"I Never Thought of That"

Insights and Soundbites

I Never Thought of That

Presented by Douglas Walker

Voice 1: You cannot do this alone. You need people experiencing the same thing.

Voice 2: Probably the hardest part was just navigating through the emotions of it.

Voice 3: Think if this had happened to a dear friend of yours, how much you feel for him or her.

Douglas Walker: Hello, and welcome to the Insights and Sound Bites podcast. My name is Douglas Walker. Sometimes it just takes that one spark to light up a whole new path. Today we’ll hear from Randy. Randy will share with us how his search for help led him to a whole new way of thinking.

Randy: There's always the, why me thing. And then of course, you go back to the, why not? I have a strong faith, and I understand the way life works, but there's still emotionally, as humans, we still deal with the sense of loss and, "Well, what do I do now?" A lot of it is, "Well, okay, I got this." And even if you are able to come to terms with it, it's like, "Okay, so now what?"

One of the things that... Looking backwards, probably the hardest part was just not understanding and getting information and help on trying to navigate through the emotions of it and navigating with the loss of vision. And there wasn't a lot of help.

But, when I came across that one by Douglas Walker, Adjusting to Vision Loss, and I read it, it just captured so much of what I felt over the years. To me, it was the most logical first workshop anybody should take when they encounter vision loss, when they're first dealing with it. It just helps you to think about the emotions, think about, "Okay, what are my steps going forward, and what am I going to do?"

What I liked about that was they made a comment about how vision loss is... When you have a loss, you go through the cycle of grieving, anger, all that stuff. Yeah, we all do that. But what was very interesting is they made the comment, "Well, because people don't realize your vision, you reach a plateau and then a little while later, your vision deteriorates more, you go through the whole process all over again." I never thought of that. That makes perfect sense.

Douglas Walker: I never thought of that, I tell you, we hear that a lot. If you haven’t checked out Hadley’s Adjustment Series, you can find those workshops on the Hadley website at Hadley.edu. Was there something that someone said to you, or something someone did for you early on that made all the difference in the world in helping you adjust living with vision loss?

We’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to share with us, just leave us a message on our “Insights and Soundbites” podcast voicemail by calling 847-512-4867. Or you can use your smartphone or computer and email us a recording to podcast@hadley.edu. Again, my name is Douglas Walker, take care and I’ll see you next time.