By Jennifer Dunnam

President, National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota

During the annual convention of the NFB of Minnesota last fall, a parents seminar was held, during which one of the topics of discussion was the difficulty the teenagers were having with isolation and being ignored by their peers. I was committed to be at another meeting and was not present for the discussion, but I am told that other blind adults shared their own stories of difficulties during the teenage years and were able to provide a measure of support for those parents, showing that the difficulties do not usually last forever and the person gets through it. Still, the blind adults really felt for those lonely teens and wished there were better answers. Hearing of that discussion caused me to reflect upon my own difficult teen years, which I had rarely talked about and had tried hard not to think about for 20 years after they were over—and to reflect upon what is different today and what is the same.

I was born totally blind, and I grew up a relatively normal kid during the 1970's. I attended public schools throughout my education, although the first three years were in a "self-contained" classroom with other blind/visually-impaired students. In that setting, I received a good foundation in braille and in the other necessary subjects, and by the third grade I was mainstreamed in all classes at a public school nearer to where my family lived. Things were not always easy by any means, but my elementary and junior high school years were generally successful because of the strong braille skills acquired early on and because I was fortunate enough to have all of my educational materials provided in braille during that time. It also helped that I got to know my classmates from an early age, making some very good friends. My parents were very supportive and worked to make sure I was "age appropriate" in most skills and behavior. However, there was one major lack: I never saw a white cane until I was twelve years old, and never knew of any blind people who got around without being led by a sighted person until much, much later. Neither I, nor my parents, nor anyone else around me knew any differently. I can remember as a young child hoping that when I grew up, maybe I would find an invisible person who could guide me so that people would not always have to see someone with me everywhere I went.

The challenges for me in junior high school were some greater, but I did manage to be involved in activities that other junior high schoolers get involved in and to have some of the normal friendships and attachments that one goes through at that age. Although I could climb trees, ride bikes, and get into my share of trouble right along with my sisters, still, when not at home, I could not walk around independently except within the confines of a classroom, or on routes within the school that I had practiced beforehand. I spent a lot of time wondering and worrying about how I would get from place to place.

Even though some of my good friends would be going to different schools from mine, I looked forward eagerly to the start of high school. Several days before school began, I went to the building with a cane travel instructor and practiced walking the routes I would need to get to my classes. Things started out well. The teachers were interesting and knowledgeable, and I got to be exposed to more older students. That first day, however, when lunchtime came, I had no plan. I'd brought my lunch from home as many others did, but with whom would I eat lunch? Where would I go? The cane travel teacher had talked with me about this eventuality, and what I might do about it, but I had tried not to think about it, hoping I would work it out before it became an issue. Clearly there was nothing to do but to follow the teacher's suggestion to walk up and down the courtyard where people were chatting and having lunch, until I heard someone I knew or until someone saw me and asked me to join them. Nowadays I would think nothing of doing such a thing; but at that time, it was very traumatic and frightening to me. I worked up my nerve and did it successfully, but I had to do the same thing every day for the first week or so, and it never got any easier.

Then, about a week into the first year, I discovered that some people I knew and liked ate their lunch in the chorus classroom on a regular basis. I started going there and fit in well, getting to know some very interesting people. What a relief—things were looking up.

Then, everything changed. About three weeks after the start of school, my father announced that we would be moving to a new town because of his job. Suddenly it was off to a new school where I knew no one and where no one had any experience dealing with a blind person. Academically, again, I was successful there, because my materials were available in braille, but socially, it was a different story entirely. It seemed to me that every day and every hour was just as traumatic as that first week of lunchtime had been at the other school. I never realized how much the people I had grown up with had learned to anticipate what I would need, and I did not know how to cope with such an entirely new situation.

A couple of weeks after settling in to the new house and the new school, a classmate invited me to a Halloween party, but my parents would not permit me to go. Unfortunately, I do not think that I was able to explain very well to them that the people who would be at this party were the ones who seemed to have common interests with me, and whom I wanted to get to know better. All my parents knew was that they had never met these kids or their parents, so I stayed home. That group never again invited me to an activity, nor did I ever become close with them, although they were in many of my classes. For quite some time, when I needed a place to focus my anger and hurt over the isolation I experienced for the next four years, the Halloween party incident was what I blamed. Of course, it's now clear that one declined invitation was not the cause of all my troubles.

