If you saw the video I posted before my hospital appointment, this is what happened.

My vision has actually stabilised since the last check-up.

But there’s nothing more they can do — no more yearly monitoring, no trials, nothing left to track. I’ve been discharged. It sounds like it should be good news. Instead it felt like the end of something: the end of any chance this doesn’t just keep going one way.

I talk about what I can actually see now — a dead line across my vision, colour still there but fading like a photo left out in the sun, more cracks and black patches where the sight has gone. And about a friend’s line that’s stuck with me since: don’t ask why me, ask why not me.

This wasn’t the news I was expecting, but I’m sitting with it rather than pretending I’m fine.

Thank you for being with me for both sides of this one.

If this is your first time here, I’m a yoga teacher living with Stargardt’s disease. You can find more of my story — and the podcast, Seeing Within — through the links below.

Six weeks ago I sat in a hospital and got told my sight had deteriorated significantly. Today I went back for the follow-up, and I already knew it wasn’t going to be good news.

This is what I recorded that morning, before I left the house.

I talk about the strange grief of losing your sight slowly rather than all at once — how you don’t just grieve it once, you grieve it over and over, every time there’s another appointment, another bit gone.

I talk about the affirmations and yoga philosophy I’ve been leaning on all week to get through today. And I talk about why it’s okay to not feel strong, even when people keep telling you that you are.

I’ll follow up once I know what today’s appointment actually meant.

If this is your first time here, I’m a yoga teacher living with Stargardt’s disease. You can find more of my story — and the podcast, Seeing Within — through the links below.

This month I’m joined by the wonderful Anne Mok, who shares her journey from years of being told she was clumsy, shy, or just not very academic, to finally being diagnosed with cone-rod dystrophy, a rare inherited retinal condition, in adulthood. Anne talks honestly about the years of not being believed, the moment a specialist finally said “I believe you,” and how giving up driving, then learning to use a white cane, changed everything.

We talk about the fear of being seen with a cane, finding community on Instagram during the pandemic, and how that led to an unexpected new career in voice acting. Anne also shares the story behind her new book, Resilience and Purpose: Discovering Strength and Connection in Life’s Cracks, and why finishing it felt like a hug from her mum.

This is a conversation about grief, acceptance, and the things nobody tells you when your vision starts to change.

Find Anne:Instagram: @PurposeInViewWebsite: PurposeInView.comBook: Resilience and Purpose: Discovering Strength and Connection in Life’s Cracks — available now, audiobook coming this autumn

SHOW NOTES

Seeing Within is hosted by Dawn Blezard, a Jivamukti-trained yoga teacher living with Stargardt’s disease - a progressive condition that is gradually taking her sight. Each episode, Dawn talks with guests who are navigating life, identity, and the world at the edges of what they can see.

In this episode, Dawn meets Bérénice Magistretti - writer, visually impaired activist, and co-founder of Visible Voices, a platform shifting the narrative on disability through the lens of fashion, beauty, art and design.

Bérénice was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at 19. Over the past twenty years, her sight has gradually diminished - first in low light, then with increasing blind spots throughout the day. Three years ago, she began using a white cane. Unable to find one that reflected who she was, she designed her own - working with artisans in Tuscany to create a cane that is now touring international museums and forming the basis of an upcoming collection.

Her work has been featured in British Vogue, Vogue Italia, and AD Italia. She has given a TEDx Talk and has appeared on France Inter. Her co-founder, Ruben, is autistic and narcoleptic — and together they are building Visible Voices into a global platform that tells different stories about disability, through a different lens.

In this conversation, Bérénice and Dawn explore:

* The emotional transition of making an invisible disability visible

* Why the world of fashion has been slow to include disabled people — and why that is beginning to change

* The work of Hair and Care, a London nonprofit helping low-vision and blind women to feel and look beautiful

* How Making Fashion Accessible is opening up London Fashion Week to the blind and low-vision community — with live audio description, tactile sample books, and direct access to designers

* The anxiety, grief, and identity questions that come with progressive sight loss

* Why sharing is not the same as complaining

You look with your two eyes, but you see with your third eye.

