to Macro. Most days though, I just do assign command and he is so good at seeing it and responding immediately, and Koa is amazing as well.
I highly suggest considering teaching dogs sign. I know, for us, it's helped so, so much just in so many different areas and so many different social situations. Definitely consider because they're very, very receptive to it. Number eight, Joshua, yes, Joshua can drive a car. Deaf people can drive. I know most people might be listening to this like, of course, but honestly, you'd be surprised at how many people question if deaf people can drive. Take, for example, it was a few years ago, we were actually on vacation, and we were renting a car. This was actually the first time that we had rented a car together, because typically we just take an Uber, and previously, we had just been to big cities. There was no need to get a car. We were actually going on a four-hour road trip. We got a car, and I got up to the counter and I speak as I typically do.
I typically take hold of just the initial conversation and things like that. The woman assumed that I was going to be driving. I was like, "Actually, no, my husband is going to be driving." I started signing to him. At that point, I wasn't really signing things. Sometimes I will sign everything in a conversation with somebody. Other times Josh is just like, no, I don't need to know. Only start signing when I need to know type of thing. We gauge it based on the conversation, but the conversation with the woman was just like just beating the bush, like, "How's your day?" Blah, blah, blah. Then I signed to Josh, and she looked at me and she was like, "Oh, wait, is he able to drive?" I just looked at her and I smiled. I said, "Yes."
She's like, "I am so sorry, but I have honestly never rented a car to a deaf person before. I don't know how long she had been working." I told her, I said, "In fact, he's actually one of the best drivers I have ever been in the car in." She was just so fascinated. It was a learning opportunity for her, and she was very receptive to it. It was incredible. Josh honestly is, he's so great. He just, in those situations, I think, number one, I think it's because he's been on a lot of situations growing up, so it's not anything new to him. Two, he's just so great. He loves people so much and he always thinks the best of people first, and until somebody proves him wrong. He just smiled at her and he was like, "It's okay."
Anyways, Josh is such a good driver. I think part of it is, obviously he rode motor cross growing up. For half of his life, he was on a dirt bike, and that is a very intense style of driving, but I think it makes you very aware of all of your surroundings, especially with him, because if you think about racing in these pro motocross races, there's so many things going on, there's people coming up behind you. He had to learn other ways of looking at shadows and feeling, if he can feel somebody coming on either side of him and things like that. It's the same thing with driving. I have found, sometimes I'll be listening to a podcast or I'll be listening to music really loud, and I won't even hear an ambulance and Josh will know immediately as soon as it comes in their rear-view mirror, or it comes in the distance of him being able to see it in terms of his eyesight.
There's been countless times that he has literally been able to see things that I didn't previously see, whether it was because I was distracted or whatnot, and it's just because he has one sense of his sense is gone, the hearing obviously, his other senses are heightened. His eyesight is very great. His smell is really good. His taste is amazing. All of his other senses are heightened because of that. It's super, super interesting. If you've ever wondered that, honestly, I probably would have said the same thing if I were that woman too, because I didn't know and I had never met a deaf person before, and I just figured like, I don't know, maybe they can't drive, but they absolutely can, and he's so great at it.
Number nine, whenever we have heated discussions, we have to put it on hold if I can't sign loud and fast enough. Basically, since our conversations look different than most, our arguing obviously looks different than most as well. Yes, I'm going to be flat out honest. I am not going to tell you that we have a perfect relationship. We argue sometimes. We are human, but for those, like I said, mentioned earlier, Josh talks to me and I sign and talk back to him. Since getting married, I've learned that, when I get frustrated or I disagree about something, my literal hands stop working, all the sign language that I know goes out the window. I noticed this a few years ago, the more I would get upset, the more I couldn't properly communicate. It was because like my hands literally stopped working because it's my motor skills, everything in me is frustrated with my emotion.
Me trying to do something else, like signing with my hands doesn't work. Because of that, we always try to take what is, maybe not working or not the best and look at it in a positive light. How can this work for us in this moment? One thing that we've done that ... across the board, I know I've told this to a bunch of my girlfriends, I've told this to a bunch of people, but it has helped so much in our relationship in terms of arguing or disagreements, and that is, in the moment, oftentimes we say things that we don't mean when we have an ego or we get defensive or we feel frustrated. What we've done is we've chosen to, most times, I would say eight times out of 10, both look at each other, and we say, "Let's give each other 15." Both go in a different room, or someone walks out of the room, and we both don't look at our phone. This is not a time to go in a different room and just distract yourself by scrolling.
