Some of life’s most profound transformations arrive uninvited, reshaping everything we thought we knew about ourselves and our future. These aren’t the changes we carefully plan or eagerly anticipate—they’re the ones that force us to discover reserves of strength we never knew we possessed.
Laura Bratton knows this reality intimately. At nine years old, she received a diagnosis that would fundamentally alter her life’s trajectory: a rare retinal disease that would gradually steal her sight throughout her teenage years. “I knew it cognitively, but I didn’t know it emotionally,” Laura reflects on learning about her condition as a child. “As a nine year old who could see and was playing basketball and riding her bike and climbing trees and doing all the things, I just assumed that’s how life would always be.”
Her story illuminates a universal truth about human resilience: sometimes our greatest growth emerges not from the changes we choose, but from how we respond to the changes that choose us. Laura’s journey from a sighted child to a confident adult living with blindness reveals practical strategies for navigating unwanted transitions while maintaining hope, purpose, and forward momentum.
The question isn’t whether we’ll face unexpected challenges—it’s how we’ll respond when they arrive at our doorstep, demanding we become someone we never imagined we’d need to be.
The Shock of Unwanted Reality
When change arrives without invitation, our first instinct is often denial or bargaining. Laura’s experience demonstrates how the mind protects us from overwhelming realities, especially during childhood. Even with a clear medical diagnosis, she couldn’t emotionally grasp what losing her sight would mean until it began happening.
“It became real as a teenager when I started losing a significant amount of sight,” Laura explains. The progression wasn’t sudden—it unfolded over her four high school years in waves. “I would lose a significant amount of sight and then it would plateau for a while, and then I would lose a significant amount of sight and then it would plateau for a while.”
This pattern of gradual decline presented its own unique challenge: grieving something actively being lost rather than something already gone. “I have to grieve what I’m actively currently losing,” Laura describes, capturing the peculiar pain of watching your world shrink in real time.
The timing couldn’t have been more complex. Teenage years are already turbulent, filled with identity questions and the desperate desire to fit in. Adding a major life change that sets you apart from peers creates what Laura calls “an incredibly difficult grieving process.” She experienced the full spectrum of grief emotions—depression, anxiety, and yes, teenage rage at her situation.
Amy Stone, the podcast host, astutely observed: “teenagers are not known for their emotional stability.” Laura’s honest acknowledgment—”Absolutely”—reminds us that timing rarely accommodates our emotional readiness for major life changes.
The Crucial Role of Support Systems
One of the most striking aspects of Laura’s story is how her support system adapted alongside her changing needs. With no family history of vision impairment, everyone was learning together. Yet rather than becoming paralyzed by uncertainty, her family and friends found ways to provide exactly what she needed most.
“The gift was the support system around me,” Laura emphasizes. “So I was able to stay in the same high school by teachers making accommodations, by learning braille, by learning technology that made the computer accessible.”
Perhaps most importantly, her support system understood the delicate balance between accommodation and normalization. Her older brother’s approach particularly exemplifies this wisdom: “as he continued to treat me like his little annoying sister, that drove him crazy every day, all the time. That was a gift because they continued to treat me normal.”
Laura’s insight about this treatment reveals sophisticated understanding of what people facing major changes truly need: “He didn’t… you’re not going to annoy me anymore because you can’t see. I still drove him crazy. So at the time, I was like, you’re so mean. You’re such a mean brother. But that was the greatest gift he could have given me, just treating me normal.”
The practical accommodations were equally thoughtful. Teachers allowed her to leave classes two minutes early to navigate hallways safely before they filled with hundreds of students. While Laura initially resented being different, she learned to recognize these adaptations as expressions of care rather than markers of limitation.
Choosing Your Mindset When Options Are Limited
Laura’s story reveals a crucial distinction: while we can’t always choose our circumstances, we can choose our response to them. This wasn’t an immediate realization—it developed through experience and reflection.
“At some point I had to accept and decide that to have the courage, to have the grit, to have the gratitude for myself,” Laura explains about her transition from high school to college. “The support system just couldn’t do it for me forever.”
Getting her first guide dog became a turning point, representing both practical independence and emotional ownership of her new reality. The physical mobility the dog provided was significant, but the psychological impact was transformative: “it gave me the confidence of, I choose this grit, I choose the gratitude, I choose to have the courage for myself to move forward.”
College offered a different perspective on difference itself. “The gift of college is that I wasn’t the only person who was blind on campus,” Laura recalls. Being part of a larger community where disability wasn’t exceptional allowed her to develop comfort with her “new normal.”
This environment taught her something profound about identity and social connection: “as I was comfortable in my new normal… I’m a person who’s blind, and I’m also so much more… the friendships, the social was natural. Because we could connect around similar interests, we could connect around our major.”
Transforming Pain into Purpose
The most remarkable aspect of Laura’s journey might be how she channeled her experience into meaningful work. Her career choices weren’t despite her vision loss but because of the insights it provided.
“I majored in psychology for two reasons,” Laura explains. “One, because I was just passionate about that anyway, but more so because of my lived experience, because of the traumatic transition, because of the grief process. I wanted to understand from a psychological perspective, how do we heal, how do we grieve and move forward at the exact same time.”
This led to her master’s degree in theology, driven by recognition that “so much of my healing was spiritual. It was emotional, it was physical. It was all of it combined. It wasn’t just one part of me.”
Her book, “Harnessing Courage: Overcoming Adversity with Grit and Gratitude,” and her company UBI Global represent the ultimate transformation of personal struggle into public service. “I wanted to be able to write a book that could be a resource for people as they’re going through any type of change and loss,” Laura explains.
The title itself carries deep symbolism. A harness connects guide dog and handler, allowing them to move forward as a team. “Every single day, it takes so much courage to choose to move forward. When we face change, when we face loss, when we’re in the midst of grief, that’s intense courage to choose not to be overwhelmed and shut down by the grief, by the loss.”
Moving Forward While Grieving
Perhaps Laura’s most practical wisdom centers on managing overwhelming emotions while maintaining forward momentum. When Amy asked about the day-to-day reality of major transitions, Laura offered this insight: “through the speaking, through the coaching, through the book, it’s my goal to be that support and be that voice to say, yes, it’s really, really hard. So we can acknowledge the hard. We can acknowledge the grief. We can acknowledge the pain and choose to move forward. We can do both at the same time. It’s not one or the other.”
This both/and approach challenges common misconceptions about resilience. We don’t have to wait until we’re “over” something to continue living. In fact, life keeps moving whether we’re ready or not.
The practical application involves scaling down overwhelming futures into manageable moments. “All we had to focus on was the next hour, the next 30 seconds,” Laura remembers her family teaching her. “Focusing on the whole future was absolutely overwhelming.”
This strategy—moving the goalpost closer when the ultimate destination feels impossible—offers hope for anyone facing unwanted change. Sometimes survival happens one hour at a time, and that’s enough.
Finding Strength in Forced Choices
Laura Bratton’s journey from a nine-year-old receiving an unthinkable diagnosis to a confident adult helping others navigate their own challenges illuminates something remarkable about human adaptability. We possess reserves of strength we can’t access until circumstances demand them.
Her story reminds us that while we can’t control many of life’s plot twists, we retain agency over our responses. The accommodations that initially felt like markers of difference became foundations for independence. The grief that seemed overwhelming transformed into empathy that now serves others. The future that once appeared impossible eventually revealed new forms of possibility.
Most importantly, Laura’s experience demonstrates that moving forward doesn’t require leaving pain behind—it requires carrying it purposefully. The courage she speaks of isn’t the absence of fear or sadness, but the decision to continue despite them.
When life forces your hand, you discover you’re holding cards you never knew you had. Sometimes the changes we never chose become the very experiences that teach us who we’re capable of becoming.
This article was inspired by a thought-provoking interview with Laura Bratton and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Interview Transcript Laura Bratton with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | July 24, 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
Laura Bratton. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. Are you ready for a chat today?
Laura Bratton [00:00:09]:
I’m ready. Thank you for the opportunity.
Amy Stone [00:00:12]:
I’m so happy you’re here. So I begin all of my interviews, asking my guests, what part of the world do they call home? Where are you talking to me today?
Laura Bratton [00:00:19]:
So I’m from Greenville, South Carolina. So the northern upstate port of South Carolina.
Amy Stone [00:00:25]:
I hear you’ve got a pretty, pretty. You’ve got a southern accent. I would say a South Carolina.
Laura Bratton [00:00:31]:
It’s obvious I’m from the southeast. Right, I guess.
Amy Stone [00:00:34]:
Well, I’m further south than you, but I’m in the tropics, so I don’t, I don’t have a, I don’t have a deep south accent. My joke is I live so far south, I have to drive north to get to the south.
Laura Bratton [00:00:45]:
Love it.
Amy Stone [00:00:46]:
All right, so in a second we’re going to start the interview, but I want to ask you one more warm up question, which is about how what is something that you do to take care of yourself that you or somebody else would call self care?
Laura Bratton [00:01:00]:
So for self care, exercising and being in nature is most important for me. That grounds me, calms me. Absolutely love it.
Amy Stone [00:01:11]:
Fantastic. I love that. What, when we talk about nature, what kind of nature do you like? Do you go to the forest? Do you like to go to the beach? What’s your.
Laura Bratton [00:01:18]:
So any obviously anything outside, pretty much. But the beach is my favorite, favorite, favorite spot.
Amy Stone [00:01:25]:
Mine too. Mine.
