Illegally Blind: The Journey of a Visionary Life Coach

Jen Hardy [00:00:11]:

Welcome to the fabulous over 50 podcast. You know, I grew up hearing that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. And if you haven’t noticed, the world has a problem. There is negativity everywhere. It seems like it’s gone mad. So I’ve decided that my solution is going to be to start a movement. And the movement is the good Human Guild. We are going to highlight people that are good humans because don’t we need more of that? We absolutely do. If you want to find out more, go to the website, Jenhardy.net, and you can learn all kinds of things about it. For right now, I want to introduce you to my friend and fellow good human, Nikki Brown.

Jen Hardy [00:00:52]:

All right, Nikki, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast.

Nikki Brown [00:00:58]:

You’re so welcome. Thanks for inviting me, jen and I.

Jen Hardy [00:01:02]:

Would love it if you just tell me a little bit about you and your life and career history, a little bit, what you’ve done.

Nikki Brown [00:01:11]:

All right, well, I am currently a professional coach. I work with creatives mainly, and then I also do coach mentoring, and I’m a coach educator. So that’s kind of my life. Live, eat, breathe, sleep, coaching, everything coaching related. Let’s see, I’ve been married to the same guy for 33 years, almost.

Jen Hardy [00:01:42]:

Congratulations.

Nikki Brown [00:01:42]:

33 years in a couple of weeks, two adult children. And it’s been an interesting journey. Life has been an interesting journey. I think you probably want me to share that. So I was born illegally blind, whatever that means. Legally, I always say, I wonder what it would be like to be illegally blind. So basically, legally blind means that you have a certain on an eye chart, you can see certain row of letters, or you have a certain degree of field divisions. It’s a legal term. That’s what that means. Anyway, it was normal to me. I just ran around, did all kinds of things. I water skied, I parasailed, I rode horses, I showed horses, I did jumping and dressage and western riding. I mean, all kinds of everything. Horses were my life as a kid. And anyway, then I grew up. Well, I hit about 15, and I decided it was time to learn how to drive. And my mother just about hit the wall because, yeah, I’m legally blind and I want to drive. So the eye doctor had to tell me, no, that’s not happening. But what happened is they told me, okay, your vision is going to be really stable. Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to get worse. It wasn’t like a degenerative eye condition, so I thought, okay, that’s fine. Well, in my 30s, when my kids were young, my eyesight started going, and it was a multiple series of surgeries and different interventions, and it took a while, but it eventually all went away. Let’s see, about eight years ago now, I lost the rest of my eyesight and so now I tell people that I’m totally out of sight.

Jen Hardy [00:03:57]:

I love it.

Nikki Brown [00:04:01]:

I can laugh about it and I can kind of poke fun at it a little bit now, but it was really difficult going through that, losing your eyesight, not only the loss of the eyesight, but the struggle to hold on to the remaining eyesight. I think that was harder than the actual eventual loss of it. That’s interesting because there was a lot of pain involved, a lot of headaches, a lot of eye strain. At the time I was doing some web design work. I’ve done everything seriously. I used to be an occupational therapy assistant, I’ve done sales, I’ve done this internet marketing, I’ve done website design. So at the time I was really into website design and losing my eyesight, of course, meant that was going to be a lot different or impossible. So I was really struggling to hold on to that vision, the eyesight that was left, and I’m just so grateful now that I don’t have to do that, I don’t have to struggle anymore to hold on to it. And of course, I have my wonderful technology that helps me. I have my computers that talk to me. Everything talks to me. Now, I can’t get it to shut up half the time, but I don’t know, I think that to me, when I look back over kind of that journey of loss of the eyesight, that’s the most intriguing part to me as well. Why couldn’t I have learned to let go of what wasn’t serving me sooner? And I don’t mean like go blind sooner, but I mean let go of that and not try so hard to do something that was so difficult and so impossible considering the Dwindling eyesight. So anyway, I’m going to stop there. I don’t know what you want to hear, I just want to hear your.

