FINDING MY PEOPLE

FINDING MY PEOPLE

For most of my life, blindness was something I lived with—but not necessarily something I built community around. FINDING MY PEOPLE

For most of my life, blindness was something I lived with—but not necessarily something I built community around.

I had been dealing with idiopathic panuveitis since high school. I lost the vision in my left eye during college. Over the years, there were flares, treatments, surgeries, remissions, setbacks, and all the usual medical chaos that comes with a condition nobody asked for.

But for a long time, I still had strong vision in my right eye. I was working, raising my son, building my business, speaking, helping clients, and doing the things I wanted to do.

I did not feel like I needed the blind community.

That is the honest truth.

I had interacted with disability spaces here and there, but most of those experiences had not made me feel particularly connected. Some spaces felt too formal. Some felt focused on problems without enough conversation about possibility. Some simply did not feel like me.

And because my day-to-day life had not changed very much, I did not feel urgency around finding people who understood vision loss.

Then my vision declined rapidly.

Suddenly, blindness was no longer sitting quietly in the background of my life. It was affecting how I worked, traveled, dressed, cooked, parented, moved through public spaces, and thought about my future.

I was losing independence faster than I was learning new skills.

I could no longer rely on the methods I had always used. I could not see menus, signs, colors, faces, or small details the same way. I could not easily navigate unfamiliar spaces. I could not always complete every step of a business task without help.

The world had not changed.

But the way I could access it had.

That kind of change is hard to explain to people who have never experienced it.

My family could see that I was struggling.

They could see me asking more questions.

They could see me needing rides, help with clothes, support with technology, or assistance getting around.

They could see what was happening.

But they could not feel what was happening.

They could not fully understand what it is like to wake up and realize another piece of the world has become harder to reach.

They could not fully understand the grief of losing skills you once used without thinking.

They could not fully understand the anxiety of entering a restaurant, airport, store, conference, or medical office and not knowing whether you will be able to navigate it safely—or whether the people there will be patient enough to help.

They cared.

But care and understanding are not always the same thing.

As my vision declined, I also sank into one of the deepest periods of depression and anxiety I had ever experienced.

I did not feel like myself.

I had always been confident, outgoing, solution-oriented, and independent. I was the person people called when they needed encouragement, strategy, a plan, or somebody to help them move forward.

Now I was struggling to leave the house.

I was sad all the time.

I was angry.

I was frustrated.

I was terrified that this version of me would never go away.

And one of the loneliest parts was feeling like the people closest to me simply did not get it.

That is when I reached out to a friend who was visually impaired.

The funny thing is that when we first met, I had significantly more vision than she did.

By the time I called her during this difficult season, I had significantly less.

Life is wild like that.

I told her the truth.

I told her I was devastated.

I told her I was depressed.

I told her I hated feeling like this because this was not who I believed myself to be.

I told her it was hard to get up, hard to leave the house, and hard to imagine how life would ever feel full again.

She listened.

Not in the polite way people listen while waiting to tell you everything will be fine.

She listened like someone who understood the language I was speaking because she had lived inside it too.

Then she told me about a gathering of blind and visually impaired people.

It was not close to my house.

I live in Hampton, Virginia, and the meeting was farther away, across bridges and through tunnels. It felt like I was preparing to go over the river and through the woods just to have lunch.

But I decided to go.

I talked to my mom, because she drives me to many places. She agreed to take me. We picked up my friend, and I jokingly told people I was going on a playdate.

That is how I ended up sitting in a restaurant surrounded by people with different levels of vision.

Some people could still read certain things.

Some had very limited vision.

Some were completely blind.

Some had been navigating blindness for years.

Others were still learning.

There was no single version of blindness in that room.

That mattered.

People often talk about the blind as though we are one group with one experience, one skill set, and one preferred way of doing things.

We are not.

When you meet one blind person, you have met one blind person.

One person may use Braille.

Another may rely on audio.

One person may love technology.

Another may prefer tactile systems.

One person may travel independently across the country.

Another may still be learning to walk to the mailbox.

One person may use a cane.

Another may use a guide dog.

One person may be comfortable asking strangers for help.

Another may want very specific assistance or none at all.

That restaurant was the first time in a long time that I did not feel behind.

