Isn’t it amazing how a few words can sweep you away to an entire thread of ideas or thoughts?
That’s what happened to me recently. I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and a few words on a post caught my attention. The words were these: the gift of adversity.
I’ve often considered the gifts that my blindness has offered me. Most of the work I now do is based around my identity as a person with a disability. I know it may seem odd to consider my blindness a gift, but think about it this way.
If not for my blindness, I would probably not have become an author, with six books, two of them Amazon bestsellers, under my belt. Obviously my life would have looked different, but so would my story, my awareness, and my passion for social justice. I would almost certainly not have met the community of people I engage with because my world wouldn’t have brought me into the same circles – and I’m not referring only to my friends and colleagues from the disability sector here. I would definitely not have met my beautiful guide dogs, Leila, Eccles and Fiji. The chances that I would ever have pursued my childhood dream of becoming a musician would have been much reduced. I may not even have landed up in Cape Town. Which means I might never have met my husband.
In short, I would not have been the woman I am today.
Those words from that Facebook post led me to apply to become a guest on a podcast. Which is what the post was actually about. And through the podcast I met Juri Love, who is a woman I have come to respect highly, despite our short acquaintanceship. But you’ll have to wait to learn more about Juri when I chat to her on my podcast.
In time, I duly became a guest on that wonderfully named podcast, A Gift from Adversity…
And you can find it here, on whichever platform is better for you:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nlhIq6skHBgskswhnBLef?si=WPNCXK4USZOcizXBgZxEzw
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/ZL903sdEkok?si=bB9UzhqcRyr9De91
Let me know what you thought of my answer when Juri asked what I consider to be the gift of my adversity.
Does my answer make sense to you?
