I'm Darian Slayton Fleming, and thank you for joining me on Get What You Need and feel good about it. Do you find it difficult to ask for what you need? Do you frequently feel misunderstood? Do you have a problem or cause that you would like to learn to manage more effectively? What makes it so hard for us to tell each other how we feel? And how do we speak up for ourselves so we get what we need and feel good about it? How do we do this respectfully so that we honor the needs and feelings of others? Together, we'll explore tips, strategies, and resources that, when used mindfully and consistently, will improve our results and enrich our relationship. Hello and welcome back to get what you need and feel good about it. I am Darian Slayton Fleming. This is episode five, entitled about Your Hostess with the mostis, how I got here, and where this is going. Now that we have four episodes under our belts, where I have introduced some of my key concepts, I thought it was about time that I shared a little about myself with you, the person behind the voice you've been hearing to set the stage. I want to let you know that I am legally blind, and I have multiple disabilities, including muscle coordination difficulties that affect my use of my hands, my gait, and my balance. When I was two years old, I became ill with laryngeal tracheal bronchitis. It might be easier for you to think about it like croup. I was very congested, and I couldn't breathe, and it didn't seem to get better. So my mom took me to the emergency room at Providence Hospital in Portland, Oregon. This was in February 1958, and in those days, there was no such thing as monitors in the nurse's station where nurses could keep tabs on patients, and they did not know CPR like we know it today. I was placed in a group tent, which was meant to help oxygenate me, and at shift change, the nurses all went to make milkshakes for the kids, and then they came and did their rounds to check on the kids in the group tent. The nurse who came to check on me found me not breathing. They don't know how long I was without oxygen. They say maybe about six minutes. But it was long enough to leave me legally blind. With limited vision then and difficulties that would present major challenges to activities of daily living for me. But I didn't realize I was different until I started elementary school. All the kids in my neighborhood where I grew up just considered me part of the gang. At that point, I could still run and play hide and seek, and I did fall a lot. That's a lifelong thing that happens to me because of my balance and gait difficulties throughout my life. I did have some fun times. One of those was when my dad purchased a tandem bicycle for me, and kids in the neighborhood would ride with me. And my dad rode with me too. That was fun. I started discovering that I was different when I started elementary school. In second grade. I realized that my classmates were learning how to write with a pencil. During that time, I was learning braille. For example, I would have to make a mark with the color crayon on all the J's on my assignment page. Even though I was different, I have a great mom. She has been my mentor and my role model throughout my life, and she would always go ahead of me and meet the teachers and tell them about my needs and how I did things and what would be helpful to make my experience in the classroom good for the teachers and for me. That was helpful. But I also began to have experiences where I was singled out and reminded how different I was. It became necessary for me to produce my own schoolwork since I have limited fine dexterity. My mom purchased an electric typewriter and taught me how to type. Now I could do my own schoolwork. During class in fifth grade, things got really dicey. I was in a classroom with a teacher named Carol Silvera, and she had some unusual classroom practices. And one of those was to use a rag to tie children in their chairs if we got out of our seats without permission. One day when I got out of my seat because I thought she called on me to come to her desk, she told me to have one of the boys in my classroom time me in my seat. It was so embarrassing. Another thing she did besides timing in my seat multiple times was one day when I came back from my Braille instruction with my Itinerant teacher. She instructed me to put my things away quickly and sit down because the class wanted to talk to me. She proceeded to have each student in my fifth grade classroom go around and tell me all the things that were weird or odd or different about me. This went on and on even after the lunch bell rang. And finally one of the boys asked if we could go to lunch. I went home that day for lunch, and I was really upset, and my mom asked me what was wrong, and I didn't tell her. Now I think back and wonder, why didn't I stick up for myself then? Why didn't I tell her what it was like? There were so many other experiences with that teacher that were humiliating and made me feel really bad. These experiences shaped me, and when we have experiences like that in our lives, they shape us before we know that there's more than one point of view and that experience might