I did not feel like the only person learning how to live in a world I could no longer see the same way.

We helped one another.

People read parts of the menu for those who needed it.

People explained how they handled everyday tasks.

People shared tools, tips, and stories.

And for the first time in a long time, I ordered my own food and felt independent.

That may sound like a tiny thing.

It was not tiny to me.

When I am out with family, people often help me with menus. Sometimes they read options. Sometimes they summarize. Sometimes, because everybody is hungry and ready to order, I feel rushed.

At that table, nobody was irritated that someone needed more time.

Nobody acted like accessibility was an inconvenience.

Nobody made me feel as though I was holding up the group.

We were simply people having lunch.

And I felt free.

I began asking questions I had been carrying around in my head.

How do you pour a drink without spilling it everywhere?

What kind of cane tips do you like?

How do you sign a receipt or check?

How do you find the bathroom in an unfamiliar restaurant?

How do you travel alone?

What do you do when you miss your seat in a theater?

How do you navigate with children?

How do you cook safely?

How do you know when people are talking to you?

How do you handle people who grab you without asking?

How do you stop feeling like you are starting life over?

They answered.

Sometimes with practical advice.

Sometimes with stories.

Sometimes with laughter.

They told me about falling.

They told me about walking into things.

They told me about missing seats, getting turned around, bumping cabinets, struggling to walk children to school, or ending up somewhere other than where they meant to go.

And something unexpected happened.

Their stories did not scare me.

They comforted me.

Because I realized I was not failing.

I was learning.

I had been judging myself for struggling with skills that other people had spent years developing.

I felt like a baby learning to walk, and I hated that feeling.

But sitting with people who had already gone through that stage helped me understand that needing time did not mean I was incapable.

It meant I was new.

That distinction changed something in me.

I was not as far behind as I thought.

I was not broken.

I was not the only person who had cried, gotten angry, felt embarrassed, become frustrated, or wanted to stay home because leaving felt like too much work.

I was simply in transition.

And I had finally found people who understood the transition without needing a full explanation.

That is one of the gifts of community.

Community does not always solve your problem.

Sometimes it gives you language for the problem.

Sometimes it gives you practical tools.

Sometimes it gives you a safe place to admit that you are scared.

Sometimes it simply lets you laugh without having to explain why something is both funny and frustrating at the same time.

That day also expanded my idea of what was possible.

Before that meeting, I had begun quietly crossing things off my life.

Movies felt pointless because I could not see the screen.

Travel felt too dangerous.

Going out alone felt unrealistic.

Plays, community events, unfamiliar restaurants, and public transportation all felt like things that belonged to the version of me who could see better.

Then people began telling me how they did those things.

They told me about audio description at movie theaters.

They told me about accessible devices at live performances.

They told me about traveling by train.

They told me about going to events independently.

They told me about apps, services, mobility training, and asking for the right kind of help.

They were not pretending blindness was easy.

They were showing me that difficulty and possibility can exist in the same place.

That meeting did not magically erase my anxiety.

I did not leave the restaurant suddenly ready to travel across the country alone with complete confidence.

But I did leave with evidence.

Evidence that blind people were living full lives.

Evidence that independence could be learned.

Evidence that there were tools I had not tried.

Evidence that I could stop assuming every door had closed simply because I could no longer open it the same way.

Since then, I have gone to the movies with my son and used audio description.

I have attended major networking events with hundreds of people.

I have worked registration at a client event while using my cane.

I have taken paratransit to appointments by myself.

I have walked around my block.

I have started mobility training.

I have tried new restaurants.

I have asked for help more clearly.

I have become more willing to test what is possible instead of deciding in advance that it is not.

Not every attempt has gone smoothly.

I have gotten turned around.

I have walked into a pole.

I have needed to call my mom when I could not find my way back to a table.

I have felt anxious, embarrassed, and frustrated.

But I have also learned that independence is not a performance.

It is not about proving that I never need anyone.

It is about having choices.

It is about knowing how to use tools, people, services, technology, and skills so that my whole life is not controlled by somebody else’s availability.

The blind community helped me see that.

And yes, I know the irony in that sentence.

They helped me see that there are many ways to build a life.

They helped me see that asking questions is not weakness.

They helped me see that I was allowed to be new at blindness, even though I had technically lived with vision loss for years.

They helped me see that community could hold both practical advice and emotional truth.

They also reminded me of something I now believe deeply: people need spaces where they do not have to translate themselves constantly.

That does not mean we should only spend time with people exactly like us.

I love my family.

I value my sighted friends.

I work with people who have many different abilities, backgrounds, and experiences.

But there is relief in being around someone who already understands why a restaurant menu can create anxiety.

There is relief in not having to explain why a changed gate at an airport can become a crisis.

There is relief in being able to say, “I walked into a pole,” and hearing someone reply, “Girl, me too.”

There is relief in knowing that your frustration is not an overreaction.

There is relief in being seen.

That experience has shaped the way I think about Blind Boss and the community I want to build around it.

I do not want this to be a place where disabled entrepreneurs are only told to be inspirational.

I do not want a space full of polished success stories that skip over the hard parts.

I do not want people to feel pressured to perform resilience every day.

Sometimes resilience is exhausting.

Sometimes people do not need another person telling them how strong they are.

Sometimes they need a system.

Sometimes they need a resource.

Sometimes they need somebody to say, “That really does suck.”

Sometimes they need permission to laugh.

Sometimes they need to ask a question they are embarrassed to ask anywhere else.

And sometimes they need to sit beside somebody who has already walked a little farther down the road.

That is the kind of community I want Blind Boss to become.

A place where we can talk about business and still talk about grief.

A place where we can share tools and still admit that we are tired.

A place where people with seen and unseen disabilities can discuss what success looks like for them—not what somebody else decided it should look like.

A place where we can talk about AI, systems, sales, leadership, parenting, marriage, transportation, mental health, clothes, food, travel, and all the messy parts in between.

A place where practical strategy and honest humanity can live together.

Because disability does not exist in one small corner of life.

It touches everything.

And community should be big enough to hold everything too.

Finding my people did not mean finding people who had all the answers.

It meant finding people who understood the questions.

That changed me.

It gave me courage to try again.

It gave me permission to be a beginner.

It gave me examples of lives that were different from mine but still full.

It reminded me that I was not alone, not incapable, and not finished.

Sometimes the first step toward rebuilding your life is not another plan.

Sometimes it is sitting at a table with people who already understand why the plan had to change.

I had been dealing with idiopathic panuveitis since high school. I lost the vision in my left eye during college. Over the years, there were flares, treatments, surgeries, remissions, setbacks, and all the usual medical chaos that comes with a condition nobody asked for.

But for a long time, I still had strong vision in my right eye. I was working, raising my son, building my business, speaking, helping clients, and doing the things I wanted to do.

I did not feel like I needed the blind community.

That is the honest truth.

I had interacted with disability spaces here and there, but most of those experiences had not made me feel particularly connected. Some spaces felt too formal. Some felt focused on problems without enough conversation about possibility. Some simply did not feel like me.

And because my day-to-day life had not changed very much, I did not feel urgency around finding people who understood vision loss.

Then my vision declined rapidly.

Suddenly, blindness was no longer sitting quietly in the background of my life. It was affecting how I worked, traveled, dressed, cooked, parented, moved through public spaces, and thought about my future.

I was losing independence faster than I was learning new skills.

I could no longer rely on the methods I had always used. I could not see menus, signs, colors, faces, or small details the same way. I could not easily navigate unfamiliar spaces. I could not always complete every step of a business task without help.

The world had not changed.

But the way I could access it had.

That kind of change is hard to explain to people who have never experienced it.

My family could see that I was struggling.

They could see me asking more questions.

They could see me needing rides, help with clothes, support with technology, or assistance getting around.

They could see what was happening.

But they could not feel what was happening.

They could not fully understand what it is like to wake up and realize another piece of the world has become harder to reach.

They could not fully understand the grief of losing skills you once used without thinking.

They could not fully understand the anxiety of entering a restaurant, airport, store, conference, or medical office and not knowing whether you will be able to navigate it safely—or whether the people there will be patient enough to help.

They cared.

But care and understanding are not always the same thing.

As my vision declined, I also sank into one of the deepest periods of depression and anxiety I had ever experienced.

I did not feel like myself.

I had always been confident, outgoing, solution-oriented, and independent. I was the person people called when they needed encouragement, strategy, a plan, or somebody to help them move forward.

