Show Transcript

Well, I want to welcome you to a very inspirational edition of learn from people who lived it.

You're about to sit down with me, doctor David Lykin, and a guy named Kevin Low, who is going to blow your mind.

His story is so incredible.

At 17 years old, he discovers he has a benign brain tumor.

And when they remove the tumor, they also remove his ability to see.

No shapes, no shadows, just darkness.

But the way that Kevin has been able to step into the light is the thing I really want you to pay attention to today.

He's a religious guy, and so you're going to hear us reference God and Jesus throughout this interview.

And there's one moment where I ask him if he ever was angry with God about this whole thing and listen to his answer.

The thing is about anger.

There were times when I'd be sobbing when I would get angry with God, because no matter how hard I prayed, every morning, I'd wake up and I'd open my eyes, and I'd see the same thing I did when they were closed.

And all I wanted so bad was for God just to let me see again.

And a lot of times, I remember even saying, God, just let me see nothing else but just my family.

I just want to be able to see them.

And it never.

It never would come true.

And I would get angry with him, but it would never be for more than a minute, because I would always end by asking God for his forgiveness, because I knew that I couldn't do this without him.

That's just a snapshot at what you're about to experience if you spend the next 45 minutes with us here on learn from people who lived it.

I'm incredibly grateful that you stopped by with us every single week to listen to these episodes.

I sincerely hope that they're helping you move through the tough stuff in your own life and step into a better future for you and your family and everyone around you.

Let's jump off into today's episode with Kevin Lowe on learn from people who lived it.

Find learn from people who lived it.

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Learn from people who lived it.

People who lived it.

What's up?

This is Kevin Low coming to you from east central Florida.

Look at this guy.

Lots of energy today.

Kevin, welcome to the show.

Who.

What story are you here to share today, man?

I am here to share.

I call it my story, but really, my hope is that it relates to other people.

It's a story of love and loss, a story of basically life being turned upside down unexpected events.

But it's that single moment in time that changes everything.

That's the story I'm here to share, is that story of my life in the hope that it can be an inspiration to somebody else.

Love that man.

Who do you hope hears this man?

My hope always is somebody on the other side of the earth who I'll never meet and I'll never hear from, but I hope that that person, they hear something I say today and it gives them that little bit of inspiration to just keep going one more day.

Love it.

Well, listen, welcome to learn from people who lived it.

We are joined as always, Kevin, with, by our buddy doctor David Lycan, resident psychiatrist and all around goodfella.

How are you today, pal?

Hey, it's a pleasure to be here as always, Matthew.

Yeah, we got a great podcast today.

I'm excited about this because, Kevin, you actually represent the first person that we have brought on who is without sight.

You are blind.

And I know we're going to talk about some of those things, but if I can, I would love to just jump right into our your story a little bit today, Kevin, by asking you this question.

In 2003, everything changed for you.

Can you give me a sense of what was happening leading up to 2003 and then help our audience understand what happened in 2003?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, 2003, I turned 17 years old.

Um, so that was the start of my junior year of high school.

Um, life was at a point where, I mean, it was going really good, man.

I, I finally kind of had that core group of good friends who I really enjoyed doing stuff outside of school.

Um, when I turned 16, that sweet 16, I got my dream truck.

It was a, a 96 forest green Ford f 154 by four, and saw her on the side of old Dixie highway on the way to Publix grocery store with my mom one Saturday.

And that was when I was 15, all excited about looking for a truck.

And I saw that thing and baby, it was like love at first sight.

And next thing you know, I had my dad picking me up and me and him going to look at it and it was, it was the one.

And so turning 16 was, was a big moment for me, getting that truck, man.

I love being with my buddies, you know, out in the woods, mudding and having fun, but it was also just a sense of freedom.

Literally just driving windows down, country music blaring on the radio, cb whip antenna whipping in the wind, and of course, big 38 inch TSL super swamp or mud tires humming like nobody's business.

And, uh, so life, life was good.

Um, I really grew up, um, honestly, with a good life.

Um, I mean, I have been lucky that I have an amazing family.

Um, family.

Family is.

Is really a part of my story from the very beginning.

Um, and I, you know, family, you know, my parents, my, my sister, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, um, really blessed to have everybody living right here in, in the same town.

And, um, anyways, coming back, you know, full circle back to 2003, um, as I said, everything was going great.

And, uh, I always say it's kind of like that scene in the movie, you know, like, wherever everything's going perfect.

It's like, it's like the swimmers out there doing the backstroke in the ocean, but, you know, something's coming.

