For those who don’t know I’m going to tell my story because why not? My name is Ashley. I was born at 26 weeks gestation, and am an identical twin. I have Retinopathy of Prematurity which in my own terms is defined as: I have no vision in my right eye because of detached retina’s so I have ZERO vision in that eye, and my right eye is smaller than my left because of that. However in my left eye, I do have decent usable vision with correction using bifocal glasses (legal limit is 2200) Without my glasses my vision is blurry (2500) because I don’t have a lens in that eye because of an eye surgery in 04 where the decision was made to just not put a lens back in, but they did leave room for that. I have been legally blind since birth, and have had pretty stable vision throughout my life. This is the life I know and to be completely honest nothing has ever come easy for me. First of all, it’s a miracle I even survived because from stories I’ve been told we weren’t supposed to survive, so WE’RE LITERALLY A MIRACLE. 🙂 I also have mild cerebral palsy which affects my left side and that’s a muscle weakening condition so growing up in grade school I had a lot of PT & OT. I also remember having speech therapy as well for what reason I don’t remember. Going through all of grade school from first to 12th every year before school I would do what’s know as Orientation and Mobility which in the field of vision loss is an actual thing guys. Reasons why this exists for blind/Visually Impaired people is to get familiar with our surroundings because believe it or not based on what your vision acuity is and your level of having good orientation becoming familiar with new places can be daunting and challenging especially when you lack certain skills so therefore I would go do tours of my classes a few times before the school year started. I’ve also done this with any new places to get my bearing and gain my confidence because I lack that sometimes. When I was also going through grade school I also had a Teacher consultant that would come in every week and teach me braille which is comprised of six cells that make dots which creates words/contractions, and I started that in second grade. I was always better at writing than reading it. My parents even took braille classes which I thought was super cool because a lot of sighted people don’t actually know what it’s like to grow up in a visual society where minorities like myself have to learn things in different ways.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve gotten to experience a lot of cool things as well and when I was in high school I would literally go around to classes and give talks about my vision and what it’s like for me so that people could get an idea, and I always loved doing that because I felt special and important and yes it was always fun to be the cool kid in class with all of my equipment because everyone was fascinated with it. I wasn’t always the smartest with academics and yes I used to have help from my paraprofessional which would enlarge papers if I need it, braille stuff, or roll my cart down the hallway so I got to leave class early. There are perks to having disabilities y’all. Math isn’t my strong suit and when i was born I also had a brain bleed which is why I’m more logical and street smart then book smart. That came later in college though…I graduated high school and made it to college.
In college I was scared because for the first time iI was on my own and I had to figure things out for myself I didn’t have help from anyone and I was the one in charge and had to advocate for myself. So every semester I’d go to Disability Support Services and get accommodations I needed for my classes and every year I’d talk to my profs and I had some amazing professors who understood blindness and who worked with me. Not everyone is lucky and has great experiences like I did but growing up I was in a great district and I was MAINSTREAMED which was a huge blessing because I was socialized and I had friends I was super lucky to live the life I did and have because not everyone has my mentality or brain or drive. My parents did good things for me and I’m forever grateful for that because things could’ve been so much different for me, and to me I always thought I had it tough because I came from over protectiveness and that always bothered me but I understood why my mom was like that. So I got through college with my BA in Communications and this is where I got good at writing papers, and where I found my love for media. I was apart of my schools radio station, and television station doing Promotions for radio & an Audio Tech for TV and sometimes I was scared to try different things because I didn’t think I could do it so I wouldn’t try because that’s when I realized things are super visual and got scared and just gave up didn’t challenge myself like I should’ve. I was super fortunate to get an internship here in Nashville where I really learned that a lot of things involve driving and visual things which honestly is a bunch of crap because we’re so focused on being visual humans that we forget if that’s taken away from us because it could be that everything we know we have to relearn so my hope for this blog is that I can educate you and make you all realize that ableism is real and a bunch of sighted people need lessons in life and just how to interact with disabled people.
This is just the start and the cusp, but I hope you guys understand me a little better now. I will be writing more consistently and going into more detail, but this year I don’t want to be afraid to just put myself out there, and hide. I want people to know my story and ask questions because I’ve always been scared of what people think of me or how how I get treated because I’m different and if you use a cane your more easily taken advantage of. It took me a long time to use a cane which there’s different ones that signal to people hey this person is blind EXCEPT I’M NOT COMPLETELY BLIND so that’s annoying sometimes but people don’t know. So for now I’m done with this first entry and if people get lost feel free to ask questions and get to know me. I wanted to write my thoughts down, but sometimes my fingers are faster than my brain so if some of this doesn’t make sense sorry my bad but that’s me and if you don’t like it oh well. I’m going to be me and not apologize for who or how I am because everything stems from me being a preemie but also being an awesome human who’s had to overcome a lot of challenges in life, but that says a lot about me. 🙂
Stay tuned for more! ❤
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