This is a time to really look into, why am I frustrated or what is it that I'm trying to get across? When I have found that works best for me is I take out my phone and I put on my notes and I just start talking into my phone what I want to say. My feelings, my frustrations, the points that I want to get across. It gives me time for me to look at my communication, to physically, in words, look at what I was going to say or what I was trying to say that wasn't making its way out through sign. It allows me the opportunity to look at it and ask myself, is this truly something that is going to honor us? Is this something that's going to bring us closer as a team, because at the end of the day, in a relationship, in a romantic relationship with your spouse, with your significant other, whatever, you are on the same team. It's you verse the problem.
It's not you verse you. That's one thing that I have learned the hard way, honestly, of just feeling frustrated that I couldn't get my words out through sign, but it has been the biggest blessing in disguise because it allows us the opportunity for me to look at my words and ask myself, is this really honoring our relationship? Is this bringing us closer to a solution to the problem? Because it's us verse the problem, not us verse each other. Then from there, go back down, and then get out what I actually want to say.
That has helped so much just in terms of having more level-headed conversations, being able to communicate more clearly, allowing my emotions to calm down. Typically, when you're signing, I know a lot of sign language interpreters, which I'm not a professional by any means, but sign language interpreters have a box. If you ever go to like an event and you see a professional interpreter, you'll see that their signs are not all over the place. When we get heated as humans and we start using our hands, we start shaking our hands everywhere. At least I'm an Italian, I'm very expressive with my emotions. As a result, sometimes that happens. Now, with signing you want to stay within a box. It's just mainly because I think you want to get your signs clearly communicated without having it be so out there.
It's hard for me to explain, especially, like I'm sitting here and I'm doing a box in the air, but you can't really see that. Anyways, all that to say is, it really helps when it comes to making my sign be easier for him to understand. Then number 10 is yes, our relationship looks 99% different than most out there, but that's what makes us unique. I'm so grateful to be able to see life through a new lens or perspective every single day. I think it's honestly, even two people growing up in a totally different household or growing up in a totally different environment. Maybe your spouse grew up in the city or grew up in the country and you grew up in the opposite, and just learning something new, I think allows you to have a perspective on a whole new lens of life, and it's beautiful. It's so, so beautiful.
I wanted to address some other questions too. Like I said, I would love to do one with Josh of just, either questions that you guys might have, and I'll open that up probably on my Instagram in the next week or so, but one of the questions that Josh and I always get is, was Josh born deaf, and was he born 100% deaf? The answer is yes. He was born 100% percent deaf. Like I said, I would love for him to share this story there, but nobody in his family tracing back generations is deaf. That was pretty, pretty cool. I just know that God has an incredible gifting he's placed on Josh's life to be able to touch people in such a unique way. It's so, so amazing, and I love being a part of it.
Another question that we get is, how long did it take you to learn sign language? That's a great question. Because Josh was obviously born 100% deaf, but he grew up in a very hearing family. Like I mentioned earlier, he's talks and then his family signs and talks back, but he reads lips so well that it almost makes it really easy for you to talk. Sometimes I forget to sign and he's like ... he can pick up a good portion, 80% to 90% of what I'm saying, just based on my words, but sometimes a sign helps contextually, and it helps just for him to get a contextual point of like, oh, that's what we're talking about, okay, and then he can continue on with lip reading. But I would say I'm definitely not 100% fluent by any means, but I would say probably three-ish years.
I only say that because, like I mentioned earlier, Josh doesn't really sign to me. He is getting better at that, and he's really starting to try to sign more just because he wants to open that up. For years, he didn't sign a lot. That is something that is new in our household of me actually seeing Josh sign, which actually helps me a lot too, because with signing, it's so great, because if you can practice it, if you have someone that you're learning it with, or you have students in a class that you're taking and you're able to practice it, you will see that you'll be able to understand and keep it in your mind longer. Another question that I get is, what advice do you have for someone wanting to communicate with someone who's deaf?