Now I was struggling to leave the house.

I was sad all the time.

I was angry.

I was frustrated.

I was terrified that this version of me would never go away.

And one of the loneliest parts was feeling like the people closest to me simply did not get it.

That is when I reached out to a friend who was visually impaired.

The funny thing is that when we first met, I had significantly more vision than she did.

By the time I called her during this difficult season, I had significantly less.

Life is wild like that.

I told her the truth.

I told her I was devastated.

I told her I was depressed.

I told her I hated feeling like this because this was not who I believed myself to be.

I told her it was hard to get up, hard to leave the house, and hard to imagine how life would ever feel full again.

She listened.

Not in the polite way people listen while waiting to tell you everything will be fine.

She listened like someone who understood the language I was speaking because she had lived inside it too.

Then she told me about a gathering of blind and visually impaired people.

It was not close to my house.

I live in Hampton, Virginia, and the meeting was farther away, across bridges and through tunnels. It felt like I was preparing to go over the river and through the woods just to have lunch.

But I decided to go.

I talked to my mom, because she drives me to many places. She agreed to take me. We picked up my friend, and I jokingly told people I was going on a playdate.

That is how I ended up sitting in a restaurant surrounded by people with different levels of vision.

Some people could still read certain things.

Some had very limited vision.

Some were completely blind.

Some had been navigating blindness for years.

Others were still learning.

There was no single version of blindness in that room.

That mattered.

People often talk about the blind as though we are one group with one experience, one skill set, and one preferred way of doing things.

We are not.

When you meet one blind person, you have met one blind person.

One person may use Braille.

Another may rely on audio.

One person may love technology.

Another may prefer tactile systems.

One person may travel independently across the country.

Another may still be learning to walk to the mailbox.

One person may use a cane.

Another may use a guide dog.

One person may be comfortable asking strangers for help.

Another may want very specific assistance or none at all.

That restaurant was the first time in a long time that I did not feel behind.

I did not feel like the only person learning how to live in a world I could no longer see the same way.

We helped one another.

People read parts of the menu for those who needed it.

People explained how they handled everyday tasks.

People shared tools, tips, and stories.

And for the first time in a long time, I ordered my own food and felt independent.

That may sound like a tiny thing.

It was not tiny to me.

When I am out with family, people often help me with menus. Sometimes they read options. Sometimes they summarize. Sometimes, because everybody is hungry and ready to order, I feel rushed.

At that table, nobody was irritated that someone needed more time.

Nobody acted like accessibility was an inconvenience.

Nobody made me feel as though I was holding up the group.

We were simply people having lunch.

And I felt free.

I began asking questions I had been carrying around in my head.

How do you pour a drink without spilling it everywhere?

What kind of cane tips do you like?

How do you sign a receipt or check?

How do you find the bathroom in an unfamiliar restaurant?

How do you travel alone?

What do you do when you miss your seat in a theater?

How do you navigate with children?

How do you cook safely?

How do you know when people are talking to you?

How do you handle people who grab you without asking?

How do you stop feeling like you are starting life over?

They answered.

Sometimes with practical advice.

Sometimes with stories.

Sometimes with laughter.

They told me about falling.

They told me about walking into things.

They told me about missing seats, getting turned around, bumping cabinets, struggling to walk children to school, or ending up somewhere other than where they meant to go.

And something unexpected happened.

Their stories did not scare me.

They comforted me.

Because I realized I was not failing.

I was learning.

I had been judging myself for struggling with skills that other people had spent years developing.

I felt like a baby learning to walk, and I hated that feeling.

But sitting with people who had already gone through that stage helped me understand that needing time did not mean I was incapable.

It meant I was new.

That distinction changed something in me.

I was not as far behind as I thought.

I was not broken.

I was not the only person who had cried, gotten angry, felt embarrassed, become frustrated, or wanted to stay home because leaving felt like too much work.

I was simply in transition.

And I had finally found people who understood the transition without needing a full explanation.

That is one of the gifts of community.

Community does not always solve your problem.

Sometimes it gives you language for the problem.

Sometimes it gives you practical tools.

Sometimes it gives you a safe place to admit that you are scared.

Sometimes it simply lets you laugh without having to explain why something is both funny and frustrating at the same time.

