Speaker bridges gap between many

By Nicole Donner

Motivational speaker and comedian Debbie Wooten has laughed through tears and helped others find the humor in situations where all hope seems lost with the help of personal stories of triumphing polio, meeting Dr. Martin Luther King and fighting a world full of “can’t.”

Wooten was invited to visit MHCC Wednesday for the Women’s Herstory Celebration after Victoria Flagg, director of the program, saw her at the American Association of Women in Community Colleges (AAWCC) last year and personally approached her. After speaking at several special events and colleges such as Concordia University in Portland and Blue Mountain College in Pendleton, Wooten was keen on accepting.

“I speak from my heart and my uterus,” said Wooten, “[where] the pulse of my life is encompassed.”

Wooten talks of her experience with living with polio and how she was placed in a “polio school,” separate from regular kids. As a young child, Wooten explained, her doctor told her parents she would never be able to have kids because of her disease. Her parents didn’t tell her this secret and she went on to give birth to five children. “You can do a lot in the world if you don’t know you can’t do it,” said Wooten.

Wooten also recalled the time she met Martin Luther King as a child. She said she was embarrassingly shy, the experience made an everlasting impression on her.

During her performance, she continued to shake hands with members of the audience in the front row and encouraged them to share the handshake with everybody behind them, explaining, “You just shook the hand that shook that hand that shook my hand that shook Dr. King’s hand.”

Putting the humor aside for a few moments, Wooten also shared insight on troubled marriages she had experienced before, explaining her history with drug users, alcoholism, spousal violence and suicide.

“I had to be my first cheerleader.”

Wooten has performed with Jamie Foxx and Tommy Davidson in the past and will be traveling to Kansas City next month for another performance.

“I’ve been gifted with a bridge, an indivisible bridge that bridges me to so many different kinds of people from different walks of life. That message is international, through the color line, through the religious line, through sexual orientation line, through the age line.

It’s a bridge that bridges people.”