Welcome to my little corner of the Internet.

Since you’re here, you probably want to learn more about me. A great way to get to know me is to read some of my blog entries. This particular blog was imported from a BlogSpot site; only recently did I get my own domain name and launch a full website. From the help of my wonderful husband and sister-in-law, I now have this wonderful place to share my life with you. I won’t overwhelm you with every detail, but I will give you the highlights of how I reached this point in my life and where I am going.

I was born in Austin, Texas, and lived most of my life in Dallas. My mother, stepfather, and brother still live in Dallas. I was born with the inherited genetic eye disease called aniridia; my mother, grandmother, and I all have it. I attended public school for the first few elementary grades, then attended a residential school for the Blind and visually impaired. Here is where I learned all of the skills of being a blind person, skills like braille, independent living, how to use a long white cane, and technology. I attended this school until my junior year of high school when I moved on to a public high school. I married my first husband at the ripe old age of 18. We welcomed our first son when I was 19 years old in Austin, Texas. Very shortly after my first son was born, we moved to Dallas, where thirteen months later we welcomed our second son. My second son had multiple issues at his birth, including the diagnoses of Aniridia. When my second son was about eight months old, we placed both boys into an in-home daycare, while I took two years of college courses. At that time my hope was to be a Psychologist. In my second year, around May, I discovered that I was once again pregnant, this time with my daughter. I did not at that point return to my community college, as I now was a stay at home mother. Through most of this time, my vision had remained stable, very low vision, able to read print at very large fonts. Unfortunately shortly after my daughter’s birth, all of my vision went away, and I was only left with light perception. At this point in my life I was twenty-one years old, and I thought that having my vision was important, that being able to see is something that made a person who they were. I say this now as from 2000 to 2004, I underwent stem cell and cornea transplants to keep my vision. The treatments were successful as I regained all of my vision and was able to see at a measured level of 20/40. Unfortunately the treatments took a toll on my body, resulting in complete rejection of both tissues. I was given a very hard decision to make: Keep trying to hold onto my remaining vision, or give up my eyesight to keep living. I chose to live. Sadly, this also meant that I had no usable vision, and I now needed to learn how to live as a totally blind person. As most people would react, I plunged into a deep depression. This was also right around the time when I started seeing cracks in my marriage. It wasn’t that we just fought a lot, but there was emotional, mental, and physical abuse. Right around this time we were moving from one suburb of Dallas to another, across town. In 2004 I received my first guide dog, Heather. In 2006, I discovered that my husband of ten years by this point had been having an affair with my best girlfriend. Through steps that removed me from the home, and others I will not go through here, we divorced. I lived a short time with my parents, and then got my own apartment in January 2007. I resumed my college courses and started working full time as a social worker for a nonprofit organization in Dallas. As if I didn’t have enough going on, I began to notice that I would get lost in familiar places. From a recommendation, I went in for a hearing test, thinking that nothing was wrong. I was mistaken, and was diagnosed with a slight hearing loss and was fitted with hearing aids. I didn’t initially wear them, as I didn’t like how they fit or made me hear. On the weekends and nights I spent time with my children. Working for this non-profit is where I learned to love the field of social work. In July of 2007, my ex-husband married the same person with whom he had been having an affair. This was hard for me to understand that now this person I trusted and loved, was now in my place. During our divorce my husband attempted to take away my children because of my blindness, I was so shell-shocked that I only fought the best way I knew how. I received little visitation and no rights to my own children. In October of 2007, Heather, my guide dog was retired, as she did not deal with the change of lifestyle very well. I thought that this year could not get any worse, but would learn other lessons of life down the road. In February of 2008, I received my second guide dog from The Seeing Eye, she was a beautiful Shepard named Emma.  In 2008, I began looking for work, as finances were not good. After looking for 9 months I made the horrendous decision to move to Baltimore for work. I quickly got my own apartment and looked for work. I did every volunteer job that I could; I babysat for families to make a little bit of extra money on the side. However, I generally lived off an incredibly small income. Yes I left my children, and by no means was this easy for me to do; I chose to move to Baltimore for a number of reasons. Primarily, my divorce was extremely painful, and I could not get out from under the mental and emotional thumb of my ex-husband’s control. He also kept my children away from me, so I couldn’t spend hardly any time with them. I wanted to find a job and rebuild a stable foundation for my life so that I could fight to get back into the lives of my children. While living in Baltimore, I was fitted for my second pair of