February 9, 2023 - Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Samantha “Sammie” Porter now calls Minnesota home. As a child, she attended mainstream schools with a Deaf and Hard of Hearing program, up until junior year of high school when she transferred to the Wisconsin School for the Deaf, which she graduated from in 2008. Upon graduation, Sammie attended University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she studied Social Work. Sammie left in 2011 and continued her studies at Milwaukee Area Technical College to study Human Resources.
Sammie discovered that she had Usher’s Syndrome when she was fourteen years old. There was no family history, except for an aunt’s husband who had retinitis pigmentosa. She attended a DeafBlind retreat camp at Seabeck, located in Washington state in 2010, “and that’s how I discovered Seattle and fell in love with their nature and weather.” She moved there in 2012 and lived there for eight years. While Sammie lived in Seattle, she worked at the Lighthouse for the Blind, INC as the first DeafBlind production lead. She was also involved with the Seabeck camp team for four years (2014 to 2018). “I grew a lot of learning and challenges while living in Seattle and that’s how I learned to accept my identity as DeafBlind person.” Sammie has been involved with ProTactile Theater (PTT) when they first started as a project and later on grew into its own organization. She was an actor in some of their theater productions, “and it was good experience, and that’s how I learned about protactile and developed my skills from there.”
Sammie moved to Minnesota in 2021 due the rising cost of living and wanting to be near her family due to COVID. She worked in the mental health field under People Incorporated for a year. Currently, she has two part time jobs: DeafBlind mentor under Deaf Mentor Family Services under Lutheran Social Services, and DeafBlind Community Specialist under DeafBlind Services of Minnesota (DBSM). Additionally, Sammie was also the Director for DeafBlind Camp of Texas last year, and will continue to be director for this annual camp, both for the teen and adult camps. “I am really excited to work on that as well.”
As a DeafBlind mentor with Deaf Mentor Family Services (which is under Lutheran Social Services), Sammie works with families who have DeafBlind individuals, and teaches them how to connect and communicate with their children. “Working with DeafBlind individuals is my priority as DeafBlind mentor because I strongly believe it's the best way to connect, teach them how to use ProTactile, and set up a foundation from there. To help parents to feel like it’s OK, and give themselves a chance to believe in their children, to see them grow and accept their identity.” She also works as DeafBlind Community Specialist with DeafBlind Services of Minnesota where she works with clients and support services providers (SSP, which is slowly changing to CoNavigator - CNs). She provides ProTactile trainings for SSPs and works together with clients, Sammie is also responsible to set up one-on-one meetings with clients related to paperwork, handbook, listen to their needs, etc. Not just that, she also does presentations based on DeafBlindness and works with anyone who requests to receive training.
“I love both of my jobs because I have always enjoyed working with people in general. I feel connected more to when parents or people in the community feel struck and feel like they need to know how to work with DeafBlind individuals. I believe that it’s really important to have that ability of knowing how to work with DeafBlind individuals, because our community is smaller than the Deaf community, and we always have struggled with our communication and accessibility. Whenever I work with clients, it always inspires me to see a smile on their face. I feel inspired because I know there’s a different way of solving that problem.” Sammie points to families in particular, because “I grew up in a family where they would do anything to show me a lot of love. But there’s communication missing, and I wish my family would learn how to accept my blindness. I know it’s been struggling for them to feel that way and hard for them to accept that their daughter, their sister, their granddaughter eventually will become blind in the future. Who knows. I want to give comfort to families and empower them to believe in their children, and develop their autonomy skills. It’s really important to have that because a person can show others in the community that we can do it on our own feet.“
In her jobs, Sammie interacts with a wide range of folks who are still learning or may not know how to work with DeafBlind folks. “I am grateful for my both jobs because they already provided accessibility to match up with my needs.” Sammie shares some ways she addresses challenges at work, “I use high contrast colors on the PC, I size up the fonts, customize my emails, my background (environment to eliminate distractions), and make sure to rest my eyes to avoid eye strain.” she shares that the most challenging part of work is the transportation part, “because there's a huge difference between Seattle and Minnesota's transportation system—it’s quite a little bit difficult because I now have to depend on people to drive and start all over again to learn how to use buses because it’s different.” She points out how buses here in Minnesota often don’t show every single stop, “I would have to use my vision to look around and start to depend on my memory to help remember the places and locations while Seattle system already based on every single stop to where I can sleep, remember how many stops, and etc—it becomes comfortable for me to use public transportations more in Seattle than Minnesota.” Sammie shares another transportation frustration, “It frustrates me, when a client lives out of bounds to where there’s no buses, I would have to set up time and date to use my work SSP to drive me out there to meet with them.”
Sammie shares the following advice: “Make sure that you’re happy working. Make sure you are happy coming to work every day, put your best foot in. Self-advocacy is really important. I have to do that a lot in both of my jobs because it teaches myself what I actually need and helps me to feel connected with my supervisors and they have rights to know what’s going on because they can help you to find a solution in some way. If you’re not happy working, then why are you continuing to work in that job? Make sure you’re happy with where you are, your job, and invest in yourself to make differences in people, community, your team, and developing your self advocacy.”
Outside of work and volunteering, Sammie loves to travel, “I love going to different states. I love to travel, I would like to try my best to travel as much as I can. Travel is my way of release from reality, going on vacation somewhere different, meeting up with friends. One of my goals in the future is to travel out of the USA, I need to experience traveling to different countries.” She is also a coffee snob (“Seattle influenced me!”), she loves going to local coffee shops, local restaurants, sampling authentic food, and coffees. “They’re my thing now.”
Sammie shares some parting thoughts: “I have no regrets on being DeafBlind individual, because I wouldn’t trade it in for being deaf, being hearing. DeafBlind is what makes me who I am, helps me to focus on coping skills, it also helps me to grieve in easy processing. Honestly, I don’t see what’s wrong with DeafBlind. Yes, I do have my moments, I do have my frustrations, I do have my vision changes throughout the day. But in the end, I am Sammie. So if you’re struggling with yourself, it’s time to step out of shell and learn how to cope with it. There’s no one else that’s YOU. Just be proud of who you are.”
The #CanDoAnything campaign showcases people who are deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing at work, giving them an opportunity to share what they do at their jobs and explain how communication access works for them. This campaign shows what our community can do, which is anything!
