When Charlene began to lose her sight she was struck by how much her life was going to change. For her entire life she had been a voracious reader “I would sit up all night, holding my eyes open to finish a book,” she said. This was my whole life, to read.”
As her sight diminished, she stopped reading. “I was devastated,” she said. “It was horrendous. To think that someday the lights would go out and it would be dark until the end.” It was at this point that she heard about Vision Loss Alliance of New Jersey. “I heard wonderful things about wonderful people. They were painting, They were cooking. They were having fun.”
Charlene made the decision to attend the one day Essential Low Vision program to learn more about living with vision loss. She immediately felt welcome. “I walked in and I met other people. There were no sad sacks here. There was too much laughter, too much humor, too much comaraderie.”
She joined the Better Health & Wellness program and came every week to Denville, where she learned to paint. She painted so much that after her pictures lined the walls of her home she began to give them as gifts. “I had to come here at 71, and going blind, to find out I like to paint! And people like what I paint,” Charlene said.
Charlene now tells everyone she meets how Vision Loss Alliance changed her life, and encourages everyone living vision loss to call and register for classes, She tells them “Vision Loss Alliance changed my life… I may have lost my sight, but I have not lost my vision.”