I’ve come up with numerous techniques to keep myself positive since my diagnosis. Blosformia, a rare genetic disease causing my retinas to slowly shrink, became an uninvited guest in my body at age 12. In the course of six years my vision dissipated completely. I tell myself “I’m not impaired, I’m empowered” . I have even learned to answer the questions I believe to be the utmost ignorant, with more pride than attitude.
It works like …show more content…
“Lucy, you are blind, but you can see. You can see more than any being with perfect vision, because you see with your heart, and your heart only.”
I had to say it just like that and third person and all. Mama Odie said that as long as I say it like that, even after she's long gone, I will feel her spirit through the mirror and it will give me all the strength I need. A few months ago after my eighteenth birthday, she became a butterfly. On her deathbed she told me that she was going to nurture the blind children in Heaven. She held on long enough until I was legally able to care for myself. Through that I learned that everyone put in your life is there for a reason and when that purpose is achieved, they will leave you.
I still say my daily promise even on my worst days. It's like my body refuses to step foot out of the house without if I didn’t. Today, as every other day I said my devotions, taking in the spirits of Mama Odie and my mother in the process, then headed out the door to conquer the grounds of the Louisiana