Sick Cells interviewed Jody, an SCD Warrior, Christian artist, and SCD advocate about his passion for music, his experience being a single parent living with sickle cell, and his advice to fellow warriors.
Sick Cells interviewed Jody, an SCD Warrior, Christian artist, and SCD advocate about his passion for music, his experience being a single parent living with sickle cell, and his advice to fellow warriors.
“My mom always loved music. When I was a kid, I used to always go to sleep with a little bitty transistor radio. So when my mom passed in ’99, I thought I wanted to do something in her memory. So the first song that I wrote was called “Always Love You Mom” and then “Reminiscing”, and from that came 10 albums. I’ve been doing it for 30+ years now. I [perform] at different churches, schools, and colleges.”
“It was very challenging, but I had a great support team with me, my wife. So after my wife passed, I had to be a father and a mother and it was very challenging. And during this process, I didn’t tell my daughters I had a stroke because I was so stressed out and I didn’t want to disappoint my daughters. So I ended up moving out, ended up homeless because I didn’t want to go home and my wife wasn’t there. I wasn’t in my right frame of thinking. But what made me to keep pressing, I met a pastor. He told me a situation that he was with his wife 40 years and God just took her back. So we don’t really own anything down here and he said, “You have to be here for your girls,” and that made me really fight to keep living for my daughters.”
“The best advice I can give to a single parent, for me, this worked for me. Number one, keep God number one, and have patience through the process. And always think about them, especially if they’re younger. You don’t want to have young kids and you leave them behind because you’re not taking care of your health or anything like that. So number one is patience and take care of your health and keep God number one.”
“You know what really helped me? I know this may sound strange, but I’m going to word it like this. My mom had 11 of us. Same mom, same dad. Now it’s 10 of us left. I was the only one born with sickle cell. As I got older, I just started to embrace it. And basically, to me it’s like the sickness that gave me life. That’s the title of my book. So instead of this disease taking me out, I’m going to live through this disease by sharing my story, by being a blessing to other people, and never make nothing about myself. So I learned to embrace it. I said, “You know what? I have this disease. Now what to do? Just keep on going and keeping God number one.” I haven’t been in the hospital since 1994.”