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[SOFT MUSIC]

Blindness doesn’t affect anybody’s mental ability, unless they have something on top of it. Someone being purely blind doesn’t affect them from being a totally capable human being.

My name is Nicholas Nathan. And I am a CNC Machinist I.

I grew up with a father who was totally blind, so I was not new to blindness growing up. I had his cancer, which is retinoblastoma. And it attacks the retinas of your eyes. So my left eye is totally prosthetic. And my right eye, they were able to save some of it, but most of the vision is gone.

Removing the cataract did not give me as much gain with my vision as I thought it would, which in the end, actually, ultimately helped me to accept who I was going to be in life, because I had been wondering, “If I got that removed, would I change?” And now I know.

So before I started at the Lighthouse, I didn’t really know what I was doing in life, not that the blindness caused that. But I personally chose a bunch of bad decisions, which didn’t get me anywhere fast. And so by the time that I came to the Lighthouse, in life, I was already behind several years.

Working here, they have stood by me and not only watched me grow with my machining skills. But they’ve also helped me grow as a human being, and being patient, and teaching me things that I probably should have already known before I came here. And so working here means a lot to me, because they’ve able to give me an answer to the question that I always asked myself.

And not that blind people are incapable. But like I said, I made a lot of wrong decisions. And I didn’t really do the right thing. I didn’t finish school. It means everything to me because they built me up into having a career. And I have a family. And I’ve gotten married. And so it’s changed my whole life.

So the things that I enjoy most about working at the Lighthouse — I like the people here, honestly. And that took me a while to say that. I always said that I didn’t want to be involved in the blind community and that I didn’t want that to be my life. And now most everybody in my life is in the blind community. And then as well as the sighted folks here that help all this happen as well. It’s just an amazing group of people in the organization.

For me to have a job as a blind person — like I said, I grew up with my dad. So I never believed that blind people couldn’t work. But for me, I like the fact that I can come to work and do my job by myself. I’ve gotten off of Social Security disability through working here. And to be able to make all my own money, and pay all my own taxes, and to not let blindness hold me back or to be on special programs, means the world to me.

So working at the Lighthouse makes me feel, at the end of the day, like I’ve gone to work. And I did it to my best of my ability. When I walk out the door, and I walk down to the bus stop on my own, I feel empowered and independent that I was able to go and provide the things that I need to provide for not only me, but everybody in my family.

The Lighthouse for the Blind, Incorporated. Learn more at LHBlind.org.

[SOFT MUSIC]