Welcome to my blog! Thanks for stopping by. I’m happy you’re here!
So… you might be wondering… who the heck is this Rhianna McGregor Hajzer person with the eight-syllable name? She writes a blog about her life as a blind woman, but what else is there? There has to be more to her than her blindness, right?
You’re darn right there is!
I also have anxiety.
One of my favourite poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley said that “poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.” Every person has parts of them that have been distorted and parts that are beautiful… here’s a glimpse of mine.
It’s true: I’m blind. I have anxiety. I often sleep during the day and am up at night, making for awkward communion with the world and the people I love. I’m phobic about bugs and I have a healthy fear of… loons. Shhh, that one’s a secret.
But I’m also much more than that. I’m a lover of matcha tea, Earl Gray chocolate, and a collector of stuffy walruses. My heart is happiest when I’m near the ocean–so is my guide dog, Saint–and I’m not ashamed of finding dad jokes funny. Read to the end to hear my favourite!
I’m a follower of Jesus Christ and my family is my whole world.
And I’m a writer.
For a long time, I was afraid to put myself out into the world as a writer, fearing that the only way I’d be known was as a “blind” writer. I was scared that I’d only be seen as my disability and not for what I wrote or who I was. After all, that’s how some people saw me anyway–“Oh, there’s the blind girl.”
But I wanted to write, and publish, and live the life that I’d dreamed of since I was a little girl. I wrote my first story in second grade about a deer, who, having been given five tasks to complete to achieve fame, tricks the other forest animals into doing them all for her. And she still lives happily, and famously, ever after, proud of her underhanded trickery. But moving on…
It took years of wrestling with my true identity, society’s perceptions of me as a disabled woman, and many therapy sessions [thanks, Monique!] to realize that no matter how others might think of me, I wanted to write.
God gave me this love for words and a desire to share them.
So here I am, writing a blog about my life as a blind woman. Because you know what? I am blind, and I’m not ashamed of who I am. It’s a part of me as much as my need for squeeze-till-you-can’t-breathe hugs.
This is me, and this is my blog. Happy to have you along for the adventure!
Oh, and about that pun I promised you. Here it is, and don’t blame me for the inevitable eyeroll.
“A hawk fell out of a tree. He looked around and said, “Oh, that was hawkward.”