Jen Hardy [00:06:09]:

Story and I’ve never heard that part of your story, so I think that’s interesting because unless you’ve gone through that, we can’t even imagine what that would be like. And I think the fact that you are legally blind is to me, a small part of the amazing person that you are. The fact that you can do so many things, though I think a lot of people would hear, oh, your child is legally blind, and they would have maybe treated you differently and said, no, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. But obviously your parents didn’t do that to you, they encouraged you, even for you, to say no. I’m going to drive now to the point where the doctor has to say no, because you’re just determined. And I think the great thing about you, Nikki, is the determination, first of all, which is why you were fighting to keep that last bit of sight, right? Because you had something you wanted to do, but you’re not just determined for yourself and that is what has what is what’s touched me. So I’ve known you since 2019, and you were my first interview for the podcast, because your story about you could train horses and homeschool your kids and design websites being legally blind was so intriguing to me. But over the course of this time, we’ve kept this relationship, and you have this amazing riders group where these people come in and you don’t charge for it. We just all meet every Wednesday, and we get encouraged, and you touch base with me in the meantime in the middle, and make sure that I’m doing okay. And I think the world just needs more good humans, which is why we’re doing the Good Human Award. And you definitely are a good human, and I just want everyone to know that you are, because we hear so many negative things, we hear so many bad things, we hear so many excuses, and I can’t and whatever. And I think if anyone’s been diagnosed with something and doctors or family or whatever is saying, well, now you can’t do these things because of this diagnosis, I think all they have to do is look at you and say, you know what? I can. Maybe I can’t drive legally blind. There are some parameters we need to follow. But in general, right, I’m guessing that those doctors in the beginning, when you were a child, didn’t imagine you’d go on to show horses or coach or teach coaches. You get on stages and speak in front of so many people, right? And you’ve just blown all the expectations out of the water. And literally, you inspire me. You do every day. And I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for that.

Nikki Brown [00:08:49]:

I adore you. I wish I could reach through and give you a hug right now, but I just really want to put a little bit of an emphasis on something you just talked about, because, I don’t know, I think maybe someone needs to hear it. There’s always the I can’t, right? That there there are always things that we can’t do. It doesn’t matter. Like, all of us are in the same boat with that, because we’re not all good at the same things anyway, right? But it’s where we put our focus. So I could focus on all the things I can’t do and be all in the Molly grubbies about it and why can’t I do this or that. And I sometimes do. Not very often anymore, but I’ve done that. We all do that from time to time because we’re human. But if we focus on what we can do oh, my gosh, jane, I did not know until today that you were honoring me with this award. I don’t think I deserve it. But I love this award that you’re doing. That’s what you can do. And we’ve talked before about the little starfish story, which people can look that up, but do what you can do. Everybody focus on what you can do and not on what you can’t and that’ll take you a long way. Okay.

Jen Hardy [00:10:26]:

I love that.

Jen Hardy [00:10:27]:

Okay. And I think on that we’re going to end. And thank you again, Nikki. Thank you for joining me and congratulations and thank you for being a good human and an awesome person.

Nikki Brown [00:10:36]:

Thank you, Jen. Thank you so much.

Jen Hardy [00:10:40]:

Oh, my goodness. Is Nikki amazing or what? She is the most good, humble person I have ever met. And I want you to stick around because we’re going to do this award every single week. You’re going to find out about some amazing, amazing people and if you want to find out how you can join the world, go to genparty. Net give. Thank you so much for joining me today. You are not going to want to miss the next episode because I am officially going to become a senior citizen.

Jen Hardy [00:11:11]:

Next week and I’m going to have.

Jen Hardy [00:11:13]:

A birthday party and join have you.

Jen Hardy [00:11:15]:

Join me in it and I’m going.

Jen Hardy [00:11:17]:

To have some prizes.

Jen Hardy [00:11:18]:

So definitely stick around, listen to that.

Jen Hardy [00:11:21]:

One and sign up to win something. I’ll see you then.