When I called my mother to tell her I had the rare genetic eye disease she had inherited from her mother, she said, “It’s not so bad.”
These were comforting words from her, but if anyone else had tried to say this to me I would have wanted to strangle them.
My mother lost her central vision in both eyes when she was forty. I was thirty-seven when a blood vessel broke in my left eye and I knew I was in trouble.
That was twenty years ago.
Now, I am an international motivational speaker and Follow Your Bliss coach. I take fun seriously, and I believe simplicity is sexy.
People who are losing their vision are often referred to me but rarely call. I think I know why. When I was in the first stages of rewriting the rest of my life, leaving the land of being able to read and drive a car and see the leaves on the trees and the stars in the sky, I did not want to be cheered up or inspired.
During the early stages of my vision loss, I saw a picture of a little girl who had suffered burns over most of her body and was now out, I don’t know, selling beauty products or being a motivational speaker or something inspirational.
My response? I didn’t want to be inspired. I wanted to scream or curl up into the fetal position and wait for something to happen, wait for my life to go back to the way it was when things were perfect and I could see. (Things weren’t perfect when I could see, but it felt that way.)
I knew I would overcome my vision loss. That is who I am. But when I was first facing this loss, I did not want to be strong and positive and inspiring. I wanted my vision back.
So if you are in those first throes of despair, why call it anything else, I want you to know it is safe to call me. I will not try to cheer you up. I am not afraid of you, and I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel enormous compassion because I have some idea of what you are going through.
When Help Really Helps
Right after I lost the central vision in both eyes, five years after that first blood vessel burst, I went for a month of training at the Oregon Commission for the Blind. They helped me enormously because they were not afraid of me, didn’t feel sorry for me, had lots of practical help for me and served as role models.
My Braille instructor was an angel, a being of light and humor. He had lived almost completely blind for most of his life and then had surgery that restored some of his vision, although he was still blind. Let me tell you — there is a big difference between almost completely blind and being blind because you have no central vision.
His big adjustment was more sight! Go figure! He had to get used to being a blind man with sight. He said I was a sited person with blindness and that was a whole different ball game.
Here’s the deal: whatever hand we are dealt, we have to deal with it. If we look at what we’ve lost, we will not be able to stand the pain. If we look at what is left, we have a big adventure ahead of us, an adventure that will take courage but will, I promise, reveal surprises that will deepen your appreciation of being alive.
I want to end by leaving you with a song I wrote about having the courage to mourn. This song says it all, I think. I could do a whole workshop just unpacking this song. Listen and see if you agree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsf_x9YgyQ
Blessings,
Vicki