And for me, that came with news that I had a brain tumor.

I had been having some issues that my pediatrician kept blowing off pretty much my entire life.

And basically my mom and my grandmother, they were at a point when they had had enough, and they both had decided that they had to get me to a different doctor because they weren't getting the answers they needed.

I, at that time, 17 years old, I still hadn't gone through puberty.

I was only five foot three, had migraine headaches every day of my life, which, I mean, those started when I was only, gosh, probably about four or five years old.

Um, I had all these different things.

I.

My mom would tell the doctor that I drank more than any human you ever seen.

I mean, literally, I didn't know what a night sleep was.

My normal night sleep was to literally wake up every single hour throughout the night, get a drink of water, go back to bed, wake up, pee, get a drink of water, go back to bed.

Um, and so, um, it would take a doctor who would actually really look at everything from the big picture and realize, yeah, there's definitely something wrong.

So that would be kind of the first domino to fall.

And, um, my mom was on her way to meet me and my stepdad and, I think step brother.

Um, we were going to take our boat, um, out for the weekend, um, up the Internet, intercoastal waterway, up to St.

Augustine, Florida, one of my favorite trips.

And, uh, my mom got a call from the doctor, um, uh, the endocrinologist on her way to meet us, and he had asked her, you know, to pull over, and she did.

And he gave her the news that it was worse than he could have ever expected.

Um, we would come to find out that I had a thankfully non cancerous, uh, brain tumor.

Uh, they compared it to the size of a plum basically positioned right in the center of my head.

So if you basically went to the bridge of your nose, right in between your eyes, and went straight back, that's where this tumor was.

It was.

It had completely encased my pituitary gland, was in the crosshairs of the optic nerve, and was now pressing against my carotid artery.

And I remember my mom, she made the decision to wait to tell me till we got up to St.

Augustine, to the marina.

And, you know, it's funny sometimes how memory works.

It's kind of like, I guess, snapshots of this time.

And I remember being down in the cabin of her boat, flipping through a magazine, when my mom came down and sat down across from me, and she told me the news that she had gotten.

And next thing that my snapshot goes to is me running up the dock as fast as I could and going all the way up to the top of the stairs to the top of the marina.

And then it flashes to me, just standing with my arms crossed, leaning against the railing, looking out at the marina.

Because we never thought it was going to be something like a brain tumor.

You always think it's just going to be something simple, not this.

And yet, that would be the start of this whole new chapter of my life that never, never knew was going to hit me.

So I have a question, and, Dave, if you have a question, please feel free to jump in.

But when you get news like that, I can only imagine, Kevin, obviously, all of us humans only have the capacity to put ourselves in that position and be like, well, what would we do?

Or what do we think we would do?

That's probably a better way to say it.

And I would think when you hear those two words, brain tumor man, it would be really easy to think the worst.

And so I think my question is, at 17, did you go there, or did you have some string of hope in there that it was going to be okay?

Um, I did.

I mean, the initial shock of it was indeed just that shock.

Sure.

But I had the leading pediatric neurosurgeon an hour from my home over in Orlando, Florida, and he assured us that it was no problem.

He literally said.

He said, listen, I take these out all the time.

In which they wanted me to get in for surgery pretty soon, because they literally said that I was six months away from dying with this tumor.

Oh, my God.

And, um.

And he told us.

He told me, he said, kevin, he said, we're going to go in.

He said, we'll make a cut, basically, kind of removing like the front, like, kind of quadrant of my skull, and they'll go in there and take out the tumor.

And he told me that I'd be back to school in three weeks.

The worst news of all is that I had to stay off of my four wheeler for six months, which I thought was a bit excessive.

But me and my personality at that moment in time, I remember the appointment.

I can remember me and my mom, my dad, probably my sister, um, grandparents, all in, all in the hospital room, uh, with that first appointment with the.

With the neurosurgeon.

And I remember him showing the Mri up on.

Up on the wall, um, and right there, plain as day man, in the center of my head was this big white blob.

And, um, I remember it was emotional.

I can remember crying the entire way home, um, and again crying just at the.

It being scary of being a shock.

But again, we never thought anything was going to go wrong.

This was literally the answer to prayers.

We figured out what was wrong, right.

And that was the entire mindset going into surgery.

So when did you ultimately get on the table and have that surgery?

How long after finding out?

Um, it was only.

I'm thinking it was close to probably about two weeks.

Um, so not a long time at all.

No, not.

Not long at all.

Um, it was long enough that we were able to, um, have a going away bob party.

As I said, I named my tumor Bob.

