Jessica Burson

Title of Tip: Attitude Change 

Name: Jessica Burson, 44

Description: Since childhood, people have made fun of me for how I talk. I was born with a cleft palate, so when I did speak, which wasn’t often, people didn’t understand me. They would ask me, “What, what, what?” and I’m like, “You’re making fun of me! Clearly, you can understand me.” So naturally, I was born to fight. I was pretty nasty; if you said something wrong, I would beat you up. I didn’t care who you were. I was like Jekyll and Hyde. I went to prison 28 times for beating somebody up. When I was in rehab, it dawned on me, Jessica, why don’t you change your life around and see what it is like to smile at everyone instead of being mean and nasty? Now, I don’t let many things get to me like they used to. Some things that used to be important to me are not important anymore. I used to think the world would fall apart if my house weren’t clean. It does not matter to me anymore. I don’t even have a home to clean. I’ve grown tremendously from 20 to 40; it’s like a 180 for real. Even today, some people don’t understand me, so I made a rule: if they ask “What?” three times, I’ll sit and analyze it. If I feel they’re making fun of me, I won’t answer the fourth time, and I’ll walk away. This helps with my attitude: not worrying about people, what they say, or what they think.

Instructions: To change your attitude, I recommend changing people, places, and things, depending on where you are in life.

People: This is probably the easiest thing to change, whether you are old or young. You can decide who you want to spend time with. Hang out with happier people who are self-reliable, enjoy life, accept you for who you are, and don’t want to use you. 

Places: This one is harder if you are young. If you are an adult and say you are tired and unhappy with where you live, move to someplace that is the opposite of what you don’t like about the place you live. If you are tired of the cold, move someplace warm with sunshine. If you don’t like the friends you have where you live, move to a place where people are strangers. You can also change your housing if you don’t like where you live. Changing your place brings you to another world, a completely different mindset, where you can be happy, clean, and a new person. People don’t know who the person that you left behind was. When I left Ohio for Alabama, people didn’t know the Jessica in Ohio, so I made a whole new Jessica. Maybe your old attitude won’t show because you won’t be around people who used to bring it out.

Things: Change your wardrobe if you can. I stick to this rule: If I buy a new outfit, I throw one out. Wearing new clothes makes you feel like a new person.

Learning: Helping others has helped me change my attitude. For a while, I worked with kids who had multiple handicaps. Some were in wheelchairs or bedridden, and others could not talk at all. I taught one kid how to eat so he could live on his own with a live-in nurse. This helped change my attitude towards life because you never know what someone’s story is, so as I got older, I would keep that in the back of my mind.Story: When I was in high school, I did not know I was at a fork in my life —right or left; which way do you go? I didn’t like school, so I knew I did not want to continue learning that way. I took the bad road for longer than I care to admit. Looking back on my life now, as I work to be a nicer person, I remember one experience I held on to in my youth. I was helping a student with a disability become more self-sufficient. I got into trouble in school because of my attitude and had to do my study hall work with him as a punishment. He was 19 but didn’t know how to feed himself. He was living in a nursing home, and their responsibility was to help him shower and take his medicine; everything else he was supposed to do on his own. He wanted to learn how to make a sandwich, and it had been two years, and no one would teach him. He asked me over and over again to help him. I thought, Oh my God, what will I do? I can’t teach him; I can barely teach myself. So, one day, I went in there with my attitude, “I ain’t doing this stuff no more; who do they think I am? Are you going to make your sandwich today? I don’t want to be here, and I don’t care if you make it.” He looked at me and crumpled up his bread in anger, and I did the same thing with the rest of the loaf. Then I said, “I guess you’re not making it because now you don’t have any bread.” I stormed out the door and didn’t return for two weeks. I got in big trouble, and the school made me return. Who would want somebody like that? He didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I was just like him; how people treated him was like how they treated me because of how I talked. Treat people like you want to be treated, right? That made me realize that he did what I did to other people when I was not getting my way or didn’t want to do something. After that, we became best friends. I taught him how to make sandwiches and how to eat. I also taught him how to crawl; he didn’t even know how to crawl. I was like him; I came out fighting for my first breath because of a cleft palate. I could have been not breathing at all, but God brought me here for some reason. I realized at that moment when we were crumbling up that bread that I could be a different person. We laugh about that still today.