The details of my lonely high school experience are largely hazy in my memory. I do know that my head was often filled with terrible thoughts, and in some ways it is a miracle I am still here to tell about it. Being a private person, I mostly did not reveal what a terrible time I was having. My interests, hopes and dreams were not unlike those of others, but few seemed to be able to see that, and mostly I felt treated as if I were from another planet. In my mind, my troubles came down to the fact that I was blind and that mostly my fellow high school students did not accept me.

Only much later did I come to understand that there were many other factors in play to create the difficult situation of my teenage years. First, being painfully shy and naturally a loner as I was necessarily brings challenges for anyone trying to deal with high school. Add my lack of independence into the mix, and it's not hard to see why some high schoolers might have found it easier just to go about the business of being teenagers than to do the work it would have taken to include me in their activities. I had to be led from place to place (or so we all thought), could not drive, could not participate in things that were visual in nature, and was quiet and sad a lot of the time, except in class where I could excel.

A few people did make the effort to be friends and include me. They did not do it out of pity, but out of genuine friendship, and even then, I could tell the difference. They were not generally people that I had much in common with, however, but they were good people. Because of them, the four years were not entirely without adventure, but those fun times were few and far between.

Once, I heard of a conversation about me, in which someone commented that I was very smart, and someone else said, "Well, if I stayed in my house and studied all the time, I'd be smart too." The friend who heard this conversation tried to explain that it wasn't quite like that, but the others didn't listen. How could they understand that I stayed home not because I wanted to but because I didn't know how to make something different happen?

For some, high school graduation was a sad farewell; for me, it was just a great relief and a chance to move on.

One of the most important things that helped me survive was that some members of the National Federation of the Blind started to invite me to seminars and conventions during that time. Those experiences slowly started to help me see what might be done differently, but it took a very long time, because conventions and student seminars didn't happen all that often, and I couldn't always attend. It was not until after high school, though, that I began to get very involved. The NFB philosophy was what I had always believed, but I didn't have enough knowledge really to live it to its potential. Slowly, after some thorough "structured discovery method" cane travel training and a lot of interaction with blind people I admired and who pushed me and supported me, I began to gain a confidence I had never before known. I started doing things I never thought possible before, and I learned to cope with public attitudes, working at the balance between not making people feel bad and not feeling obliged to accept every bit of help that was offered.

A quick tour of the next 20 years goes like this. My parents did not stop me when I decided to attend college far away from home, and they rejoiced with me when the college environment turned out to be one in which I could thrive. They did not object when I spent summers abroad studying French, German and Russian. They only mildly expressed their concerns when, after graduating from college, I bought a pass good to ride the Greyhound for a month and began visiting friends around the country—even taking a three-day trip to Arizona with no clear plan of what I would do when I got there. Incidentally, I did not practice any routes ahead of time. By the time I moved thousands of miles away to take a job in Minnesota, it just seemed like par for the course to them. I have been able to lead a normal, happy life, holding a sequence of very good jobs, making many good friends, being involved and holding leadership positions in community activities, and the like. The support of my family, who instilled in me a basic belief that I would someday be able to do whatever I wanted with my life--and the support of the family that is the National Federation of the Blind, from which I learned the tools I needed to make the belief a reality, and met the role models who helped to show me the path—these things made all the difference. There are always challenges—some of them blindness-related, some of them not—but that is life's way.

During the 20 years we have just flown through, I cannot exactly say that I came to peace with my high school experience; mostly I just blotted it from my memory as an awful time period that I hoped to help other kids avoid going through if I could. After graduating from high school, I did not remain in contact with any of my classmates at all. The twenty-year anniversary of the graduation came and went with hardly a thought from me—it was a chapter from the distant past—utterly and thankfully gone and buried.

Life, however, is full of twists, turns, and unimaginable surprises. A few months after the 20 years out of high school mark however, a family member convinced me to sign up for the social networking site known as Facebook. I had resisted doing so for a long time until being persuaded that it might be a good way to keep up better with family who live so far away. Soon, in addition to many other people who are part of my life currently, I began to find people from my past with whom I had completely lost touch—some friends from pre-high school, and, eventually, even some people who attended high school with me. It has been absolutely fascinating to see how their lives have developed--some in predictable ways, some not predictable at all. It has been a good thing to have contact with these people all these years later, now that we've grown up a bit, and with my clearer understanding about blindness and the role it plays and does not play. It is also pleasant to find that my memory of some people being truly accepting of me as a person was not wrong—that acceptance continues. Of course, some remember things I wish they did not or talk about what an inspiration I was, but mostly we're all just people living our lives.

