Adriene has never seen the face of her daughters. Yet he learned to recognize needs, fears and demands through signals that many parents, while seeing, may not notice.
She was born with a rare condition that prevented her eyes from forming during gestation. For her, therefore, motherhood could not rely on one of the tools that seem more natural when a child grows: the look.
Become a single mother of two girls, Adriene had to build her own way of dealing with them.
He turned sounds and physical contact into information. He learned to listen carefully every variation in the crying of his daughters, until they knew when they were hungry, when they were bored or when they needed his help.
It was a different form of attention, developed day after day through experience.
When Adriene began to tell her everyday life about social media, however, the doubts of others came.
How can a blind woman take care of two girls alone?
Someone even came to imagine that their daughters had to take care of their mother.
The reality told by his family was the opposite: when the girls were small and completely dependent on an adult, it was Adriene who did everything for them.
He couldn't look at an expression on their face to immediately understand what they were trying. He couldn't watch them grow up. He had to collect information through voice, noise, movement and contact.
And this is perhaps the most significant aspect of his history.
Knowing a child deeply does not only mean looking at him. It means learning his language, recognizing his signals and realizing when something changes.
Adriene never saw the face of her girls.
But he found his way to meet her.