Bob the tumor.

So we had a going away bob party.

Um, and, uh, and I I can remember going back to school, and of course, um, it must have maybe even been a little bit more than two weeks, because I remember that I.

I dropped out of trigonometry, um, and became an office aide and for my guidance counselor, because we knew that that class.

I mean, heck, I was no fan of trigonometry to begin with, much less going to miss a bunch of it.

Figured that would be pretty hard for me to keep up with.

Um, and I remember, you know, man, it was.

It was all kind of fun.

I mean, I remember telling all my friends, you know, like, see you later, suckers.

I'm out of here for a couple of weeks.

And, um.

And that was the mindset.

Surgery was set for October 28, 2003.

And literally, I went into the operating room.

I remember my mom and dad.

They were the ones who followed me back as they wheeled me in the bed.

And what I say is, if I knew then what I know now, I don't know that I could have allowed them to push me through those doors, really, because I don't know that I could have stopped staring at the faces of my family, because once I went through the doors, everything I ever knew, everything I loved, it was taken from me in an instant.

That was me waking from surgery to be left completely blind.

It took everyone by surprise.

Now my memory stops at that point going into the operating room, and my memory doesnt actually come back till probably a good month or two later back at home.

But I ended up remaining in the ICU for two weeks.

Nothing was going right.

I mean, the loss of vision was just one thing.

It was all kind of issues related to my sodium levels, my endocrine levels, um, literally my entire family, both my.

My mom's side of the family, my dad's side of the family, they were all there.

Basically overtook the pediatric ICU at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital.

And literally, it would take my family, they would do shifts of, I think, four or five people, and they would last like ten minutes because I was super combative.

I was trying to pull out every port.

And they.

My family's so amazing.

They.

They didn't want the hospital to strap me down, so instead they would take the time to have groups of them be in there with me to try to just keep me.

Okay.

And they did that for basically two weeks.

And how long does it take you to accept your fate that you're not going to see again?

Is that a gradual process?

Is that something that you're still dealing with?

Can you help me understand that?

Um.

I would tell you that it took pretty much the better part of ten years.

Ten years?

Yeah.

I never stopped moving forward.

I always.

I mean, that happened the beginning of my junior year of high school.

I never went back to school the rest of my junior year.

But one thing that was kind of remarkable about my story is, I mean, I was a kid who, honestly, I hated school.

I mean, if I could be sick with the flu, that was.

That was a plus.

And yet, for some reason, which now I believe it was nothing, but, God, I had this desire.

And my family will tell you that.

As soon as this happened to me, I just kept saying, I still want to be able to graduate with my class, but I.

But I would graduate.

I literally walked across the stage of my high school graduation.

Um, I found myself wanting to ask you this question, and it's so irrelevant and who cares?

But you made such a big deal about it.

It's.

It's coming to the forefront.

Whatever happened to this truck you bought, man?

Um, my dad kept it for a long time.

That's great.

Everybody dealt with it in their own way.

Um, my dad was one who.

He was keeping it for when I could see again, I always thought that I would see again because there's a medical procedure, there's trials happening in China, there.

There's.

We grow up in a world expecting that everything is fixable.

Yes.

That was a big lesson to learn is that that's not the case.

And I finally, my.

In regards to the truck, I.

I mean, literally, my four wheeler, we would end up selling the four wheeler.

Um, I finally told my dad, um, one day, and it was probably, gosh, I would say a couple of years later, I finally told him.

I said, Dad, I said, I said, let's sell my truck.

I said, because if I ever get my sight back, I want a brand new truck.

Yeah, that's great.

Okay, so.

So I have so many questions, but I don't want to interrupt you because you're, you're, you're really great at communicating this story, but.

So it takes you ten years to come to terms of it, with it.

What is that ten years filled with?

Because this is where we really, I believe, have such an opportunity to learn from you, Kevin.

None.

Most of us don't know what it's like to not be able to see.

And from what I understand, you don't see shapes, shadows, light.

It's just dark.

Correct.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you think about, like, what is the average 17 year old doing in today's world?

And it's filled with activities.

It's filled with the endless death scroll on their TikTok and Instagram feeds.

It's filled with all of these things that are so visual and, you know, from video games to YouTube to social media to email to learning your schoolwork.

And you would have to learn a different way to kind of approach those things.

Right, exactly.

And that's coming from a, from a person who was a total visual learner all growing up.

Yeah.

Okay, so walk us through that a little bit.

Yeah.

So I.

I call the first 1st probably year or so was nothing but survival mode.

