WHY I LAUGH FIRST

WHY I LAUGH FIRST

People sometimes get nervous when I laugh at something connected to my disability.

They do not know whether they are allowed to laugh too.

They pause. They look concerned. They try to decide whether the moment is tragic, inspirational, uncomfortable, or funny.

Meanwhile, I am already laughing.

That is usually the simplest answer.

Sometimes the moment is funny.

Not everything that happens to a disabled person has to become a life lesson wrapped in sad music. Sometimes I walk into something. Sometimes I send a message to the wrong group. Sometimes I fall in the grass after teasing everybody else for falling. Sometimes the universe hands me a ridiculous situation, and I choose to laugh before embarrassment gets the first word.

Humor has always been part of who I am.

I am naturally confident, loud, expressive, and willing to tell a story on myself. Disability did not remove that part of my personality. If anything, I need it more now.

Because when your life includes surgeries, medication, depression, inaccessible systems, transportation drama, awkward public interactions, and having to relearn basic tasks, you need somewhere for the pressure to go.

For me, sometimes it leaves through laughter.

LAUGHTER IS NOT DENIAL

I want to be clear about something.

Laughing does not mean the situation never hurts.

It does not mean I think blindness is easy.

It does not mean every embarrassing moment should be turned into entertainment for other people.

It does not mean I am giving strangers permission to mock disabled people.

Humor and pain can exist in the same story.

I can laugh about walking into a pole and still be frustrated that public spaces are difficult to navigate.

I can joke about needing help and still hate feeling dependent.

I can tell a funny airport story and still believe airport assistance needs serious improvement.

I can laugh about a mistake while also acknowledging the fear, anxiety, or exhaustion underneath it.

That is not denial.

That is emotional range.

People sometimes want disability stories to fit into one clean category.

Either the disabled person is devastated, or they are inspirational.

Either the moment is tragic, or it is a triumph.

Either we should cry, or we should clap.

Real life is messier than that.

Sometimes I am angry and amused at the same time.

Sometimes I am embarrassed and proud.

Sometimes I cry first and laugh later.

Sometimes I laugh immediately because the alternative is standing in the middle of an airport acting like I did not just walk directly into a giant white pillar.

THE POLE

I was in an airport terminal, trying to be independent.

That phrase alone should probably warn you that something was about to happen.

I had my cane. People were sitting around the gate. I was walking through the terminal, focused on getting where I needed to go.

Then I walked straight into a large white pillar.

Smack.

Not a gentle little tap.

I hit that pole with enough confidence that the people around me definitely noticed.

I leaned over and started laughing.

I knew everybody nearby was probably struggling internally. They wanted to laugh because it was objectively funny, but they did not want to look like horrible people laughing at a blind woman.

That awkward silence almost made it funnier.

Sometimes you have to give people permission to laugh.

I was not hurt. I was not in danger. I was embarrassed, but I was okay.

So I laughed.

The pole had already won the first round. I was not going to let shame win the second.

That moment could have become evidence that I should stop walking independently in public.

It could have become another reason to stay seated, hold onto somebody, or avoid unfamiliar spaces.

Instead, it became a story.

A funny one.

Humor helped shrink the moment back to its actual size.

I walked into a pole.

That was embarrassing.

It was not the end of my independence.

IT WAS MY TURN TO FALL

My family is a village. We are close, involved in each other’s lives, and regularly in one another’s business.

For a couple of weeks, it seemed like everybody in the family kept falling.

My mom fell.

Some of the kids fell.

One child fell down my steps.

Every few days, somebody had a new falling story.

Naturally, I joked about them.

Then one day I left my house, missed something near the edge of the walkway, tripped, and ended up laid out in the grass in front of my home.

The neighbors could probably see me.

I was not hurt, so I stayed there for a moment and laughed.

It was my turn.

I took a picture and sent it to the family group chat.

They asked why they were looking at grass and mulch.

I told them, “Because I am laying on the ground in front of my house. It was my turn to fall.”

That story still makes me laugh because the timing was perfect.

I had spent days joking about everybody else, and life said, “Do not worry, Cori. We did not forget you.”

Falling can be serious. I know that.

But this particular fall was not.

The ability to recognize the difference matters.

If I treated every stumble as proof that I was fragile, I would become afraid of my own body.

If my family treated every mistake like an emergency, I would feel watched instead of supported.

Laughter helped us say, “Yep, that happened,” without turning it into a crisis.

CRAPPING AROUND THE WORLD

One of the strangest traditions in my family is that I take bathroom selfies.

Not inappropriate pictures. Let us not get carried away.

Just selfies of my face while I am in bathrooms during trips, events, and outings.

For years, it has been a running joke that one day I will create a coffee-table book called Crapping Around the World.

I have taken pictures in regular bathrooms, fancy bathrooms, hotel bathrooms, and probably a porta-potty or two.

The tradition existed before my vision became this limited.

As my sight changed, taking the picture became more complicated. I could not always tell whether the camera was positioned correctly or whether I was sending the image to the right conversation.

On one trip, I asked my mom to take the picture for me.

She refused.

She said she was not taking a picture of me in the bathroom.

So I decided to do it myself.

I took the selfie and sent it to what I believed was my family group chat.

I saw the little bubbles that indicated multiple people were in the chat, so I assumed I had done it correctly.

I moved on with my day.

Later, one of my business accountability partners called me.

She asked, “Are you okay?”

I said, “Yes. Why?”

She asked, “Are you still in the bathroom?”

That is when I learned I had sent my bathroom selfie to my business accountability group instead of my family.

Now I had to explain several things.

Why I sent a bathroom picture.

Why taking bathroom pictures was a family tradition.

What Crapping Around the World meant.

Why they should not be alarmed.

That could have been painfully embarrassing.

Instead, it became part of the group culture.

At later conferences, my accountability partners joined me for bathroom pictures.

Now we have a collection.

A mistake became a tradition.

That is what humor can do.

It can turn an awkward moment into connection.

THE STORY IS MINE TO TELL

There is an important difference between laughing with me and laughing at me.

I get to decide when a story feels funny.

I get to decide which parts of my disability I want to share publicly.

I get to tell the joke from my point of view.

That ownership matters.

Disabled people are often treated like public property. Strangers ask personal medical questions. People stare. They touch mobility devices. They make assumptions. They tell stories about us without asking whether we want to be part of the lesson.

Humor should not become another way to take control away from the person living the experience.

When I make a joke about walking into a pole, I am choosing the frame.

I am not saying it is acceptable for someone to intentionally place obstacles in my way.

I am not saying blindness is a punchline.

I am saying that one human being had an awkward human moment, and I am allowed to laugh at it.

The joke is not that I am blind.

The joke is that I was trying to be grown and independent and confidently walked into a giant object.

The disability is part of the setup, but my humanity is the reason the story works.

Everybody has walked into something, sent a message to the wrong person, fallen after teasing somebody else, or made a mistake in public.

Mine may happen differently, but the embarrassment is universal.

That is one reason these stories help people connect with me outside of a polished business brand.

They remind people that I am not only a CEO, speaker, coach, mother, wife, or disabled woman.

I am a person with a ridiculous life sometimes.

Just like everybody else.

HUMOR LOWERS THE TEMPERATURE

Disability can make rooms tense.

People do not know what to say.

They are afraid of asking the wrong question.

They overcorrect.

They become serious, cautious, or overly helpful.

Sometimes I can feel the entire energy shift when people notice my cane.

A little humor can lower the temperature.

It tells people they can relax.

It creates room for honest conversation.

It allows us to talk about hard things without acting like every sentence belongs in a medical brochure.

That matters because I do not want Blind Boss to become a place where people only come to feel sad or inspired.

I want us to laugh here.

I want us to cry here.

I want people to ask questions.

I want disabled entrepreneurs to share the ridiculous things that happen when technology fails, transportation disappears, accessibility tools malfunction, relatives say the wrong thing, or we confidently enter the wrong room.

Life is already serious enough.

Community becomes stronger when people can tell the whole truth, including the funny parts.

Sometimes laughter is what makes a difficult story safe enough to share.

Sometimes it is what helps another person say, “That happened to me too.”

Sometimes it is the first bridge between pity and real connection.

I do not want people feeling sorry for me from a distance.

I would rather they sit beside me and laugh at a story I chose to tell.

HUMOR HELPS ME RECOVER

Embarrassment can be dangerous when it becomes avoidance.

One awkward restaurant experience can make you stop trying new restaurants.

One difficult trip can make you stop traveling.

One fall can make you afraid to walk outside.

One technology mistake can make you hand every task to somebody else.

One public misunderstanding can make you want to disappear.

Humor helps me recover faster.

It interrupts the story that says, “You looked foolish, so you should never do that again.”

Instead, it says, “Well, that was a mess. What did we learn?”

That shift is practical.

When I laugh, I am not avoiding the lesson.

I can still ask what went wrong.

Did I need more training?

Was the environment inaccessible?

Did I rush?

Did I need clearer instructions?

Was the tool not working?

Could I prepare differently next time?

But I do not have to punish myself while I evaluate it.

Shame is not a requirement for growth.

I can learn and laugh.

I can adjust and keep my dignity.

I can be accountable without acting like I committed a crime because I made a mistake.

That is especially important for disabled people because the world often treats our mistakes as evidence that we should not have tried.