Following is one example of some of the kinds of conversations that have happened as part of reconnecting with the people from my past. In this case, the person, whom I’ll call Lisa, found me but was not sure if I would remember her. Indeed I did, and we had gotten along well. After establishing that we remembered one another, the correspondence went like this:

***

Jennifer,

I am surprised you do remember me! We were in Ms. ____' math class together during junior high! I was such a stupid kid then. I did and said so many dumb things back then. You know how, as we get older, we always have a tendency to look back on things and remember all the idiotic things we've done? Well, I have been doing so and I feel that I owe you an enormous apology (again).

During that year, you were kind enough to invite me to your birthday party. I was having such a great time. You had a real good friend there. I can't remember her name but she was always there for you and was even learning your braille machine. She was with me and a couple other friends you had invited, telling us about how you had become blind, and that you could see only blurred shadows. For whatever reason, and to this very day I still think about it and STILL don't know why, I went up to you and asked how many fingers I was holding up. Your mom grabbed my hand and told me that it was not funny. I felt like crawling under a rock and probably should have.

That following week, your mom was bringing you to class, I caught up with you and apologized then, and you were wonderful enough to forgive me. But it has still been bothering me all these years that I had the mental capacity to have been so cruel. Jennifer, I am so terribly sorry for having done that. I cannot believe I ever did such an insensitive thing.

That is why I thought you wouldn't remember me or would even want to remember me. I hope that you will forgive me (again) and that we can continue to be friends and catch up on the GOOD times!

***

Hi again, Lisa,

Goodness! Please spend not one more second worrying about such a thing! First, your mentioning Ms. ____'s math class brings back more of the fun memories, but I have zero memory of the incident you described. Second, what you describe sounds a whole lot more to me like a kid simply being curious than a kid being cruel.

I have always viewed my blindness in a very matter-of-fact way, and not as something to be uncomfortable about. One of the very biggest challenges I faced while growing up (and even now, truth be told), is to help others not feel they must tiptoe around blindness or view it as some great tragedy that makes me vastly different from them. Your being at my birthday party indicates to me that you were clearly someone who had enough comfort with blindness that you and I were able to have a normal friendship based on other things. That's pretty special, and was not easy to come by for me, especially in those days.

You weren't feeling sorry for me or thinking of blindness as some big deal. It is also likely that, even if I was a bit taken aback at first by the fingers question, I was probably a lot more upset with my mother for making a big deal about it than I was with you. Anyway, I hope this makes sense to you, and please don't be concerned any longer about it. I'm absolutely delighted to have reconnected with you, and I look forward to staying in touch.

***

Thank you, Jennifer! I will think of it no longer!!!! I have been thinking of you a lot over the years and I am also very happy we are able to reconnect! I am very happy you allowed me to be one of your friends and still are allowing me. What a blessing! My parents have always taught me to look past the things that make others different from me and to look for what lies inside; not to dwell on the color of their skin, the God they worship or the wheelchair they sit in. It is the heart that makes the person. …

***

While I certainly was not happy to hear that Lisa had worried about this all these years, it was encouraging to know that people could be so thoughtful. This was one of many exchanges with different people in which there was the opportunity to articulate things more clearly than I might have as a young person.

It is by no means my intent to give the platitude here that "everyone has a tough time as a teenager, so don't worry, it will all work out eventually." I was fortunate in many ways to be at the right place at the right time for several elements to become available that helped me immensely. Such is not the case for everyone, and so we must do all we can to help blind teenagers through what can be a very tough time. While now having come to a better understanding of the difficulties of my teenage years, I believe I could have avoided some of the problems with better information and support at the time. We in the Federation have been working hard to improve opportunities for blind youth today, and there is much to do yet. Some of the challenges in today's world are quite different from those of 20 or more years ago, but some are the very same.

Recently an article appeared in the journal of AER, about the benefits of giving children early education in independent cane travel. Of course, we in the NFB have long known and advocated for this, and have helped many little children get independence early. Still, I was delighted to see that perhaps now, even more kids will avoid some of the kinds of difficulties I had because of travel skills.

Technology exists today that provides blind people better access to information than ever before, and also more options for making connections with people than we have ever known. Because of computers, blind youth today have means of communicating in writing with their sighted classmates that were not available to those my age and older.

Indeed, there are no magic formulas, but all these excellent developments do little good if blind youth do not have the basic skills to move about independently and to function appropriately in social settings, and if they do not have access to blind role models to show what is possible. This is the importance of our programs like Saturday School and Teen Night, and why we must do all we can to find ways of connecting with those who cannot attend these programs on a regular basis.