She grew up on the mountain, on skis from an early age. Shelby Perry grew up with good working vision and never gave any thought to the alternative. So when the accident, “When it happened, I was really at a loss and I didn’t even know what a prosthetic eye looked like or how people lived with one. So it was a very challenging time when that first occurred to get a grasp about how I was going to continue to live my life.”

Outlook On Radio Western is based on the various perspectives of its guests, and this week is no exception. The same goes, as always, for its two hosts - While siblings Kerry and Brian were both born with blindness, their stories are not the same. Kerry has a prosthetic eye while Brian does not and this week we’re discussing a topic many are unfamiliar with until they face it themselves.

On Outlook this week we’re welcoming Shelby Perry. Shelby was always a highly active person (volleyball/yoga/hiking/an avid snowboarder) and suddenly she had to figure out a future with only one working eye, after a snowboarding accident damaged her right one, along with navigating the prosthetic eye process.

She didn’t initially know anyone else going through this until she started to reach out on social media and discovered others going through it, living with it, and this has led to the founding of Eyehesive, a community of those living with prosthetic eyes where experiences are shared and support is given and received for how to take back power with the realization of what’s still possible for a full and confident life after the removal of an eye.

It was the late 90s when Kerry’s left eye was removed after a mysterious virus destroyed it. She was barely using the Internet at that time, long before social media and is only now discovering a community of others finding acceptance with themselves and finding the kind of group understanding on such a unique experience.

Eyehesive is that place so check out what it’s all about, the work this week’s guest has done to build up a safe spot found nowhere else online:

https://www.eyehesive.com

Join the Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/eyepowermentprogram/