My academic journey was punctuated by challenges. I graduated high school as valedictorian in 2015, then struggled to pay for college after two years. I stuck it out for a third year in which I tried and failed to juggle a full course load, working full time in the college’s food service system to afford health insurance, and being the only caretaker for my mother when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I did not succeed that year.
I’m epileptic; having good health insurance is not optional for me. I did not qualify for Medicaid in South Carolina, despite having multiple disabilities. My father should have kept my health insurance until I was 26, but I would have had to find him to cover that. My mother qualified for Medicaid because of her cancer diagnosis, but it didn’t extend to me.
I have never been as stressed as I was in the spring of 2018. I failed every final. I got academic probation, but I missed the hearing and no longer cared to fight for my education because of every other need in my life. College felt like a want instead of a need in 2018, and my financial, emotional, and physical budgets could no longer sustain it.
I went to work full time, starting at The GAP and J. Crew. I worked at Office Depot starting in the late summer. I learned every machine’s quirks in three weeks and became the Copy and Print supervisor, while caring for my mother through radiation and chemotherapy. Her cancer treatment worked, but then a tornado hit our house and replacing a roof is expensive even with insurance. We added that bill to the pile and it seemed like I needed a better job.
The following summer, I found my way to interning at AudioEye as an accessibility tester from the blind perspective, earning my International Association for Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) Certification in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) in the first year the credentials were widely accepted in the industry.
That internship led to a junior analyst position at a Canadian accessibility firm. Covid-19 led to the layoff of all North American employees outside Canada. I was back to work in retail for health insurance, worried every day about bills, cancer, and now my elderly grandparents’ isolation and declining health.
I had to get a better job than retail. I shot a Hail Mary to work remotely as a digital compliance specialist for the most influential accessibility firm in the United States, landing a full time position as an Industry Lead, managing 46 clients at a time. I succeeded in raising the bar for Blind professionals in a company where our talents were venerated publicly, but our professional skills were underestimated in private.
I got fired after a year. The need for health insurance grabbed me by the throat again. I eloped and married my boyfriend because he worked for the hospital. My psyche couldn’t handle anything more and my very new marriage disintegrated within three weeks of discovering his infidelity, just at the end of the qualification period for COBRA.
I was back to the grindstone, now at the AT&T store with terrible insurance. Both of my grandparents were on hospice, and every day, I woke up thinking that I wanted to die instead of them. Selling phones was not a raison d’être, but admittedly, work felt better than making every decision involved with their care.
I missed my grandfather’s burial on the day that I was held up at gunpoint and robbed at the AT&T store. My resolve to leave my surroundings grew fiercer every day. I applied to AmeriCorps. Wherever they sent me in the whole country had to be better than this. My life was worth more than an iPhone.
A basement apartment with a half-finished floor in Watertown, Massachusetts was the best I could afford on my stipend. AmeriCorps had stationed me at the Perkins School for the Blind service site, 897 miles away from home. I taught braille and supported instruction in the elementary school. Two weeks into my service, Hurricane Helene hit.
I could not find some of my family for weeks. My mother’s house that I had fought viciously to save from tornado damage just a few years back was deemed uninhabitable by FEMA. She did not have flood insurance. $300 is the whole payout, even not living in a floodplain.
My basement in Massachusetts was a palace in comparison to the devastation at home. I got up, drank coffee, commuted to the school on the MBTA bus, and worked with students every day. It was finally fulfilling. DOGE cut the program in April 2025, that other shoe dropped again.
I immediately got a contract position with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, accessibility for MassDOT. Until January 2026 when guidance leaked from the federal DOJ that the ADA Title II (compliance for state level digital properties) would not be subject to the new government’s priorities, it was a solid job. Once again, the shoe dropped.
I want to pursue higher education again. I deserve to prioritize myself and to pursue my dreams. Lacking formal qualifications has been a challenge, but I know I have the grit and determination to overcome challenges.