Find Bérénice on Instagram: @berenice.magistretti Visible Voices: @visible_voices_ TEDx Talk: youtu.be/7jB6rdUfWIE

This is not a podcast to rush through. There is no right way to listen. Produced by Anne Gould. Music via Epidemic Sound. With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production. To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com.

This week I'm joined by my dear friend Chris, who many of you will know as The Blind Man with the Backpack.

Chris was diagnosed with cone dystrophy in 2018, and within a couple of years had gone from driving and living what he calls a "normal-ish life" to being severely sight impaired. We talk about the constant adaptation that comes with degenerative sight loss — the moving goalposts, the readjustment family members can find so hard to understand, and the grief of what we could do last month but can't do this month.

Chris also opens up about the last six weeks since his beloved guide dog Chester retired from work, and what it's been like returning to the white cane after the partnership of a dog. His description of the difference — a bumper car versus a Formula One car — has stayed with me ever since.

We share what keeps us going. For Chris, it's his local woods and an outdoor pool in Reading where the staff have made every adjustment so he can swim. For me, it's yoga, breath work, and being outdoors.

And because I'm walking part of the Jurassic Coast in July for RNIB, I asked Chris for his tips. He walked the Pembrokeshire coast with a guide, and what he says about rhythm and trust between walker and guide is something I'll be carrying with me on the cliff paths.

His advice to his younger self is one I'll be coming back to: live your blessed blind life. Don't fight it. Just go with it.

You can find Chris on Instagram as @theblindmanwithabackpack and on his blog of the same name.

Produced by Anne Gould. Music via Epidemic Sound. With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production. To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com.

Seeing Within — Episode 4: It Will All Be Okay

Guest: Claire Sisk | @canseecantsee_

In this episode, Dawn talks with Claire Sisk — disability advocate, RNIB Global Ambassador, and the first blind chef to appear on This Morning. Claire has 112,000 followers across her @canseecantsee_ platforms, where she shares the unfiltered reality of life with sight loss.

Claire's sight loss journey began in 2009 following two strokes. In the aftermath, she noticed changes in her vision and was diagnosed with cone-rod dystrophy — a condition affecting the rods and cones in the eyes. She has since been diagnosed with Best Vitelliform Macular Dystrophy (BVMD) and macular degeneration. On 1st November 2017, she woke up to find she had lost almost all of her sight.

Rather than stepping back, Claire stepped forward. She began sharing her daily life online under the name @canseecantsee_ — a name that captures something both she and Dawn know well: the strange in-between of partial sight loss, where you can see enough to be doubted but not enough to feel safe.

In this conversation, Claire talks about:

The moment she knew she had no choice but to use her white cane — and why she describes being told she was going blind as easier than actually going outside with it

What it really means when people say blindness is a spectrum — the good days, the bad days, and why both are valid

Walking the catwalk at London Fashion Week for Oxfam's sustainability and inclusivity show — and what she hopes younger people took from seeing her own that runway with a cane

Her role as one of three blind matchmakers in ITV's Blind Matchmakers — a dating show that puts non-visual connection at its centre

Co-hosting The Happy Hour on RNIB Connect Radio every Monday from 1pm

Why she started creating content, and what she tells herself every single morning: give up, give in, or give it your all

Claire also talks honestly about the gap between what people see online and what life actually looks like on a hard day — and why she would give all of it up to have her sight back.

Her advice to anyone at the beginning of this journey: "It will all be okay. You will get through this. Life can still be just as good and just as fulfilling. It'll just be in a very different way."

Follow Claire: @canseecantsee_ on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook

This is not a podcast to rush through. There is no right way to listen. Produced by Anne Gould. Music via Epidemic Sound. With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production. To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com.

Seeing Within is a podcast hosted by Dawn Blezard, a Jivamukti-trained yoga teacher living with Stargardt’s disease — a progressive condition that is gradually taking her sight. Each episode, Dawn talks with guests who are navigating life, movement, and identity at the edges of what they can see.

