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Back No Barriers Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. FOREWORD
  5. Winter Solstice
  6. THE NO BARRIERS PLEDGE
  7. PROLOGUE
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. 14
  22. 15
  23. 16
  24. 17
  25. 18
  26. 19
  27. 20
  28. 21
  29. 22
  30. 23
  31. 24
  32. 25
  33. 26
  34. 27
  35. 28
  36. 29
  37. 30
  38. 31
  39. 32
  40. 33
  41. 34
  42. 35
  43. 36
  44. EPILOGUE
  45. GLOSSARY
  46. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  47. ABOUT THE AUTHORS
  48. Newsletter Sign-up

To push the boundaries of what is possible,

And prove that what’s within me is stronger than what’s in my way.

PROLOGUE

I wasn’t always completely blind. Even though I couldn’t see well from birth, I could still play basketball, ride my bike, and jump off rocks in the woods behind my house. Then, when I was three years old, I was diagnosed with a rare disease called juvenile retinoschisis.

The odds were about the same as winning the lottery. The disease causes hemorrhaging in the eyes and makes the retinas split away over time. I went totally blind just one week before I started my freshman year of high school.

On my first day of high school, I was led into the building by my teacher’s aide—not the ideal way to begin freshman year in a sighted school. She guided me from class to class and even to the bathroom. At lunchtime, she led me into the cafeteria, where I sat at a table alone, thinking about everything I had lost. I had been afraid of going blind and seeing only darkness, but I was even more afraid of what I’d miss out on. Now I could hear the other kids around me, their laughter and wisecracks, their horsing around. A food fight broke out, and from all the yelling and screaming I could hear, it sounded like everyone in the room except me was in the thick of it.

The darkness was the easy part. The hard part was realizing I would never be in the food fight. I’d been swept aside, shoved into a dark place, and left alone there. Blindness descended upon me with such force that I thought it would swallow me.

I’ve heard people say we shouldn’t be motivated by fear. Even Yoda said it in my favorite movie series, Star Wars: “Fear is the path to the dark side.”

But that day in the cafeteria was my first bitter taste of fear. It caught in my throat like bile. It writhed in my gut, intertwining itself through every action, every decision. No matter how I fought it, fear was ever present. It was a tug-of-war, the fear of pushing forward through darkness against barriers I couldn’t see, tugging against the fear of sitting quietly and safely in a dark place.

Earlier that summer, right before the last of my eyesight was gone, I was watching TV. I could barely see out of my right eye. To see what was happening, I had to put my face almost against the screen, so close I could feel static electricity crackling on the tip of my nose.