Trying to get past all the different medical complications, getting used to all these new medications, because now, you know, my pituitary have no pituitary function.

So now I'm taking all these new hormone medications to replace all the stuff that my body should be producing naturally.

All of those medications I still take today.

Um, so learning that I had short term memory loss for six months, um, I would end up also losing my ability to smell was another weird thing.

Um, so survival mode, the rest of that ten year period, I would tell you, was learning how to love life again, even though I couldn't see it.

Um, it was a lot of trial and error.

And, um, my parents, the.

They would never say it to me, but they would often say it to my mom or my grandmother is.

We were fortunate enough that right where I live, there's actually a big center for the.

For the blind.

They have different organizations, center for the visually impaired, division of blind services.

All these kind of near our local community college.

And that was amazing for me to have that resource right here where I live.

But I can remember the counselors there.

They would often tell, you know, my mom that, you know, I.

That, you know, Kevin, he needs to.

He needs to accept this and he needs to get moving on with life.

And my mom, thank goodness, was.

Was really amazing.

And she would let them know that Kevin will do it when Kevin is ready.

Um, and she knew me.

She knew who the person I was, my personality.

She knew.

You're not going to push him.

Um, I can remember going there, uh, one time my mom dropped me off, um, which I remember feeling.

I felt really, really tricked, um, because I thought I was going for one little class, and instead I was being dropped off for, like, the whole afternoon, um, and they wanted me to do classes, like learning how to do laundry and cook.

And I remember saying, but my friends don't even do this stuff.

Um, you know, and, uh, um, it was.

It was.

It was tough.

Um, a big part, though, of that first ten years was, was my nana.

When you look at things now, you can see how it all fit together.

Why did my.

Why did my grandparents, my nana, have her children so very young?

Why did my mom have my sister and me so very young?

Well, in a situation like this, I had a grandmother who I stayed with, who, looking back on it now, I realize, was actually very young 20 years ago, and she had a goal to make me laugh and smile.

And so me and Nana, we would get into some of the craziest stuff during the week when my mom would drop me off and she would go on to work.

I mean, Nana, we would do crazy stuff in the house.

She would have.

We would end up playing, like, hide and seek, and I would be chasing after her.

I mean, we said if anybody from, you know, the services looked through the window, they probably would have arrested her, thinking she was abusing the blind kid.

But we would just have the best adventures.

And something powerful happened that I feel so grateful for is that I got to become best friends with my grandmother to this day, which coming up, October of this year will be 21 years.

I still call my nana every single night between 730 and eight.

I know her schedule and I talked to her because.

Not because she's my grandmother, because she's my best friend.

And it's the same thing with my family, with my parents, my sister.

I got to become best friends with my family.

And it's really something special.

How was your sister throughout this process?

Because siblings can be tough, right?

It was really hard on Tiffany.

Yeah.

You know, man, um, I always got.

A lot of attention, right?

Like they had to.

Not.

Not that.

Not that it was hard on her, what happened to me.

I see my sister was older.

My sister is five years older than me.

Um, so she had actually just started college when this happened to me.

She actually had just started nursing school.

And it was hard on my sister just watching what happened to me.

And what I started to say is, is I often tell people that what happened to me didn't just happen to me, it happened to a family.

Right?

An entire family had a tragedy, a loss.

And it affected everybody in some way, shape or form and everybody individually.

I mean, my dad, his whole thing was always trying to keep us doing crazy cool stuff.

I mean, we went from me having my own four wheeler to buying something called, like a side by side where we're still out in the woods.

It was literally a period, like I said, of learning how to love this life again, even though I couldn't see it.

And that took a lot of trial and error, a lot of just trying stuff, um.

And a lot of stuff didn't work right.

A lot of stuff you didn't like.

And, uh.

And then I tell everybody, time, um, is the thing that can heal things, can fix things like no other.

And it's horrible because it's the thing that takes the longest.

It's just giving it time.

There's no way to speed it up.

That's the.

That's the tough stuff.

Did you spend a lot of time pissed off or did anger, like, where.

Where was anger in your equation?

The only anger I had was, I remember so many times at night, crying myself to sleep, begging, pleading God to let me see again when I woke up in the morning.

And I mean, every night I would pray, um, even right after coming home from the hospital when I don't even remember have memory of it.

My mom tells the story of her asking me one morning who it is that I am always talking to.

And when I go to bed at night and she told her I said, it's Jesus.

That he's always there with me.

And the thing is about anger.

