The Kidd and Friends Podcast | Self-Improvement and Mindset Insights · Christopher "KiDD" Perry

Harnessing Change with Grit and Gratitude | Laura Bratton on Losing Her Sight and Finding Strength

·1 hr 14 min·4 clips

Laura Bratton says she tried to use blindness as a “permanent get out of jail free” card in high school.

1. The Kidd and Friends Podcast episode centers on Laura Bratton’s gradual loss of sight and how she turned it into grit and gratitude. 2. Laura Bratton is the guest, and the host frames her as the author of Harnessing Courage and founder of UB Global. 3. The episode asks what losing vision, rebuilding a life, and choosing courage and gratitude actually look like in daily practice. 4. Laura says the vision loss began at age nine and was so gradual that her mother noticed the changes first. 5. Her mother saw Laura holding books closer to her face and choosing the chair closest to the TV, while her father noticed she was not tracking a golf ball as well. 6. A pediatric ophthalmologist sent her to a retina specialist at Emory University in Atlanta after seeing a major problem in her retinas. 7. Laura explains that the condition was an early-onset retinal disease and that the cells of her retina started deteriorating. 8. She says the major vision loss happened during the last four years of high school, from the end of middle school through graduation. 9. Laura describes high school as the period when the grief, anxiety, and depression became deepest because she was losing her sight while her peers were getting driver’s licenses. 10. She says she often kept a smile on her face in the South and then got home and cried for hours in bed. 11. Laura says her family provided both empathy and sympathy, holding her to standards she could not yet hold for herself. 12. She tells a story about trying to use blindness as an excuse to avoid unloading the dishwasher, and her mother responding by telling her to do it anyway. 13. Laura says that moment taught her she could not use blindness as a victim card and still had to be independent. 14. Her brother also refused to baby her, and she says that hard approach was part of what prepared her for adulthood. 15. Laura says Arizona State University worked because it already had resources for students with disabilities, and she was one of about 15 blind or disabled students on campus. 16. At ASU, she says being treated as another student in Spanish 101 and social situations helped her become comfortable in her own skin again. 17. Princeton became the place where she had to advocate for herself, because the program had never supported a blind student before. 18. She describes asking for double time on tests and showing professors that reading through screen software made a 500-page theology book take extreme effort. 19. The conversation stays warm and reflective, with the host relating her experience to stoicism, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and comfort in uncomfortable situations. 20. This episode will suit listeners interested in disability, self-advocacy, grief, faith, and resilience, while listeners wanting a fast celebrity-style chat may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded story of blindness, self-advocacy, useful accommodations, and choosing a response when control runs out.

Laura Bratton gives the episode its center: a child losing her eyesight who learns, slowly and practically, to build agency around what she cannot control.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want Laura Bratton's clear-eyed answer to what courage can look like when losing vision changes everything.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Kidd and Friends Podcast | Self-Improvement and Mindset Insights