not be appropriate. Hello and welcome back to get what you need and feel good about it. I am Darian Slayton Fleming. And this is episode number five. This is episode this is episode five entitled, about your hostess with the most, how I got here and where this is going. Now that we have four episodes under our belts, where I have introduced some of my key concepts, I thought it was about time that I shared a little about myself with you, the person behind the voice you've been hearing to set the stage. I want to let you know that I am legally blind, and I have multiple disabilities, including muscle coordination difficulties that affect my use of my hands, my gait, and my balance. When I was two years old, I became ill with laryngeal tracheal bronchitis. It might be easier for you to think about it like croup. I was very congested, and I couldn't breathe, and it didn't seem to get better. So my mom took me to the emergency room at Providence Hospital in Portland, Oregon. This was in February 1958, and in those days, there was no such thing as monitors in the nurse's station where nurses could keep tabs on patients, and they did not know CPR like we know it today. I was placed in a group tent, which was meant to help oxygenate me, and at shift change, the nurses all went to make milkshakes for the kids, and then they came and did their rounds to check on the kids in the group tent. The nurse who came to check on me found me not breathing. They don't know how long I was without oxygen. They say maybe about six minutes. But it was long enough to leave me legally blind. With limited vision then and difficulties that would present major challenges to activities of daily living for me. But I didn't realize I was different until I started elementary school. All the kids in my neighborhood where I grew up just considered me part of the gang. At that point. I could still run and play hide and seek, and I did fall a lot. That's a lifelong thing that happens to me because of my balance and gait difficulties throughout my life. I did have some fun times. One of those was when my dad purchased a tandem bicycle for me, and kids in the neighborhood would ride with me, and my dad rode with me too. That was fun. I started discovering that I was different when I started elementary school. In second grade, I realized that my classmates were learning how to write with a pencil. During that time, I was learning braille. For example, I would have to make a mark with the color crayon on all the J's on my assignment page. Even though I was different, I have a great mom. She has been my mentor and my role model throughout my life, and she would always go ahead of me and meet the teachers and tell them about my needs and how I did things and what would be helpful to make my experience in the classroom good for the teachers and for me. That was helpful, but I also began to have experiences where I was singled out and reminded how different I was. In the fourth grade, it became necessary for me to produce my own schoolwork since I have limited fine dexterity. My mom purchased an electric typewriter and taught me how to type. Now I could do my own schoolwork. During class in fifth grade, things got really dicey. I was in a classroom with a teacher, and she had some unusual classroom practices, and one of those was to use a rag to tie children in their chairs if we got out of our seats without permission. One day when I got out of my seat, because I thought she called on me to come to her desk, she told me to have one of the boys in my classroom time me in my seat. It was so embarrassing. Another thing she did besides timing in my seat multiple times was one day when I came back from my Braille instruction with my Itinerant teacher. She instructed me to put my things away quickly and sit down because the class wanted to talk to me. She proceeded to have each student in my fifth grade classroom go around and tell me all the things that were weird or odd or different about me. This went on and on even after the lunch bell rang, and finally one of the boys asked if we could go to lunch. I went home that day for lunch, and I was really upset, and my mom asked me what was wrong, and I didn't tell her. Now I think back and wonder why didn't I stick up for myself then? Why didn't I tell her what it was like? There were so many other experiences with that teacher that were humiliating and made me feel really bad. These experiences shaped me, and when we have experiences like that in our lives, they shape us before we know that there's more than one point of view, and that experience might not be appropriate. During the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years, I went to the Oregon State School for the Blind for a summer session. Even there, I was a bit of an outcast because I wasn't just blind. I walked funny, and I had trouble doing things with my hands. Even at age 13, I did not know how to tie my shoes or make my bed or cut my meat or hold a fork like an adult. I learned a lot at the School for the Blind, and it made me feel less awkward and more like other people. And I got to know other people who were visually impaired, and I felt such a sense