CONTENT THAT HELPS PEOPLE SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY
Hi! I’m Olivia! 😄
I was blind from birth until 2016.
I am a:
Content Creator / On Camera Talent
Speaker / Teacher
Technologist
I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a graduate of Rutgers University in New Jersey.
I live in Los Angeles and unexpectedly gained global notoriety speaking about my journey on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
My story is one of significant personal transformation, shared with the world to educate, inspire, and engage with others about the realities of daily life, vision, disability, and adaptation.
The Beginning:
I remember being lifted into the doctor’s chair. He moved this cold thing near my face and told me to look through it.
He told me that I was legally blind.
I was 5.
Blindness is a spectrum.
Every blind person is not the same.
I was so nearsighted I could not identify people, walk outside by myself, or watch TV.
At school, the other kids bullied me because I was easy prey.
Some of my teachers treated me as if I were stupid.
I believed them.
I was prescribed 2 inch thick glasses.
It was like wearing a fishbowl over my face.
I would take my best guess at what was going on around me from the faint images I could vaguely perceive.
One day I was in a Sears department store with my Grandmother. I wandered off to find the toy section.
I ran back to who I thought was my Grandmother…it was the face of a complete stranger instead.
This was one moment of many that made me feel always afraid and unsure of my abilities.
I always felt lost.
When I reached age 9, I was given special contact lenses that gave me a small amount of peripheral vision.
I hid in my room and read hundreds of books.
I felt safe there.
I had my imagination.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Most people assumed I wouldn’t amount to anything.
I vowed to prove them wrong.
When I reached age 34, a new eye doctor mentioned an operation that could possibly improve my vision.
I might lose what little eyesight I had.
I knew I had to take that risk and have the surgery.
It was a success.
One day, I saw a stranger in the mirror and said hello.
That stranger I didn’t recognize was me.
For the first time in my life, I now knew what I looked like.
One time I walked into a restaurant and people turned to look at me.
Before surgery I would have assumed they were staring at me because I was stupid or ugly.
I realized they were simply looking at me, just like they were looking at everyone else.
Everything I thought I knew about the world was wrong.
Life as I knew it was over… and also just beginning.
I didn’t just gain my eyesight – I now had a second chance to live.
And I promised the scared little girl that I was that I would make the most of it.