You’re listening to a Community Story from Be My Eyes.


My name is Jennifer. I’m from Lakewood, Ohio, and I have been considered legally blind for the past 5 years. Before I lost my sight, I was a Graphic Artist, and I went to college on a scholarship for drawing. So, when I initially became blind, I still needed a creative outlet for myself. I tried drawing again, and I would get frustrated, because how I was drawing now that I can’t see vs.  how I used to draw are drastically different, and I would get disappointed and upset with myself. I felt like I lost my identity, a good portion of who I was, everything I did revolved around the visual world. I only allowed myself to go through that for about 5 months of being angry and depressed, and I said “This is how things are going to be from this point forward, you need to move forward and you need to find new ways”. So, I decided from that point that I needed to do something creatively that I had never tried before, so I wouldn’t compare it constantly to how I was before. I started making jewelry sitting on my porch, I had a jar of beach glass and a spool of wire, and I just started playing with it, and from that day forward I was hooked on it. Jewelry-making is a tactile thing for me, I can feel it with my fingers, how to wrap the wire. I didn’t let losing my vision stop me from my dreams, my future, I just had to reinvent what that future was. Because I was a Graphic Artist for over 25 years, I have a very strong visual knowledge-base of what colors are, and what colors work well with each other. The problem that I have now is that I can’t see those colors anymore. I can visualize it in my head, but when I’m dealing with natural gemstones, a lot of them, for instance Amethyst can be a dark purple all the way up to almost translucent, and I can’t see those colors. So, creatively I can call someone on Be My Eyes, and I can lay out the stones I want to use for a necklace, and I can ask: “Do all these look good together? Are they cohesive and matching?”. It’s cut a lot of time for me, it’s made it a lot easier for me creatively because of that, because I don’t have to wait. Before, I would take a picture of something, and I could wait hours before someone would call me and answer my question. Now, I can get instant help, I can lay out several stone combinations of different colors and put them in groupings, and get opinions about if the colors look good together. As a Graphic Artist, it depends so much on things visually, and once that was taken away, I was lost for a little bit, but now I find that I can still kind of do what I did before by using someone else’s eyes. I don’t know what I’d do without assistance. I love the independence, that’s one thing that’s important with my creativity, and Be My Eyes has done that for me. It is sort of a game-changer for me. Be My Eyes has been invaluable through my creative process. It takes out a lot of the wait, I’m able to be more productive, more independent as well, I don’t have to rely on family and friends to help me be creative. I’m just elated that I found this creative outlet. I started my own business called Eyesore Designs. I don’t know where I would be with my business if I didn’t have this app to help me. Initially I had been making pendants and earrings out of beach glass, and a friend of mine told me: “You can sell those!”. So, I took her advice, and, with her help, I signed up for an indoor show. I ended up selling out of everything I had, and the money that I made, I used to buy some better materials. And it just exploded - my creativity, the amount of different things that I could do by opening up to all these other materials. I’m still discovering new things to make, and with the creative process, I never sleep. My mind is going all the time on different things I can make. Eventually, I got help from someone who helped set up my Etsy shop. If someone were to ask me: “Would you imagine you would be this busy a year, a year and a half ago?”, I would not have been able to imagine how successful I have gotten with my Etsy shop. I’m elated that I’ve found Be My Eyes. It has enabled me to further my business, it’s made me more productive, it’s helped me through my creative process. It’s an invaluable tool for me, it’s helped me tremendously in all aspects. Be My Eyes does more than just helping me match up colors and stones. It helps me with paperwork, it helps me if I’m doing research, and I can’t see something quite clearly on the computer, I get help that way also with Be My Eyes. It’s really become an invaluable tool for me. The most important thing that I’ve learned is just to never give up, because you really only have two choices; you can give up and do nothing, or you can dust yourself off, get up and plow ahead, and try to do the best that you can and move forward.


Thank you for listening to this Community Story from Be My Eyes. You can share your story too, send it to mystory@bemyeyes.com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, download our app, or visit www.bemyeyes.com/community-stories for more.