Aly Slaughter is a yoga teacher based in St Louis, Missouri, who has been visually impaired since birth. Diagnosed in adulthood with achromatopsia — a rare inherited retinal condition — Aly lives with severely reduced distance vision, nystagmus, and extreme light sensitivity. She also has ADHD, anxiety, and a seizure disorder, and has built a teaching life that spans senior centres, CrossFit gyms, and online classes across multiple time zones.

In this conversation, Aly and Dawn explore what it means to navigate the world when you exist somewhere between the blind and sighted worlds — and why that in-between space is both the hardest and the most interesting place to be.

They talk about how Aly came to yoga through weightlifting and why she used to dread Shavasana; the practical and psychological reality of solo travel with a visual impairment; why she uses a white cane primarily for other people’s benefit — and the complicated feelings that come with putting it away; the “you don’t look blind” experience and what it costs to keep explaining yourself; how achromatopsia progresses differently from conditions like Stargardt’s; and why asking for help is a form of advocacy, not weakness.

“Imagine if I didn’t practice yoga — how much worse this would be.”

To contact Aly about classes, email [email protected] or find her on Instagram at @alyslaughteryoga.

This is not a podcast to rush through. There is no right way to listen. Produced by Anne Gould. Music via Epidemic Sound. With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production. To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com

Six months ago, I sat down with Helen Kane - a member of my yoga community and one of the few people in my life who truly knows what it's like to live with Stargardt’s disease.We'd only recently discovered we shared the same diagnosis. She'd walked into my class, told me about her condition, and I said: no way -that's the same as me.In this conversation, we talk honestly about what the journey has actually looked like. The overwhelming first visits to Moorfields. The guilt of telling family. The moment you freeze in a coffee shop because you can't see anything and you're too proud to ask for help. The strange, particular grief of handing over your driving licence. And the unexpected gifts that have come from all of it.Helen has been navigating Stargardt for over a decade. I've been living with it for five years. Together we're both now registered severely visually impaired - and both still on the mat.Since this conversation was recorded, Helen has attended classes and retreats, tried different styles of yoga, and our community has continued to grow. This episode is proof of what happens when you stop hiding and start sharing.If you're living with vision loss - or loving someone who is - this one is for you.In this episode:— The moment each of us found out, and what no one tells you in that waiting room— What Moorfields Eye Hospital feels like when you're not prepared for it— Why the hardest part isn't the diagnosis — it's telling the people you love— The invisible condition problem: we look okay— Asking for help when you've always been the one everyone else leans on— Audio description, family dinners, and negotiating the TV remote— What happened when Helen walked into yoga class for the first time— Why Stargardt’s, in the end, turned out to be a giftThis is not a podcast to rush through. There is no right way to listen.Produced by Anne GouldMusic via Epidemic SoundWith thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production.To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com

Watch the full conversation on YouTube:

Seeing Within is an audio-led space for listening quietly and without pressure.

In this opening episode, Dawn introduces the intention behind the podcast and why it has been created as a listening-first space.

After being diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease and living with sight loss, she reflects on sound, attention, and presence .

That inspired her to create something shaped for people who are visually impaired.

It is also open to anyone drawn to slower, more attentive listening.

This is not a podcast to rush through.

There is no right way to listen.

Credits

Produced by Anne Gould

Music via Epidemic Sound

With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production.

Here are two new videos that I’d love to share, one to start your day with presence, and the other to help you end it with peace.

The first is a gentle evening meditation — a way to wind down, breathe deeply, and rest well. It’s a soft, grounding practice to support you as the day ends.

The second is a short reflection on Yoga Sutra 1.12: abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyām tan-nirodhah — which speaks to the importance of regular practice and non-attachment.

Click here to listen

This teaching has shaped the way I approach my own practice. I often think of it like planting seeds: roots come before fruit, and it all takes time, care, and trust.

Both are now available on my YouTube channel. I’d love for you to listen and use them.

Namaste.