There were times when I'd be sobbing when I would get angry with God, because no matter how hard I prayed, every morning, I'd wake up and I'd open my eyes and I'd see the same thing I did when they were closed.

And all I wanted so bad was for God just to let me see again.

And a lot of times, I remember even saying, God, just let me see nothing else but just my family.

I just want to be able to see that.

And it never.

It never would come true.

And I would get angry with him, but it would never be for more than a minute because I would always end by asking God for his forgiveness because I knew that I couldn't do this without him.

Kevin, this story is just unbelievable.

And I know, and I just feel so lucky to have met you and to be listening to this testimony right now because, you know, I think we can spend the next 30 minutes kind of in a little bit more of the hopeful lane.

Right, which is the way that you were able to work through all of this stuff, because, you know, you hear this story time and time again.

It's not just about somebody who loses their sight, but people.

People go to war with God all the time about the circumstances in their life, and, you know, they.

Whether, you know, when you were telling your story, I was thinking of my buddy Ryan Penn.

He lost his ability to walk, and would he share that same testimony?

He said, you know, I go to bed at night, I would just pray to God, like, tomorrow morning when I wake up, let my legs work, and, you know, so, you know, it's.

It's.

It's a lot of different things.

Right?

Your.

Yours is.

Your.

Yours is your version, but there's a lot of people that have wars with God and have to kind of reconcile those relationships.

And so ultimately, is it faith?

Is it faith?

Because I think this is one of the things that's interesting about your story.

Can you land on faith singularly to say, like, this is what catapulted me through this, or what other tools and people and processes did you have to use to get yourself to the place you are now?

Because we all heard the way you started this podcast, man, and everybody fell in love with you in the first two minutes.

Like the joy in your voice, the inflection in your voice, the way you tell stories, the zest that you can clearly see that you have now for life.

So what were some of those things that were transformative in you coming around.

Three things.

1st.

1st was faith.

Second is family.

As I've told you, my family is everything.

My family was always there to cry with me, to help me.

They still are today.

The third thing is that I believe in all of my heart that God knew this was going to happen from the very beginning.

They say that the type of brain tumor I had was something that probably happened when.

When I was being formed.

It was a cell or something that went to the wrong place.

It was a part of me, and God knew that.

And God made me to be the kid who was super organized.

He made me a kid who was naturally positive.

The glass is always half full.

He made me a kid who just loves life because he knew what was going to happen when I turned 17, and he knew that I would be able to come out the other side a better man with a testimony to share the power of God.

Those are the three things.

So, with regard to faith, like, what we should talk about, if you're comfortable with it, and, Dave, love for you to jump into is, like, faith can look like a lot of different things to a lot of people.

And so as you articulate your story and you talk about God and Jesus, like, for somebody else, that's Buddha, or for somebody else, that's the universe, or for somebody else, that's a different creator.

Right?

Like, it doesn't.

I don't want anybody to get hung up on words and language that we're using here.

What you're talking about is trusting something bigger than yourself.

And I love that you put that third one in there, which you said, mandy, like, what I wrote down on my piece of paper, Kevin was.

He trusted the plan.

Like, eventually you said, I surrender to this.

I surrender that this is how it's supposed to be.

And I think, how in the heck did you get there, man?

Like, you prey on it.

Did you just.

Was it just the family support?

Like, you had to go through something in your head to get there, too?

It was.

It was all of it.

Yeah, it was all of it over time.

And.

And you know what finally did it for me that really made it where I could really move forward is that I was listening to an audiobook, and it was of a book of Eric Winemeyer.

He's very famous for being the first blind person to ever summit Mount Everest.

Well, the book that I listened to, though, was a book that he did about kayaking the Grand Canyon.

And at the end of the book, um, it was the guide, his guide, who had guided him down that river, he.

They were all done.

They were all loaded up, ready to leave.

And that guy, he walked out into the middle of the river and he stood in the middle facing upstream, and he had his hands outstretched, his fingers splayed, letting the, the current of the river just run through his fingers.

And he said something that stuck with me in the most profound of ways is him talking to the river.

He said, I'll be back someday, but for right now, I got more life to live.

When I heard that in the audiobook, I rewound it and I listened to it again.

And literally, it was like this moment when I realized I don't have to give up on seeing again.

But I understand it might not be till I'm in heaven.

And that's okay, because right now I got more life to live.

Yeah.

Dave, I think we have a great opportunity here to talk about surrender and how you can get to that stage with anything in life.

And I know that, you know, Dave has worked effortlessly with veterans in our community for, you know, 20 plus years.

And these guys too, man, they go through situations that, let's be honest, in a lot of ways, they aren't going to get right again until they go meet their creator.

Right.

It's just, this is life.

This is the, this is what you're going to be.

This is the card you're dealt with.

And now it's about getting 1ft in front of the other and, and moving.

So speak about that a little, Dave, if you don't mind.

So, as a kid, I grew up in the church, and I've been to a bunch of different churches and seen different styles of christian thought and different denominations and religions.

And the idea that you can pray and make a problem disappear, that rarely happens.

I mean, it does sometimes there are miraculous things that happened, um, to people, but, um, you can go from one end of the Bible to the other, and you will never find a passage in scripture that says that God will not allow you to suffer.

Um, you're not going to be spared suffering in this life.

What God does promise is he'll always be with you.

Right?

So that's the assurance that you have, um, and the quicker you can come to that realization and say, okay, this is what happened.

And, and, and I know God is with me and I'll move forward and I'll figure out how to make a good life with what I have.

One of the things that you fell upon was humor.

And to me, that's a huge piece of healing and being able to find purpose and wholeness.

Matthew knows I have a pretty dark sense of humor, and I can find something to laugh about in ICU, you know, and in really dark places and being able to find those little absurd moments and those find something to laugh about in the middle of the struggle.

It helps to keep things moving along, and it helps to keep your morale up, and it helps to keep you looking for the next mountain to climb and the next thing to conquer.

So that's an important thing.

It's so wonderful to hear that, you know, with your family, that you're able to find that.

Yeah.

I'd love to ask you, Kevin, about your sense of humor.

What is it, like, is it a little dark yourself sometimes, or what is your sense of humor like?

You know, I don't know that I would call it dark.

I would call it.

I just would rather laugh than cry.

And.

And sometimes that means, um, like you said, cracking a joke when maybe it's not quote unquote appropriate, right.

But sometimes you just need to laugh.

Um, I mean, the saying that laughter is the best medicine, there is so much truth to that.

Um, and.

And that is.

That is the thing for me.

Um, now, there are some people who take humor.

Um, I've been around them who.

They.

They meet me for the first time, they hear me crack a little joke, you know, that I always try to make people feel comfortable when they're around me, so always will say some type of silly little joke about being blind.

And then there's some of the people who take it to another level and they start cracking jokes about me being blind.

And that's when you're kind of like guys.

Not.

Not really the best case, you know?

Right, right.

People have.

People have no clue sometimes, do they?

No.

No.

Really, really not.

Oh, my gosh.

So how.

Okay, so let's get back to your story.

So you get to this ten year mark where, like, you're going, okay, I'm in my lane now.

I'm comfortable with my life.

Help us understand what your life is like now.

What kinds of things are you filling it up with and what are you doing and how are you operating in 2024?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, 2013, it was a pivotal year.

Not only did I come to that realization of moving forward, but I also participated in a program at the local center for the visually impaired.

And it was a.

They called it a blind or not blind, a job readiness program.

And I was there with a group of other.

Other blind people, all different ages.

And at the end of it, it was like, I think, about three months long.

At the end of it, you would get an internship at whatever kind of business you had an idea of that you would like to work in.

And so, for myself, I chose radio and travel.

Travel was something that I realized that even after becoming blind, travel was even more vital than before, because travel, you don't always have to see stuff to experience it.

And so, lo and behold, I would end up getting an internship at a local AM radio station, where I would work three days a week on the morning drive in the studio with the guys, and at the same time was interning at a local travel agency.

I mentioned both of those because those, as you will see, are kind of pivotal in the years moving forward.

I would ultimately end up starting my own company.

It was called Better Days Travel.

It was a home based travel agency, and that launched in 2013.

And I would get to run a business, create a brand, book, vacations, all of that, from my home.

And I did that for the next seven years, up until 2020.

And coming into 2020, it was going to be my best year ever, of course.

But also around this time, though, I knew that I wasn't meant to be a travel agent, but I didn't know what else to do.

And so, fortunately for me, the pandemic made that very easy, because within a week's time span, I went from my best year ever to a company that had not a single trip on the books.

Oh, goodness.

And that is when kind of things took a whole new spin, is when we were in quarantine.

And I belonged to several different organization and groups of other travel agents.

And of course, we're on daily Zoom calls trying to encourage everybody and whatnot, and, of course, thinking, when is this going to be over?

Who's actually booking something?

And I had the idea of starting a YouTube channel.

It was something I had thought about for a while.

And so I thought, you know what?

Perfect opportunity.

We're stuck in the house, so let's do it.

So I started ordering, like, tripods and all of this jazz, and I had another pivotal realization.

Kevin, if you don't have somebody here who can help film you, to be sure the lighting is right, you're not going to be able to do this by yourself.

And if there's one thing I've learned in life, the less that you can count on other people, the better off you are.

And so I quickly realized my YouTube stardom was done.

And that is when my sister Tiffany, she said, why don't you start a podcast?

And my response, what the heck is a podcast?

And so then I, lo and behold, would start a podcast, and at first, it was about travel.

I thought I was still going to be a travel agent.

God had not clued me in on his plans quite yet.

He would let me get started, and, you know, starting a podcast was one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me.

Not only did it end up kind of taking over my life, leading me off in a direction that I never could have imagined, but it opened doors for me to get to meet people all over the world.

And I.

And about the time that I realized this really powerful thing about a podcast is about the time when I realized, you know what?

I don't know where I'm headed.

I don't know where this road's going, but I know it feels right, and so I'm just going to follow it.

And I would end up rebranding the podcast a couple of times, finding my groove, and ultimately realizing that through podcasting, it was the first time that I could finally show the rest of the sighted world what it was like to see somebody through my eyes.

Yes.

And that you only see them through the sound of their voice, the stories they tell, the emotion.

And I realized when I realized that power, that's when it really took off for me.

So what is your podcast called?

Yeah, so it is called grit, grace, and inspiration.

And you can find it on all apps under the name of inspirational and motivational stories of grace and inspiration.

Incredible, man.

I don't know if you know this about me, Kevin, but I spent 20, almost 28 years behind the microphone doing morning radio in terrestrial radio.

And so when you were talking about how radio was one of those things that you were into, I thought, wow, man, that's.

That's incredible.

That was.

My entire journey was.

Was behind my.

And look, I'm still doing it.

I'm still.

I walked away from it three years ago, but I'm still behind this microphone because I love it so much.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, that's what I said is really, really pretty cool, is I said, you know, I got to kind of come full circle back to being.

Being at a mic, because, dude, I loved working at the radio station so much.

I I was supposed to be an intern who wasn't supposed to be on air.

Um, but they quickly realized that Kev had stuff to say, and so they brought me out of the little booth and into the actual studio, and, um, it was, you know, mostly about political stuff, um, related, local, and, you know, I always had a view on it, and so I would pop in, you know, with my view, as they.

As they called me, Kalo.

So that's so great.

Let's offer some hope to somebody right now, like who's.

Who's in.

In the darkness themselves right now, maybe literally, maybe figuratively, but, you know, their life isn't making a ton of sense for them right now, and they just.

Maybe they're doing some of that stuff that it took you ten years to realize.

Is there anything that you would offer that person in this moment that would be comforting to them?

Absolutely.

Um.

If anybody tries to tell you that you should be over it, that you should be better now, that you shouldn't be sad, I want you to realize that they're not living the life that you're living.

They are not the same person as you.

We are all different, and we're all on our own timeline.

The next thing I will tell you is to just let yourself be.

I understand that right now, life sucks.

It hurts, and you want it to be over with.

And I promise you, this is that it will be.

Sometimes, though, you just got to go through the darkness.

But I promise you, one of my favorite sayings is that there's always a rainbow after the rain.

So I promise, if you can just keep moving forward, putting in the motions, doing what you have to do, I promise there will come a day when all of a sudden you realize that you're smiling again.

You're laughing, you're not thinking about what is wrong.

Instead, you're excited about what's in the future.

And I promise it's not too far off.

Dave, any final thoughts from you as we look to wind down with Kevin today?

Yeah, Kevin, those are some great points.

You know, I've worked with so many people over the years that have had losses and injuries and.

And things that have happened in a blink of an eye that then changed the future for them instantly.

And I think your point about, you know, it takes time to kind of accept where you are, and.

And it's also a grieving process.

I think the balance in that is, if you're stuck waiting for things to go back to the way they were before, then you're never going to be able to move forward.

But I think moving forward and still occasionally needing to.

Still grieve or needing to feel down for a day and take inventory of where you are and say, oh, geez, a year ago, I was planning on doing this, and now that's off the table.

You know, I think it's completely natural and necessary to go through that grieving process.

And I think that's where what you were saying about, hey, everybody kind of processes at their own pace.

That's absolutely true from my experience.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you can't push somebody faster than they're.

Then they're ready to go.

Yeah.

Well, it's clear to me that there's a few ingredients and getting it all figured out.

Faith is going to be important.

Your family is going to be important.

Letting go that bit about surrender and just trusting the plan is going to be important.

If there's any bobs in your life, you're going to need to get rid of them.

You're going to need some great relationships with your family and, you know, your grandparents.

And one day you're going to kayak the Grand Canyon.

And because Dave and I both live in Arizona, if that ever happens, you have to let us know because we want to come do it with you.

I don't know if I'm down for kayaking the Grand Canyon.

You're not.

Okay.

I want to go with you.

Kevin.

I want to go with you.

That is a terrifying prospect.

Dave's a little bit more risk averse than I am.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Incredible.

Kevin, I cannot thank you enough for being with us today.

I mean, I just, honestly, I feel like we all went to church today in the best way possible and your story is so inspirational and I think it's just what people needed to hear today.

I know.

For me, honestly, it's exactly what I needed to hear today, man.

So thank you.

Absolutely.

And if you wouldn't mind, I would love to share just one little piece just so that somebody realizes sometimes God answers our prayers in ways that we don't expect.

Go for myself.

20 1714 years after becoming completely blind, I would end up having these pieces fall into place that had me going out to Los Angeles, California, training one on one with a guy to learn echolocation.

What's that?

Yeah.

Like literally.

Like a bat.

Like a dolphin.

Literally.

I retrained my brain's visual cortex to see through sound.

Third day of training.

Um, days one and two, my, my instructor, he's telling me to make this clicking noise with my tongue against the roof of my mouth and I'm supposed to be seeing stuff and I'm not seeing stuff.

He's, he's also completely blind.

Um, and, uh, finally, day three, we're working in the little Airbnb apartment me, my mom, my sister had rented and my mom and sister, they would go off every day doing tourist stuff while me and, me and Brian bushway hung around his neighborhood, him helping me.

And third day, we're in the apartment, and we're working, identifying corners of the room, and, man, all of a sudden, it was like a light switch got turned on, and all of a sudden, I could see the wall in front of me.

It turned to this fuzzy gray, and I could walk alongside the wall without touching it.

And then all of a sudden, it was like a deep, dark cavern.

Well, that was the doorway into the kitchen.

That day would forever train, would forever change my life.

I remember going to bed that night, and at that point, I only had just a little taste of it.

But I realized at that moment that sometimes God answers your prayers in ways that you never expected.

Today, I can tell you it's kind of like a muscle in which the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

My life, my world, is no longer nothing.

It's no longer just blackness.

It literally has shape and dimension.

Um, there's times when I, uh, recently I'll be standing in the kitchen, and maybe it's because of the water and on the sink hitting a dish just right, and it activates it.

And literally, I can look over, and literally, it was just recently I looked over, I was in the kitchen cooking with my mom.

I looked over, I said, mom, just so you know, I see, I see you.

And literally, I can see her whole figure.

It's not like I used to see, but it's a pretty darn cool way to see today.

That's really cool.

That's amazing, man.

You know, if I could get sciency for a second.

So, Kevin, what happened with taking out the tumor is they, they damaged or had to completely cut the optic nerve, right?

So the visual cortex of the brain is all still there, and all that processing power is all still there.

And I've heard talking to other people that have lost their sight, that you can reprogram that part of the brain to pick up other things like visual and spatial functions, even though there's no sight input coming into the brain.

That's really cool that you were able to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's truly been life changing.

Um, you know, I I always say that, you know, I never would, would choose this path for anybody, not for my worst enemy, but all these things that, all these things that I learned about life, about God.

At the end of the day, man, I have to be grateful that it's all gone the way it has and that God chose me to be the one.

I am literally fighting back tears this whole podcast.

I don't know why I'm so emotional today, but it's just awesome.

It's just awesome what you've been able to do and overcome.

And it's such a testimony to, like, just put your faith in it, just surrender to it.

Just let it go and see what happens.

And, man, you just.

I think it's just.

I mean, back me up, Dave.

Right?

Like, it's just inspiring.

When you get around.

People have, like, done the thing.

They've done the work.

Well.

It goes to what our mutual friend Jill McMahon is fond of saying is that, you know, when you work through the traumatic event, what you come up with on the other side becomes your superpower.

Yeah.

Yes.

I love it.

Well, Kevin, we'll send everybody to your podcast, and you have an open invitation, man.

If you ever wake up one day and God's put on your heart that it's time to be on this podcast again, you send me an email, and we'll get the booking, and we'll make it happen.

Okay?

I love that, man.

You guys have been amazing today.

Literally.

This has made my day.

Thank you, guys for having me.

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