of acceptance that I asked my parents to let me go to the School for the Blind in Oregon for my 8th and 9th grade school years. During that time, I made a lifelong friend. Kim Charleston. Kim grew up to be an accomplished librarian and the first female president of the American Council of the Blind. Remember, I said our experiences shape us? I had some really good experiences in school, too, and many of them were when I went to college. In my first three years of undergraduate school, I went to the Oregon College of Education, otherwise known now as Western Oregon University. And there I often felt lonely. I still felt like an outcast, but I had some really good friends, too, and one of them was Jane Miller, who had been in choir with me and had gone to college the same year I did. And we both applied to be student assistants. Some universities call them resident assistants, and I was selected for one of those positions. You might wonder, how can a blind person be a student assistant? Well, I have very good organizational skills, which I learned from my mom, and I have very good listening skills, which I also learned from her. And I was able to talk with kids about their interests and help them select the college courses for which they wanted to register. And I was able to have good relationships with the students that lived in the pod that I oversaw in the dorm. I also felt very important because I got the keys to lock and unlock the doors of our dormitory every morning and every night. And one interesting thing that happened happened in a way, because I am visually impaired, and it was a successful outcome. We had a young man that didn't live on campus that started hanging around all the time, and he would come in the different floors and look for the girls he knew, and he started hanging around quite a bit, and the girls began to feel uncomfortable. During a meeting of all of the student assistants with our dorm mother, we were told to let the dorm mother and security know if we ever discovered that young man hanging around the dormitory. One day. Well, actually, one evening I was walking over to see the dorm mom, I think I was coming to a meeting, actually, and that young man said hi to me, and I knew him by voice, and I knew his name, and I just didn't break stride. I just said hi to him and acted like nothing was amiss. And I walked into the meeting and told them that he was in the courtyard. I was really proud of myself for being able to pull that off. You don't have to see to know that something is awry, do you? I was able to use my voice recognition skills when I was in high school. I had another dose of an incident or experience that led me to doubt myself and to feel inadequate. I must have been about a junior in high school, and my parents wanted me to go to college. So we were meeting with the guidance counselor, and they invited a vocational rehabilitation counselor from the Oregon Commission for the Blind to come and talk with us about what kinds of studies I might engage in, what kinds of jobs I might be able to do. My mom said, well, she's really a good typist. She could maybe be a medical transcriber. And he said, I don't know, it's really rough. She said, Durian's a good writer. Maybe she could be an author. And he said, I don't know, it's really rough. And we went around and around like that, and I don't think we ever really got any satisfaction out of that meeting. Also, when I was in high school, I had an orientation and mobility instructor assigned to me, and we worked on my travel skills in my neighborhood. He wanted me to stay after school to work with him, and one term he wanted me to take a driver's education during one of the periods. I really thought this was ridiculous. I thought I'll never drive a car. And he said, you need to know what's going on in the car. And I said, I know what's going on in the car. We drive around all the time, and we all talk about what it means to stop at a stop sign and red light, green light, and all of that. And consequently, I ended up usually skipping driver's ed and skipping out of school before my instructor got there for my after school orientation and mobility lessons. When I went to the School for the Blind, though, I got some really excellent training. That first summer, I worked with an orientation and mobility instructor who performed a certain test with my vision. She would step behind the tree and ask me to tell her where she was, or she would step to the left of the tree and ask me which side of the tree she was on. And this way she got an idea of what I could see and what I couldn't. This was a really good experience for me, too, because she encouraged me to use the vision that I do have to maximize my success. Like I said, our experiences shape us. During the years between my first and second year of graduate school, I decided to go get a Seeing Eye dog. I went to Leader Dogs for the Blind, and while I was there, I met a man and we got married. We had a son named Tim, who is now 38 years old. I wanted to get married. It was a lifelong dream, and I wanted to be a mom, and I did get my wish. It was a really troubled marriage. My husband was abusive towards me.

And.

I finally left him, not wanting my son to have this kind of a father as a role model. Little did I realize how difficult it would be to be a single parent of a boy who, when he got to elementary school, learned that his life was a lot different than other kids in his classes. Not only did he only have one parent, but that parent had a lot of challenges, walked funny and couldn't do things for herself, and expected him to take care of some of the household responsibilities. These were challenging times, and now my son and I are doing well, and he has two lovely daughters, and my granddaughters Audrey and Sophia are the joy of my life. After I left Tim's dad, I spent about 15 years as a single mom. I had a few relationships, but they really didn't go anywhere. I was involved in the American Council of the Blind, and I have been off and on. When Tim grew up, when he was a teenager, I decided to start going back to ACB American Council of the Blind conferences. And there I met John Fleming. John was a really interesting guy. We just hung out as friends, starting at the annual National American Council of the Blind conventions. We both felt like outcasts, and so we began spending time together, having dinner together, and John became the president of the American Council of the Blind of Oregon. And at that time, I volunteered to be the editor of the state newsletter. So John and I had occasion to talk a lot on the phone and work together on the newsletter. We became friends, and we would spend time together at state and national conventions. And this went on for about seven years, until one day I asked John if there was something going on between us, and John said, Well, I think so. One thing led to another, and John and I were married on July 1, 2006. We had been friends for seven years first, and John really, truly was my soulmate. He understood me inside and out. He cared that life was difficult for me, and he made life easier for me. In a tribute to John, my son Tim said, he taught us how to be happy. John gave me laughter. For example, one day we were watching a movie, and when it was over, we both ended up high fiving each other without realizing that we were going to do the same thing at the same time. One time we attended a convention for the Blind Veterans of America, and we ran into, coincidentally, a friend of John's. This friend called John and said, hey, guess what? I'm at a hotel in Reno, and there's hundreds of guide dogs. And John said, well, guess what, I'm here too. So we spent some time with them while they were there. And one night we got a little bit too intoxicated. We were having a good time, and after we went to bed, I hear John calling me. He's saying, Darian, let me in. And he had gone to go to the bathroom, but opened the wrong door, and he found himself in the hotel hallway in very little clothing with our door locked. We had all kinds of fun experiences together. Like I said, our experiences shape us. And my experiences shaped me to doubt myself, to feel bad, to question my choices, and to speak up in not always the best ways. I like to think that when my illness at age two happened, I fought for my life. And as I examined some of the experiences I had with conflicts in relationships and being determined to accomplish goals, I realize that I'm still a fighter. That makes me a good advocate, but it also means I need to work on how I say what I say and learning how to manage my emotions. When my son was a teenager, he got into some legal trouble, and I became very depressed. So I went on an antidepressant called Paxil. And about 15 years later, 20 years later, I realized that I wasn't sad anymore so much, but it really was that I couldn't express it. I couldn't cry anymore. What I could do, though, is be angry, and this sometimes got me into trouble. I finally realized, after losing a very dear group of friends and having conflicts with my son and other family members, that I really needed to work on regulating my emotions. I happen to be a therapist. I have a license as a clinical social worker, and I realized that I needed to practice what I preach, and I determined to take seriously the skills I was teaching my clients. I heard this poem one time, and one of the lines in it was, just because you think it, doesn't mean you have to say it. I decided that was one of the first things I needed to learn how to do, to really take a pause and think about what I was going to say before I said it. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting better. I mentioned taking a pause. I realized that I really need to take a pause before I respond to a situation, because that gives me time to think about what kind of an outcome I want and how best to conduct myself in order to enjoy good results, happy results, harmonious results in my relationships. I attended a Dream Builder workshop put on by Mary Morrissey, and I'll put her information in the show notes. One of the lessons, or keys that she emphasized was notice what you're noticing. And I've talked about that in other episodes of this podcast. But what it means to me is to pay attention on purpose. And once I became aware of how I felt in correlation with actions that I took and thoughts that I thought I started working on intentionally becoming a more positive person, I decided that I had learned a lot from John Fleming. And again, those keys are be determined, do creative brainstorming, and ask for support from your friends. So I started working on my emotional regulation. This is important because when I am calm and thoughtful and listened to other people, I get much love and appreciation in return. My life is more harmonious. I don't carry around anger and negative energy, and when something tries to get me down, I bounce back a lot more quickly because I've learned emotional regulation skills. That's where this podcast is going. How do we overcome any barrier to a goal? How do we overcome barriers to having harmonious relationships? And how do we find peace in our world? How do we get what we need and feel good about it? In summary, things do happen to us that are out of our control. That started when I was two, when I was unable to breathe and placed in a croup tent. And my whole life changed before I even got to put a brushstroke of my own on the trajectory of my life. Going through all the experiences that I have, have brought me to a place where I know that the only person that I can influence and get to behave in ways that are supportive of me is myself. I've tried to adopt an attitude of mindfulness and to me that means noticing what I'm noticing and taking myself off autopilot and making a choice about the response that I want to make in order to get the outcome that I wish for. One way I do this is by employing a strategy that I developed called pBAR, and that's an acronym. P as in Paul b as in boy. AR. That stands for pause. Breathe. Assess. Respond. When we take a pause before we react, we allow ourselves time and mental space to consider what we need and be more effective in the choices we make. When we pause, then we can take a couple of cleansing breaths and that helps calm us by sending oxygen to our brain and through our body and helping relax us. When we assess, we consider what is happening inside us and outside of us and what we need to feel safe or comfortable. The answers to those questions help us make a choice that provides us with positive outcomes. I have learned that when something triggers me, I often enter into negative thinking. Negative thinking keeps me stuck. So the strategy is to ask myself, what can I think now that would be more helpful? What step can I take right now that would be helpful? I'm working on retraining my brain by interrupting those negative thoughts. I'm learning to live in the present moment, which means being aware on purpose and making choices in the moment that support my success and positive interactions with the people in my life. Finally, I decided to make a list of the things that used to give me joy and then I went about adding those back into my life. I remembered that I enjoyed singing and playing the Auto harp I had as a child. So I bought another auto harp. I remembered how much joy my husband's guide dogs and other people's dogs bring when I get to pet them and play with them and see them be goofy. And I determined that I was going to have another dog in my life. Now I have a white German shepherd named Phoenix who is 17 months old, and she does something every day that makes me laugh. When I get triggered, I'm much more able to interrupt that negative thinking and bounce back more quickly. Being thankful and grateful for where I am now in life is also very helpful. A couple of things that can help us with that are one, every night, list one to three things that you love about yourself. And the next night, do not repeat, but add to that list. Another strategy is called Glad, and that is an acronym which stands for G is something I'm grateful for, L is something I learned today, a is something I accomplished and D is something that delighted you. I like that last one the best because it reminds me I get to choose what attitude I approach life with. In closing, I want to share a poem that I wrote. It's entitled self affirmation. I have permission to take care of myself. I exercise and eat right because I love the me I see in the mirror when I take care of myself. I look at the world through clearer eyes as I rest quietly meditating upon the positives in my life. Inverting problems to find solutions. Decisions come more easily. I have patience with myself and others. Strength returns with my convictions. Peace and happiness reside in my heart. I feel joy in waking to a new day my energy is refreshed the.

Only way to do this is we're happy hope not.

Thank you for joining me today on Get What you need and feel good about it. Remember, when you speak up for yourself, assertively you will get what you need and feel good about it. You will also be showing respect for yourself and for the other people in your life who are important to you. Until next time, try thinking about it like Stephanie Lahart says it say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it.

Mean before it gets too late. And the only way to do this is with hope not. Yes, the only way to do this is with hope not made close.