Speaker emphasizes kindness
Posted on: Dec 6, 2022
Guest speaker Jonathan Friesen visited Delano High School on Wednesday, Nov. 16, to present his “Make Them Visible” talk to students in grades 7-12.
The award-winning young adult author, international speaker, storyteller and educator shared about his journey with Tourette syndrome and epilepsy, and how every person asks two questions: “Does anybody see me?” and “Does anybody like what they see?”
“You have words that you can say that give life to each other,” Friesen said. “We all have a light. Someone else needs to see it.”
Friesen explained that his medical conditions, which developed when he was 6 years old, mostly went unnoticed during his elementary years, but worsened and made him an outcast by seventh grade.
“I was twitching and shaking all the time,” he said. “(School) wasn’t a happy place.”
After suffering a severe seizure in front of his classmates, Friesen finally gave up trying to fit in.
“I thought, ‘I am a freak. Who is going to want to spend time with me?’” he said. “I went back to school the next day and there was nobody.”
He spent most of the next two years shut in his bedroom at home, until a girl came to visit him.
“She just talked to me and smiled at me. I said not one word,” Friesen said. “Then she got up and left, but she didn’t go alone. It was like she sucked something out of the room. It was that hate I had for myself.”
He gradually returned to school and managed to graduate high school and college before becoming a special education teacher.
“One person, one human being, made me visible,” he said.
He explained that everyone asks those two questions mentioned above in their own way, whether through social media posts or other methods of presenting themselves. He added that he also spoken in prisons, where inmates have been desperate to share their life stories with him because “they are in the most invisible place on earth.”
“If those guys needed to unload, tough as they were, I’m guessing you do to,” Friesen told the audience. “I hope you have a lot of people in your life who can help you unload. I hope you have parents and friends and siblings. And you have each other.”
He encouraged students to reach out to those around them, no matter how different, and show life-giving kindness.
“I don’t know how much time you have with each other,” he said, referring to graduation. “Some of you may only have one more year. You have the words. Seems like a nice time to say them.”
Post Categories: High School