A sighted person gets turned around in a hotel and it is a normal travel problem.

A blind person gets turned around and somebody may decide they should not travel alone.

A sighted person spills something and it is an accident.

A blind person spills something and people may see it as proof of helplessness.

That pressure can make every mistake feel larger than it is.

Humor helps me refuse that pressure.

I am allowed to be imperfect without surrendering my independence.

NOT EVERY MOMENT IS FUNNY

I do not laugh at everything.

Some situations are dangerous.

Some are humiliating.

Some are examples of discrimination, neglect, or disrespect.

Some leave me too tired, angry, or hurt to find anything funny.

I do not believe disabled people owe the world a positive attitude.

We do not have to make other people comfortable with our pain.

We do not have to turn every inaccessible experience into a cute story.

We are allowed to say, “That was not funny.”

We are allowed to be angry when people grab us without permission.

We are allowed to be frustrated when family members rush us, leave us in the middle of an aisle, or ignore instructions we have repeated many times.

We are allowed to complain about transportation systems, medical systems, workplaces, and public spaces that make life harder than it needs to be.

Humor should never become a demand that we smile through mistreatment.

Sometimes the correct response is advocacy.

Sometimes it is a complaint.

Sometimes it is a boundary.

Sometimes it is grief.

And sometimes it is a joke.

The power is in choosing the response instead of having other people choose it for us.

WHY I LAUGH FIRST

I laugh first because I know how quickly embarrassment can become shame.

I laugh first because I do not want every awkward moment to become proof that my life is tragic.

I laugh first because sometimes the story is genuinely hilarious.

I laugh first because it gives the people around me permission to stop treating me like glass.

I laugh first because humor reminds me that I am still myself.

The same woman who joked before vision loss still jokes now.

The same person who tells stories dramatically, teases her family, and finds comedy in chaos is still here.

Blindness did not replace my personality.

Depression did not erase it.

Anxiety did not own it forever.

The cane did not make me serious.

My life changed, but I did not lose my ability to find joy inside the mess.

That matters to me.

There was a season when I felt like so much of my life had become medical, difficult, scheduled, and dependent.

Appointments.

Treatments.

Medication.

Transportation.

Training.

Waiting.

Asking.

Explaining.

Humor gave me a part of the day that did not belong to the diagnosis.

It belonged to me.

THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF JOY

Joy is not a distraction from building a full life.

It is part of the life I am trying to build.

I do not want independence only so I can attend appointments and work more hours.

I want to go places that are fun.

I want to try restaurants.

I want to attend community events.

I want to travel, listen to books, take ridiculous pictures, spend time with my son, and collect stories that make my family laugh.

I want my life to include more than surviving disability well.

I want pleasure.

I want silliness.

I want inside jokes.

I want moments that have no productive outcome.

That can be easy to forget when you are rebuilding after loss.

Everything becomes a project.

Learn the cane.

Organize the clothes.

Set up transportation.

Fix the workflow.

Train the team.

Prepare the food.

Manage the medical care.

But a fulfilled life cannot be one endless accessibility checklist.

At some point, the tools and systems are supposed to help us live.

Laughter is one way I know I am still living, not only managing.

It is not shallow.

It is not irresponsible.

It is part of my mental health.

It is part of my family culture.

It is part of how I connect with people.

It is part of the Blind Boss voice.

I want people to leave my stories feeling empowered, but I also want them to enjoy being here.

I want them to know that disability conversations can be honest without being heavy every second.

We can discuss grief and bathroom selfies in the same community.

We can talk about inaccessible systems and falling in the grass.

We can advocate fiercely and still laugh loudly.

Those things do not cancel one another.

They make the story human.

GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION

Maybe humor is not your first response.

That is okay.

Not everybody processes life the same way.

Some people need time before a story becomes funny.

Some moments never do.

The point is not that everyone should laugh at hardship.

The point is that you are allowed to choose joy without disrespecting your pain.

You are allowed to laugh while you heal.

You are allowed to tell a funny story about a difficult season.

You are allowed to make a joke about your own experience without turning yourself into the joke.

You are allowed to refuse pity.

You are allowed to say, “Yes, this is hard—and that part was hilarious.”

You are allowed to be a whole person.

For me, being whole means I am serious about my business, my family, disability rights, mental health, and building a meaningful life.

It also means I may send the wrong bathroom selfie, walk into a pole, fall in the grass, and tell everybody about it later.

That is not weakness.

That is not me minimizing what I live through.

That is me refusing to let difficulty take every good thing.

So yes, sometimes I laugh first.

I check whether I am hurt.

I figure out what happened.

I learn what I need to learn.

Then I keep moving.

Because one awkward moment does not deserve the power to make my life smaller.

And frankly, some of this stuff is funny.