Full Talk Title: Blindsided: How Losing My Eyesight Gave Me A New Vision For My Life

Mother of 5 and functionally blind before the age of 30, Chelsey Tucker shares her personal experience detailing the sudden, devastating loss of her eyesight and how she learned to navigate her life after being blindsided by a rare-disease diagnosis. After months of living in the dark, Chelsey was inspired to begin painting using the memories she could recall and the imagination she cultivated while living blind. Painting provided a deeper connection to the life she once remembered and was an opportunity for those around her to see life through her eyes. It was through the process of creating her artwork that she reclaimed her birthright as a creator and began painting the story of her life in a new way.
After living a decade with a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, Chelsey Tucker’s life was changed in an instant after learning she instead had a rare, aggressive autoimmune disease called Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder or NMOSD. Repeated attacks and inflammation of her optic nerves left her with minimal color vision, along with permanent damage to her eyesight. It was during a lengthy period of blindness in 2017 that Chelsey began asking her family to describe the people, places and colors she missed seeing so desperately. Recalling the memories of the life she once knew, along with using a bit of creativity, Chelsey felt an urgency to re-create and paint the images that had been reimagined and etched into her mind. Not wasting a single moment of inspiration, she immediately began painting using self-taught methods and emotion to create the artwork that would go on to connect her with others and serve as an expression of how she sees the world through her eyes. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx