A Sign of Growth

When I had been sober for about a year, I overheard a fellow AA member discussing the lack of AA for the deaf. I became interested and later enrolled in beginning sign courses at a community college. My instructor continually reminded us that if we were to learn sign language, we must become involved with the deaf. I was fortunate because in one of my first classes, I met a woman who had recently lost her hearing and was just learning sign. She was married to an alcoholic so we started attending Al-Anon meetings together. I attempted to "interpret" meetings for her. I was really unqualified to interpret sign, but being a beginner herself, she would have been unable to follow a skilled interpreter anyway. Because she had lost her hearing as an adult, she had perfect speech so we were able to communicate fairly well.