033 Dancing without a Mirror with Luna Kocabag

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Dolunay Kocabag, who goes by Luna, an actor, musician, playwright, and self-described non-technical dancer who works as an administrator at Dark Room Ballet. Dark Room is a tuition-free, Zoom-based movement program with an all blind and low vision faculty, offering ballet, modern, jazz, movement improvisation, and, this year, acting and podcasting classes. It was founded in 2020 by Krishna, a blind former professional ballerina who also teaches audio description. Luna joins the conversation from her family's library in Turkey, where she works American hours for the New York-based organization. Luna describes moving to the United States for drama school, where mandatory dance classes were fast, mirror-based, and impossible to follow with her low vision. She talks about leaving class in tears, being repeatedly offered the option to sit out, and the sadness of knowing she will never be a professional technical dancer. An Alexander Technique teacher pointed her to Dark Room Ballet, where an eight-week, college-level intro class gave her anatomical vocabulary and confidence she carried back into her other classes. She also shares the survival jobs, off-Broadway credits, and discovery of pole and aerial dance that filled the years after graduation. Matthew and Luna go on to discuss what audio description can do when it conveys how a movement happens rather than only what happened, and how tears and tension show up in the body. Luna compares life as a blind person in New York with life in Turkey, including infrastructure, unsolicited help, assumptions, and laws that exist on paper. The conversation closes on disability representation in the arts, why art by disabled people does not have to be about disability, the difference between inspiration porn and real encouragement, and why employment access matters for artists who need an audience. Topics Covered: dance and low vision, Dark Room Ballet, inclusive movement education, audio description, embodiment and emotion, barriers in arts training, disability in acting, cultural attitudes toward disability, disability representation in the arts, employment and arts audiences. Visit Dark Room Ballet: https://darkroomballet.com/ ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Kevin Lowe, a podcaster, public speaker, and former travel agency owner from the Daytona Beach area of Florida, about losing his sight at seventeen. After years of migraines, stalled growth, and glasses that never fully corrected his vision, Kevin was diagnosed in 2003 with a plum-sized, non-cancerous brain tumor pressing on his optic nerve and wrapped around his pituitary gland. Surgery on October 28th, 2003 was reported to his family as a total success, but when Kevin fully woke up three days later he could not see the blinking light on a pulse oximeter. Doctors had put the risk of blindness at one percent, and to this day no one can say why it happened. Kevin describes the survival-mode months that followed: praying every night to see his family again, mourning a future built around sight, and holding onto hope for a medical fix. He also tells the story of deciding to graduate with his class, learning braille, a screen reader, and cane travel from teachers at his grandmother's house, and inventing his own strategies, like tracing math equations with his finger so he could picture them. A rough stretch at community college, a close friendship with his Nana, and a job readiness program at the Center for the Visually Impaired lead to internships at an AM radio station and a travel agency. Matthew and Kevin then talk about entrepreneurship as an underdiscussed path for blind and low vision people, including the seven years Kevin spent running Better Days Travel from home with JAWS and a laptop, and how the pandemic erased what was set to be his best year in a single week. His sister's suggestion led to a podcast, launched in May 2020 as The Lowdown on Life and Travel, which opened the door to public speaking and to conversations with people he never would have met otherwise. The conversation closes on Kevin's belief that how we respond matters more than what happens to us, and on Matthew's observation that Kevin's hope never went away. It transformed from waiting to be rescued into creating something of his own. Reach out to Kevin at [email protected]. Learn more about his podcast at https://gritgraceinspiration.com/. Topics Covered: sudden vision loss, brain tumor surgery, adjusting to blindness as a teenager, hospital homebound teachers, braille and cane training, family support, entrepreneurship and blindness, starting a podcast, hope, living in the present. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Ann Wagner and her husband Eric Ringham about how vision loss moves through a relationship. Ann, a retired board-certified clinical psychologist who spent 26 years on the PTSD clinical team at the Minneapolis VA Healthcare System, has autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa, which runs through her mother's side of the family, and became legally blind at 18. Eric is a retired journalist who picked up some "blind skills" guiding his father through age-related macular degeneration, and who was raised to hold the door and offer help to anyone who might need it. Their different instincts collided early in their dating, over a glass of water. Ann defines a dilemma as a moment when different values could be acted on and there is no way to act on all of them. She and Eric describe the shared names they use to meet those moments with compassion: "if you say you're thirsty," Eric's stance that he will always get the glass of water; "help by not helping," the phrase that finally helped him hold back; and "can I eat my pie," which came from an evening when Ann asked Eric to look something up while his mouth was full of dessert. Ann explains how helplessness and hurt show up to tell us what we care about, why hurt signals that self-esteem is intact rather than damaged, and how she draws on narrative therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and attachment theory to approach conflict without judgment. Eric shares a childhood memory of his mother and a shooting star on the Jersey Shore, and the grief he still carries about not being able to share visual moments with Ann. Together with Matthew, they talk about offering each other grace through a more generous interpretation (Eric's "innocent construction rule" from journalism), why tone of voice matters, and how all of this applies to relationships well beyond vision loss. Topics Covered: relationships and vision loss, retinitis pigmentosa, unsolicited help, independence and self-advocacy, shared names for dilemmas, helplessness and hurt, nonjudgmental stance, grief within couples, grace and generous interpretation, couples communication. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Jennifer Frederick, a 48-year-old woman from New York's Capital Region who lost most of her vision to diabetic retinopathy five years ago, at age 43. Jennifer describes the early signs she initially explained away, doubled-up reading glasses, an unfamiliar floater, a gas station display she suddenly couldn't read, and the rapid string of referrals that followed, ending in a prognosis of legal blindness. Jennifer walks Matthew through what came next: resigning from a highly visual job in emergency tech support with the full support of an understanding employer, a Social Security disability application that moved through in months rather than years, and the orientation and mobility training, assistive technology, and cane use that reshaped her daily life. She's candid about the internalized stigma she initially felt toward the cane and how it became, over time, something she now calls an extension of herself, along with the moment she spoke up to request a different instructor when her first one wasn't the right fit. The conversation also covers a piece of Jennifer's story this show hasn't featured before: managing chronic kidney disease, a second complication of the type 2 diabetes behind her vision loss, alongside her adjustment to blindness. She talks about the fear that finally motivated real changes to her health, and about her recent move into advocacy work, sharing her story publicly and connecting people newly facing vision loss with resources she wishes she'd known about sooner. Contact Jennifer at 518-655-1615 or [email protected] Topics Covered: diabetic retinopathy, legal blindness, workplace disclosure, Social Security disability, orientation and mobility training, cane use and stigma, assistive technology, chronic kidney disease, self-advocacy, peer support and advocacy work. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Wyatt Edmondson, a Nashville-based singer-songwriter who was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at age five, though his parents waited until he was fifteen to tell him. Wyatt describes the deliberate, protective choice behind that ten-year gap, the two weeks of anger and grief that followed the disclosure, and the pivotal afternoon on a high school fire escape when that grief turned into a sense of purpose: he knew, suddenly and completely, that he wanted to build his life around music. Wyatt traces his path from an early mentor who convinced him he could make a real career out of songwriting, to becoming a working artist in Nashville's co-writing scene, to the origins of his upcoming album, Make Light of the Dark. He talks about collaborating closely with producer Bobby Holland, who also has RP, and about the community of musicians, friends, and 198 Kickstarter backers who helped bring the record to life. The conversation also covers his family's shared history with RP across two generations, learning to rely on others (including the moment he first used a cane traveling alone), and how he chooses when and how to disclose his blindness to an audience on stage. Matthew and Wyatt close with a broader reflection on humor, resilience, and grief: how the album's title captures a philosophy that applies well beyond the vision loss community, that taking hardship seriously and refusing to let it define you can coexist. Visit Wyatt at www.wyattedmondson.com Topics Covered: retinitis pigmentosa, RPGR gene, family history and disclosure, grief and diagnosis, mentorship, songwriting with vision loss, Nashville music scene, Kickstarter and independent artistry, disclosure on stage, resilience and humor. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod   ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Janel Brooks, an engineer at a Fortune 500 company who has lived with Stargardt disease for almost twenty years. Diagnosed in her twenties after a routine LASIK consultation revealed the condition, Janel describes an unusually smooth diagnosis followed by a much harder decade of watching her vision quietly worsen while she kept driving, working, and problem-solving her way around it, until a stoplight she couldn't fully make out became her first real warning sign. Janel walks Matthew through the guilt she carried before she finally quit driving in early 2018, the total restructuring of daily life that followed (walking to the grocery store, building thirty-minute buffers into every rideshare, treating errands as a shared family calendar rather than a solo task), and the moment her husband pushed back on being cast as her "helper" rather than her partner. The conversation turns toward her career, where Janel spent years hiding her vision loss out of fear it would stall her advancement, until a moment of crisis, walking into her regional manager's office to quit, led to an unplanned disclosure and a response that changed everything: "I do." His daughter has Stargardt's too. Matthew and Janel talk about the exhausting, ongoing work of asking for help, the power of using humor to put people at ease, and how choosing to disclose, rather than waiting to be found out, can become its own form of control. Janel also shares an unlikely story about becoming an emergency feline chaperone on a cross-country flight, a reminder that vision loss doesn't disqualify you from showing up for the people you love. Topics Covered: Stargardt disease, driving cessation and vision loss, disability disclosure at work, self-advocacy, reframing burden and independence, marriage and caregiving dynamics, humor as a coping tool, workplace accommodations, asking for help, community and podcast listenership. Reach Janel at [email protected]. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

On the surface, this episode of inSight Out is about dry eye. Underneath, it's about something every listener with low vision or blindness will recognize: what happens when a very real experience gets minimized because it doesn't fit the box other people expect it to fit. Host Matthew Reeves talks with Rebecca Petris, president of the newly renamed Dry Eye and Ocular Pain Foundation, about a condition that is chronically misunderstood by its own name. Rebecca explains why "dry eye" has become an unhelpful catch-all term, covering everything from casual irritation to severe, sight-threatening disease, and why her organization recently added "ocular pain" to its title to better capture what many patients actually live with. As Matthew and Rebecca discuss early on, plenty of people in the low vision and blind community carry some degree of ocular discomfort alongside their vision loss without ever naming it or having it taken seriously, which is exactly the kind of overlap this conversation is built to surface. Rebecca traces her own path into this work back to a 2001 LASIK surgery that left her with corneal damage and undiagnosed neuropathic pain. What started as one patient searching for answers online became a website, then an online community, and eventually a full-time career building support for people whose eye pain and vision problems come from wildly different causes but land in strikingly similar places: the powerlessness of not being believed, and the isolation of a body that no longer behaves the way it used to. She describes the foundation's helpline, where people who have often seen a dozen or more specialists without answers can finally be heard, and walks through how untreated eye pain compounds into financial, relational, and mental health crises, a pattern that will land as familiar to anyone who has navigated the medical system with vision loss. Matthew and Rebecca also have a candid conversation about suicidal ideation within the chronic pain and vision loss communities, and why Rebecca fought to keep the word "chronic" out of her field's official diagnostic language. It's a wide-ranging conversation that starts with a name nobody likes and ends up being about connection, validation, and what it actually means to accompany someone through a painful and uncertain diagnosis, whatever that diagnosis happens to be. You can reach the Dry Eye Helpline at  800-484-0244. Concerned about suicidal thoughts? Dial or text 9-8-8 to reach the national crisis hotline in the US. Topics Covered: dry eye disease, ocular surface pain, LASIK complications, chronic pain, medical trauma, patient advocacy, suicidal ideation, mental health and chronic illness, self-advocacy, accompaniment in illness. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: [email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Ana Nosal, a 30-year-old marathon runner from the Washington, D.C. area who was diagnosed with Stargardt disease at fourteen. Ana describes the early denial that came with starting high school just as her vision loss was confirmed, the accommodations she quietly refused to use, and the moment in college when giving up driving forced a new kind of acceptance. She also traces how her competitive life shifted, from soccer and softball, where her declining hand-eye coordination became too hard to ignore, to cross country and track, sports she could still control on her own terms. Much of the conversation centers on disclosure: why Ana told professors and friends only on a strict need-to-know basis for over a decade, how therapy, originally sought for grief after her father's death, eventually surfaced how much of her anxiety and self-esteem was tangled up in her vision loss, and how she and her therapist worked through worst-case and best-case scenarios before she told her boyfriend just two dates in. That practice run set the stage for the leap that followed: posting her story to social media all at once, rather than telling people one at a time. Ana and Matthew talk about what it's like to receive an outpouring of support you spent years bracing against, the guilt of wondering why you didn't trust people sooner, and the unexpected reward of helping other people, including partners, parents, and teachers, recognize vision loss they hadn't known how to see before. Topics Covered: Stargardt disease, disclosure and self-advocacy, adaptive sports, marathon running, grief counseling, generalized anxiety, self-esteem work, social media visibility, dating and disclosure, worst-case versus best-case thinking. Contact Ana at [email protected] and follow her on IG or TicTok: @Ana_Nosal ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. Please be sure to subscribe to catch every episode. And remember to share the show with others in the blind and low-vision community! CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: mailto:[email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod   ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Paralympic hopeful Graham Rainsby about losing most of his vision within a single year to Stargardt's disease, and the unlikely athletic career that followed. Diagnosed in sixth grade after his vision dropped from roughly 20/60 to 20/200, Graham describes the strange mix of denial and determination that got him through middle school, the accommodations that let him compete at the varsity level in high school and at Middlebury College, and the ongoing, exhausting calculus of deciding when and how to disclose a disability that isn't always visible at first glance. A knee injury at the end of his senior year ended Graham's running career, and after several years adrift, he picked up competitive swimming, setting an American record in the 50-meter butterfly in his very first race. He's now training toward the qualifying time for the 2028 Paralympic trials, and he opens up about the strange unsatisfying quiet of finishing a swim race blind, unable to see the clock or know how he placed until someone tells him. Matthew and Graham also dig into the difference between wanting to stand out because of a disability and refusing to be defined by it, why Graham still struggles to ask for enough support, and the philosophy that's carried him through two sports: that the value is in the pursuit, not the finish line. Topics Covered: Stargardt's disease, progressive vision loss, disability disclosure, self-advocacy, collegiate athletics, adaptive sport transition, Paralympic swimming, identity and disability, resilience, chasing long-term goals. Follow Graham on Instagram: @blindconfidences ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. Please be sure to subscribe to catch every episode. And remember to share the show with others in the blind and low-vision community! CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: mailto:[email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod   ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC

In this episode of Insight Out, host Matthew Reeves sits down with digital accessibility professional and entrepreneur James Warnken to discuss the transformative power of shifting from a mindset of survival to one of professional empowerment. Diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease at nine years old, James opens up about his journey through progressive vision loss, the intense burnout that can come with constant childhood self-advocacy, and how he ultimately learned to embrace his disability as his greatest professional asset. James walks us through his career trajectory, from launching an apparel line in college to founding his own digital accessibility consulting framework, Clear Vision. He shares insightful reflections on how navigating a world not built for low vision instills crucial professional skills like hyper-organization, proactive planning, and innovative problem-solving. We also dive into a fascinating family dynamic: James’s younger brother shares the exact same visual diagnosis but approaches life with an entirely different personality, highlighting why accessibility and accommodations can never be a one-size-fits-all solution. Whether you are currently navigating employment with vision loss, battling imposter syndrome, or considering taking the leap into entrepreneurship, this conversation offers a refreshing, solution-oriented perspective. James reminds us that lived experience cannot be replicated by certifications alone, and that embracing our unique adaptations allows us to walk through open doors with confidence. Topics Covered: Stargardt's disease , progressive vision loss , childhood self-advocacy burnout , digital accessibility , entrepreneurship and disability , assistive technology , imposter syndrome , workplace accommodations , personalized IEPs , adaptive professional skills. Contact James at [email protected] or 330-936-2556. Learn more about Clear Vision: https://clearvisionllc.org/. ABOUT THE PODCAST inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor. Please be sure to subscribe to catch every episode. And remember to share the show with others in the blind and low-vision community! CONNECT WITH US Podcast Home: https://insightoutpod.com Talk to Us: https://speakpipe.com/insightoutpod Email: mailto:[email protected] Watch on YouTube (with transcripts): youtube.com/@insightoutpod Feed: https://www.insightoutpod.com/feed.xml Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/inSightOut/ Social Media Handle: @insightoutpod   ©Integral Mental Health Services, LLC