hearing aids. Generally, they did help, but yet again I could function without them. In May of 2009, I interviewed for several positions, but didn’t hear back from the companies. In July 2009, I volunteered for a camp for high school aged blind youth. I can safely say I wanted nothing to do with men. Through the first part of the year, I began relying on God, and relying on his provision to provide; I grew a huge amount in this year spiritually. I discovered that God was in control, not me. Of course, I didn’t see that until later either… Each month it was a choice to either eat or pay bills. For the one-week camp, I met hundreds of people, but one person stuck out more than anyone else. His name was Joseph, who lived in Pennsylvania. I went away from the camp thinking that he was definitely someone I wanted to stay in touch with. Following that summer I volunteered with other programs for children who were blind. In the beginning I came up several times for a visit, only after my second or third visit, I admitted to myself that I loved and was in love with this man. The awesome thing is that he felt the same way. In October of 2009, we were engaged, and had set a wedding date of December 19, 2009. Yes it was quick, but it was certainly the best decision both of us have ever made. He had been previously married, but his late wife passed away. We attended premarital counseling from the church that he was attending at the time, and we sought other counseling. We both wanted to make sure what we were doing was right. On a beautiful snowy, December morning, we said our vows in front of our families and friends. That day it snowed twenty-eight inches, a record for that year. We honeymooned in the Poconos for several days afterwards. So, I moved to Pennsylvania. Finally for the first time, I was loved unconditionally. Our first year of marriage was blissful. Several times in 2010 we traveled down to Texas to visit my parents and my children. In 2011, my ex-husband decided to take me back to court to remove my parental rights completely, and yet again it was under the presumption that my blindness caused me to be an unfit parent. This time I had two people in my court, God and a loving husband. We found and employed one of the best lawyers in Dallas Texas. For 13 months we fought for custody and visitation rights. I could say that for most couples a struggle like this would have torn a marriage apart, but in reality, for us, this brought us together more. That same spring of the lawsuit, I began college courses at the local community college. For four semesters I attended that community college, completing all of my basic courses. In the spring of 2012, I started at Temple University in the school of Social Work. In the end the suit ended with me receiving almost everything I had the right to as a parent. When I first married my now husband, I didn’t even have to wear my hearing aids. At some point during the spring or summer of 2011, I began to notice that my hearing was decreasing. For example, I could not hear people talking to me in noisy places. I started to wear those hearing aids I had received in MD. I looked and looked all over the place for resources and others who were just like me. The one resource I did find was a group of other persons who were hard of hearing and deaf, and who were blind and visually impaired. My first event to attend with them was a Pool party, and boy was I overwhelmed at this event. In the summer of 2012, those hearing aids were no longer working for me. I was still attending classes at Temple University, but that was getting more challenging. Yes again, I was forced to retire a guide, this time because of health issues. Emma officially retired in September, but had not been actively working since the beginning of the year, in January or February. The awesome thing is that I was able to get into another class to get my third guide, this time from Guide Dog Foundation in October of 2012. This time I received a black lab cross. By this time hubby and I had been married for three years, and still very much in love, despite all of the different challenges we have faced thus far. Through the beginning of 2013, my hearing decreased more and more. My spring semester was the most difficult because of my hearing loss. If it had only been the schoolwork, I could have handled it, but my classes were discussion based. Traveling became more treacherous. Just communicating with anyone became difficult. In May of 2013, I had a meeting with my OVR counselor and a representative from the Helen Keller National Center. The recommendation was that I go get some additional training to learn as a deafblind person. Through the whole summer we chewed on this decision. I was going to be a senior and would have had an internship with clients. Right before the school year began, I decided to get that additional training. As of this writing, I will be starting at HKNC in November.

If you have made it through all of that, thanks for reading. As you can see I have had ups and downs, bad times, betrayal, joy, and lots of love in my life. By no means do I have all of the answers. The one thing I can say is that God is good, that he deserves all of the credit. To have me go through all of the pain, the hurt, the struggle and the loss, and then to bring me out of that into the sunshine, into love, peace and His hands is a blessing. I would have not wished anything I have gone through on anyone, I could not dream it up for a movie or a book, but it’s my life.

Today, I am a thirty-seven-year-old deafblind wife, mother of three teenagers, student, social worker, technology geek, avid book reader, writer and blogger, advocate, leader, Christian, friend to all, crocheter, fur mom, and much, much more…