Seeing so many reports of cop-induced eye injuries that I’m starting to wonder if we should just have a traumatic vision loss tips & tricks thread. (Always, though, people are welcome to reach out to me directly; if you’re willing to mentor don’t be shy, drop your details below!)

So, a few things in no particular order: Traumatic vision loss, temporary or permanent, is uh yeah physically and emotionally traumatic. It may bring up some feelings. They’re valid. It helps to find people who share your experience to talk to!

You use your vision for things you don’t even know about. You might be cracking jokes about depth perception now but vision plays a huge role in overall proprioception too. You are going to be clumsy. You will stumble. Your brain will adapt.

You might find yourself crashing into doorways or sitting down too hard or dropping cups on the floor instead of setting them on the counter. Adjustment will take time!

Relearning how you see and navigate the world is tiring and it hurts. Especially at first, let your body and eyes rest. Ask for help with visual tasks. In the very short term, pain/swelling/pressure can make you even more tired and irritable.

Sometimes you’ll experience fatigue or pain in weird ways like nausea! Pay attention to what your body is telling you.

You may also experience visual disturbances like flashies/floaters/distortion. Those can come and go with time; try to take note of when and where they happen.

Take your time to sit with what you are experiencing. There are some things you may not be able to do again. There are some things you might to adapt. There are other things you may be able to do just fine once your body has adjusted, like driving.

Said it above, I’ll say it again: Reach out to other people who have experienced this. They have years of lived experience & advice, & are also happy to just talk. The vision loss community is super-active online and people come up with extremely creative approaches to problems.

Finally, yeah. This is a huge adjustment for you. There are a lot of ways to talk about vision loss and to define your own experience and identity. Pick the one(s) that feel right to you and know that may change over time. No one else is allowed to tell you how to ID.

Finally: There’s some complex disability politics wrapped up in acquired impairments and there’s an unfortunate tendency in some corners of the disability community to immediately claim all people with acquired impairments. It would be great if people could not do that.

Acquiring or diagnosing something is a really intense experience. Disability is a huge, complicated sociocultural identity. Let people start to adjust before chasing them down with a ticker tape parade, and make sure they know resources are here when they want them.

I realise this point of view is not very popular in some quarters but idgaf. People experiencing trauma need to put processing that trauma first, and that goes a lot of different ways. And people ALWAYS have the right to self-id; I strive to avoid forcible labeling.

There is so much more to say about practicalities and emotional elements of traumatic vision loss as well as disability politics but I think this is a decent start. People are here for you, and if you decide to lean in and get a parrot I will need videos please.

Third finally’s the charm: Every human, body, injury, circumstance, etc is unique! What resonates with one person might leave you cold. So don’t be afraid to reach out to lots of people — and if you’ve experienced traumatic vision loss please do chime in.