That day also expanded my idea of what was possible.

Before that meeting, I had begun quietly crossing things off my life.

Movies felt pointless because I could not see the screen.

Travel felt too dangerous.

Going out alone felt unrealistic.

Plays, community events, unfamiliar restaurants, and public transportation all felt like things that belonged to the version of me who could see better.

Then people began telling me how they did those things.

They told me about audio description at movie theaters.

They told me about accessible devices at live performances.

They told me about traveling by train.

They told me about going to events independently.

They told me about apps, services, mobility training, and asking for the right kind of help.

They were not pretending blindness was easy.

They were showing me that difficulty and possibility can exist in the same place.

That meeting did not magically erase my anxiety.

I did not leave the restaurant suddenly ready to travel across the country alone with complete confidence.

But I did leave with evidence.

Evidence that blind people were living full lives.

Evidence that independence could be learned.

Evidence that there were tools I had not tried.

Evidence that I could stop assuming every door had closed simply because I could no longer open it the same way.

Since then, I have gone to the movies with my son and used audio description.

I have attended major networking events with hundreds of people.

I have worked registration at a client event while using my cane.

I have taken paratransit to appointments by myself.

I have walked around my block.

I have started mobility training.

I have tried new restaurants.

I have asked for help more clearly.

I have become more willing to test what is possible instead of deciding in advance that it is not.

Not every attempt has gone smoothly.

I have gotten turned around.

I have walked into a pole.

I have needed to call my mom when I could not find my way back to a table.

I have felt anxious, embarrassed, and frustrated.

But I have also learned that independence is not a performance.

It is not about proving that I never need anyone.

It is about having choices.

It is about knowing how to use tools, people, services, technology, and skills so that my whole life is not controlled by somebody else’s availability.

The blind community helped me see that.

And yes, I know the irony in that sentence.

They helped me see that there are many ways to build a life.

They helped me see that asking questions is not weakness.

They helped me see that I was allowed to be new at blindness, even though I had technically lived with vision loss for years.

They helped me see that community could hold both practical advice and emotional truth.

They also reminded me of something I now believe deeply: people need spaces where they do not have to translate themselves constantly.

That does not mean we should only spend time with people exactly like us.

I love my family.

I value my sighted friends.

I work with people who have many different abilities, backgrounds, and experiences.

But there is relief in being around someone who already understands why a restaurant menu can create anxiety.

There is relief in not having to explain why a changed gate at an airport can become a crisis.
There is relief in being able to say, “I walked into a pole,” and hearing someone reply, “Girl, me too.”

There is relief in knowing that your frustration is not an overreaction.

There is relief in being seen.

That experience has shaped the way I think about Blind Boss and the community I want to build around it.

I do not want this to be a place where disabled entrepreneurs are only told to be inspirational.

I do not want a space full of polished success stories that skip over the hard parts.

I do not want people to feel pressured to perform resilience every day.

Sometimes resilience is exhausting.

Sometimes people do not need another person telling them how strong they are.

Sometimes they need a system.
Sometimes they need a resource.

Sometimes they need somebody to say, “That really does suck.”

Sometimes they need permission to laugh.

Sometimes they need to ask a question they are embarrassed to ask anywhere else.

And sometimes they need to sit beside somebody who has already walked a little farther down the road.

That is the kind of community I want Blind Boss to become.

A place where we can talk about business and still talk about grief.

A place where we can share tools and still admit that we are tired.

A place where people with seen and unseen disabilities can discuss what success looks like for them—not what somebody else decided it should look like.

A place where we can talk about AI, systems, sales, leadership, parenting, marriage, transportation, mental health, clothes, food, travel, and all the messy parts in between.

A place where practical strategy and honest humanity can live together.

Because disability does not exist in one small corner of life.

It touches everything.

And community should be big enough to hold everything too.

Finding my people did not mean finding people who had all the answers.

It meant finding people who understood the questions.

That changed me.

It gave me courage to try again.

It gave me permission to be a beginner.

It gave me examples of lives that were different from mine but still full.

It reminded me that I was not alone, not incapable, and not finished.

Sometimes the first step toward rebuilding your life is not another plan.

Sometimes it is sitting at a table with people who already understand why the plan had to change.