There comes a point in many people’s journey with vision loss when masking quietly becomes part of everyday life.
Not because they are trying to fool anyone else. More often than not, they are trying to convince themselves.
They pretend to recognise the person waving from across the room. They pretend they can still read the menu if they hold it a little closer. They pretend they know where the doorway is, where the curb begins or where the last step ends. They leave the white cane behind because it is “just a quick trip” and hope they can manage without it.
Sometimes they can. Other times, they cannot.
The reality is that vision loss changes far more than our eyesight. Whether it happens gradually or overnight, it changes the way we move through the world. It changes routines, relationships, careers and, perhaps most of all, the way we see ourselves.
Naturally, grief becomes part of that process. There is nothing shameful about struggling to accept that life has changed. It is an entirely human response. What deserves more attention, however, is the amount of energy we spend hiding that anything has.
The strange thing about pretending is that it rarely convinces anyone else for very long. Most of the time, it only convinces us. We tell ourselves we are managing, that we are not ready for a white cane, that we can ask someone to guide us “just this once.”
Days become months. Months become years. Slowly, without even realising it, we begin organising our lives around avoiding the very things that could help us reclaim our independence.
But that reluctance comes at a steep cost. It costs confidence. It costs opportunities. And, perhaps most ironically, it costs independence. Sometimes, it costs years that could have been spent adapting instead of hiding.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that the white cane is rarely the thing people are afraid of. What they fear is what they believe it says about them.
To some, carrying a white cane feels like announcing to the world that they are blind. It feels like giving up. It may feel like admitting defeat or becoming someone they never imagined they would be.
The truth is, the cane was never the problem. It is simply a tool. What we struggle with is everything we believe it represents.
Like many others, there came a point in my own life when pretending simply was not enough anymore. My work required me to travel more independently, and that meant learning to trust my cane in ways I never had before.
Looking back, I realised that every time I trusted my cane a little more, I trusted myself a little more too. My eyesight had not changed, but everything else had.
The more I used it, the more confident I became. Places that once felt intimidating became familiar. Independence stopped feeling like something I had lost and became something I was building again.
I have seen that same transformation in others. I have also seen people spend years resisting it.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that this is not limited to people who are new to vision loss. I have seen it happen within our own community. People who have spent years working with, supporting or living alongside persons who are blind or visually impaired sometimes struggle just as deeply when it is their own eyesight that begins to change.
Knowing about blindness and living with blindness are two very different things.
The turning point often comes when life leaves us with little choice. A new job. A missed step. A responsibility that cannot wait until we feel ready.
We pick up the cane because we have to. Then, somewhere between that first uncertain journey and the hundredth, we discover something we wish we had known all along: the cane was never taking our independence away. It was giving it back.
As we observe Disability Pride Month this July, perhaps this is the conversation we should be having.
Disability Pride is not about pretending disability is easy because, let’s be honest, it isn’t. It comes with an entirely new set of challenges.
Disability Pride is not even about celebrating every challenge that comes with vision loss. It is about letting go of the belief that disability is something to hide.
Perhaps pride begins much earlier than we think. Perhaps it begins the moment we stop measuring our independence by how well we can pass as sighted and start measuring it by how confidently we can live as ourselves.
Because sooner or later, many of us discover the same truth. The life we were trying so hard to protect by hiding our disability was waiting for us on the other side of accepting it.
This column is supplied in conjunction with the T&T Blind Welfare Association.
Headquarters: 118 Duke Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad
Email: ttbwa1914@gmail.com
Phone: (868) 624-4675