This is such a great question. We get this asked all the time, a lot of nurses, a lot of people that work as a barista, or they work with the general public a lot. I'm sure that you have come up with situations where one of your customers was deaf or hard of hearing and you didn't know how to communicate, or it was this like, you were never taught anything. I truly believe that sign language is such an amazing, amazing language to learn. Not only is it beautiful, I think it's such a beautiful language, but it's so cool. When you can sign to somebody, and you don't even need your voice at all, it is so cool. Actually, I'm really, really excited to share this, but this has been in the making for years, and Josh has finally, finally started it.
He actually is currently building out a site and a course that's called The Sign Language Coach, which I'll put a link in the show notes and then on the podcast blog as well with the transcript. But if you want to be the first to know when that blog and site opens up, just put your email address on there, but he is building out an ASL. So American Sign Language course, as well as tons and tons of resources. I mentioned earlier how important it is, in my opinion, to teacher dogs certain sign language. I think it's just really fun. I know lots of moms actually teach their babies like 10 to 12 signs, like more, food, hungry, and it really, really helps with moms when they have really young babies that cannot verbally communicate. I know there's tons of different other situations where sign language is really, really helpful for moms, but The Sign Language Coach, it's going to be an incredible resource for the general public, and you're going to be able to immerse yourself into learning more about ASL and I'm really excited for it.
Be sure to sign up for that. I'm trying to think of some other questions that we get asked a lot. Another question that we get is, do you ever feel frustrated? I answered this before. In anything, I think that communication, even between two hearing people is, we are in such a time where we get so distracted that it can feel just our communication is off, right? In anybody. This is my relationship with friends, or relationship with family, or my relationship with Josh, whatever it is, whether it's hearing to hearing, or hearing to deaf. Of course, there's times of frustration, but I always have to ask myself, okay, how can this situation help me, and how can this grow me, and how can this grow us together, and what is this trying to teach me?
Constantly trying to ask those questions, I think, will help you to look at it in a new light. Then, another thing that I just wanted to touch on was, what lesson can we learn from our relationship? Now, I think the biggest piece of advice that I would share is to not be so set on a type person or type of relationship that you're looking for. Yes, you can have standards, of course, but I will be honest, when I heard just the Lord speaking to me saying, "Your love story is going to be one, that there's no doubt about it, that I brought you two together." To be honest, I only had my experience up until that time, which was age 22.
At that time, I had all of these ideals. I always tell people that Josh is everything that I never knew I needed. I just want to encourage you, if you are in a season of singleness, if you're in a season of waiting, or even you're in a season of maybe adulthood. We're all adults listening to this, most of us, and navigating adult friendships is so difficult, and that's a podcast and I would love to touch more on. I think just being open-minded, being open-minded to going out on a date, or being open-minded to not being so set on a specific person, whether it be a relationship, a job, or opportunity. Always try to keep an open mind, because when we become so set in something like what we think, or what we want, or all the things, we miss out on what we actually need sometimes.
Like I said before, this doesn't have to be like compromising on values and standards, but just be open minded. With everything going on in the world right now, that goes a long way of just opening our eyes and opening our perspectives and surrounding ourselves with people that don't look like us, that don't talk like us, that haven't grown up like us. It's so important to do that. That is my episode. Thank you so much. If you're still listening, you are a true VIP. I am so, so grateful for you. If you love this episode, I know you also love episode one, how I finally embraced my real ... I really open up about my personal story, about our story, about how I met Josh, and how he was a pivotal person in my relationship when it comes to health and wellness and fitness.
Thank you so much for being interested in our relationship. Like I said, without Josh, I truly would not be where I am today. That's how I know that Josh was everything that I never knew I needed. Thanks again for tuning in. If this message inspired you or encouraged you, I would love to see you listening. Be sure to post it up on your Instagram, tag me, Julie Ledbetter. Send it to a friend, if you feel like they need this story today, or this was really intriguing for you, and I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, @juliealeadbetter. Yes, it's with an a in middle for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you much for joining me. It means the absolute world. I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves.
Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So, go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.