By Tim Cumings | From BayLines Express, February, 2023
People say that one of the most stressful events in a person’s life is moving. I would add that as a blind person this stress is multiplied by a factor of ten.
After having lived in one place for twenty-four years, the thought of moving even to the next town was overwhelming. However, we decided to move not only to another town, but clear across the country.
As one of our close friends used to say, “there aren’t any functioning eyes in your household.” Translated, this means that we are both blind.
Cheryl led a small nonprofit in the Boston area that offered an after-school program for middle and high school students who are legally blind. I work at Perkins School for the Blind, initially as an Assistive Technology trainer and now as a customer service representative.
Boston is where I grew up. Boston is where we know the transportation system. We know the city. We were involved in our community, and we have friends and family, a reliable reader, i.e., a support system.
Yet, an opportunity came along that Cheryl really wanted to pursue. The Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind had an opening for a manager to implement a career growth and development program for its DeafBlind, blind and employees with other disabilities.
As a blind couple, we had to consider the many changes which would occur as a result of this move. Where would we live? How would we get our things from Boston to Seattle? How would we get around in Seattle? How would we rebuild our lives and our support system in a new community? How would we make friends?
Three months after our move, we don’t have answers to all these questions, but we are on the journey to finding them. We found a place to live. Thanks to the internet, we have been able to stay in touch with our friends in Boston. Thanks to apps, we can use Instacart to get groceries and Amazon to buy other things we need. Because of the partnership between paratransit services, we were able to use paratransit as guests while we searched for a place to live. Luckily, we have some good friends in Seattle who let us stay with them for a week so we could find a place to live before we made the final move. Instead of spending a lot of money to hire a moving company, we packed the essential things ourselves and shipped them to Seattle. We have joined the local Washington Council of The Blind chapter. Cheryl has started her new job, and I am working remotely for Perkins. We know for sure that moving is stressful, but it is also exciting and a new adventure.