Finding a Family at the Colorado Center for the Blind

On Wednesday I will start cooking a meal for 60 people. My final project at CCB, a celebration of how far I’ve come over the last six months. I know this last week is going to rush by before I know what’s happened. On the one hand it’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Colorado for so long and that my program is coming to an end. On the other I can’t imagine a life without all the people I’ve met here. I will look at my life and there will be before CCB and after it, a turning point that helped define who I am as a person and the future I will create for myself.

I’m still me. I’m still too loud, too easily distracted, too talkative in moments when I should stay silent. I still ask numerous questions and get hung up on the small details which others brush off, but which seem to control me and make me unable to move on to a different thought. But I am also not me, or not the me that arrived in the US in June. I have more good days than bad ones, I am mostly able to push through the panic that rises up in me when faced with something new. I am more adaptable, more understanding, not just of others but of myself. I have seen more quiet acts of kindness in these last few months than I ever had before. I have watched students and staff rally around someone in need, more food shared, more hugs given, more gentle encouragement dispensed.

I have been able to share my own knowledge with other students and my belief that blindness is something we can love about ourselves. But I have also been educated, been shown that each and every journey must run its own course. I have been taught how to be a better leader by those who lead with kindness and understanding, and I have led in small ways when I can. Each day that passes brings new opportunities to learn, to connect with others and to be part of a beautiful, strong community.

So when I look back at training I will remember the cooking, the cane travel, the slating and typing and the tools that now sit in my hands. But more than that I will remember the small moments. The quiet words. And the people, all the people, because every one of them has changed me in some way.

Love is the word that really captures the experience of attending the Colorado Center for the Blind. Love for blindness and the blind community, for the National Federation of the Blind, for giving people their lives back after vision loss. Love for one another, for the families we had to leave behind and for the friendships that form when you are in training. Love of cooking, of building and breaking and fixing. We definitely don’t love each other every day, in fact there are days when we don’t like one another much at all! But all real families are dysfunctional at times and CCB is no different.

But every time a student returns from their first independent travel route and is met with cheers or is celebrated for hosting a dinner party I am reminded of the bond that exists between us all. No matter where I go after this, whether I am able to remain in the US or not I will carry it with me.