Laura Bratton [00:01:26]:
To me, there’s nothing better than walking on the beach and just the ocean, the sand, the shells, it’s just, it’s incredibly healing and energizing.
Amy Stone [00:01:39]:
I think so too. I think so too. All right, so the topic of today that we’re going to talk about, which is something that I think you’ve probably talked about a lot over the years, is your story of losing your sight, your vision as a teenager. And that is a massive life change. Can we start by you going through which I’m sure you’ve told this a million times, tell us the backstory of how this happened. How did you lose your sight?
Laura Bratton [00:02:04]:
So at the age of nine, I was diagnosed with a very rare retinal disease. So the cells in my retina started dying. Perfectly healthy, no accidents that caused it. And still now it does not have a definite name. It’s just a very rare retinal disease. I was diagnosed when I was nine, but I didn’t start losing a major amount of sight until a teenager. So pretty much in those four years of high school is When I lost all my sight. So what I have now is very, very limited light perception. So what that means is if I’m at the beach and in a gorgeous day, you know, I know it’s sunny, I know or know it’s cloudy or you know, rainy or foggy, so I can tell that perception, but not in a usable day to day vision.
Amy Stone [00:03:02]:
All right, so no diagnosis. So nine, at nine, did you know or understand like the I even the idea of what it would mean to lose your vision, Like I’m, I’m curious about that.
Laura Bratton [00:03:15]:
Brilliant question. So I knew it cognitively, but I didn’t know it emotionally because as a nine year old who could see and was playing basketball and riding her bike and climbing trees and doing all the things, I just assumed that’s how life would always be. Even though I had received the diagnosis, my parents could grasp the reality, but not as a nine year old. I couldn’t grasp it. The reality. It became real as a teenager when I started losing a significant amount of sight.
Amy Stone [00:03:54]:
So when you say as a teenager then you were in high school, was it rapid when you were a teenager or was there. So you were diagnosed before you had any symptoms?
Laura Bratton [00:04:03]:
Yes, they’re very, very, very minimal symptoms.
Amy Stone [00:04:07]:
I’m trying to think. So you, did you go to an eye doctor? How did that, do you know how that happened? Because I don’t even know if I took my kids to the eye doctor when they were nine.
Laura Bratton [00:04:14]:
Great question. So my mom is the teacher, so she is hyper aware of what sort of where I should be as a nine year old, what I should be doing. And she noticed I was just holding books a little bit closer to my face than normal or I would walk up to the TV and sit in the chair closer to the TV rather than just sitting anywhere on the couch or any chair like I used to. So there were just slight, slight changes that I didn’t even notice. Again, as a, as a child I didn’t notice and they were very minimal. So that’s why my parents scheduled an appointment. And this was just supposed to be, or we thought it was just going to be a regular checkup, get glasses and move on with life. It was at that appointment the ophthalmologist said there’s a major issue going on and I have to refer her to a retina specialist. So, yeah, so it started by my mom and parents noticing she’s holding books a little bit closer than she did before.
Amy Stone [00:05:27]:
Wow. You were living it. And it’s a weird thing to ask people about things they actually go through and try and compare them to things that other people don’t go through. Because this was your lived experience, you don’t know anything else. So you described this in the information you gave me as a traumatic transition. And I think that it’s very easy for my mind to believe that as somebody who has their sight, I don’t struggle with that at all. But I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about when that transition actually kicked in as a teenager and this thing that you had been told was going to happen.
Laura Bratton [00:06:05]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:06:05]:
Began to actually happen. Like what? What was that like? And how did it feel?
Laura Bratton [00:06:10]:
Yeah. So the huge ysa traumatic transition, I had completely transitioned from basically full sight to over time, no sight. So I didn’t just wake up one day and all of a sudden have no sight. It was gradual, but yet it was quick because it was over those four years. So I would lose a significant amount of sight and then it would plateau for a while, and then I would lose a significant amount of sight and then it would plateau for a while. So again, it wasn’t just dramatic. I went to bed with full sight and woke up with no sights yet in those teenage years that are so difficult anyway, and you’re trying to figure out who you are and all you want to do is fit in. I was going through the trauma and the grief of I have to grieve what I’m actively currently losing.
Amy Stone [00:07:09]:
Yeah. I wondered. I wondered about grief. That was the thing that was bouncing around in my head, but I didn’t want to guess it is so in my family, we wear glasses. And so for three out of the four kids, we have had a moment where we realize that their vision needs adjustment. And then we watch them as it’s corrected and they realize how different the vision is, how much they couldn’t see.
Laura Bratton [00:07:34]:
Couldn’t see. Right.
Amy Stone [00:07:35]:
Because when the vision is changing, even in a situation that’s not like yours, you don’t necessarily actually notice it until somebody points out something that you can’t see. And so I was thinking about that, but we did not have nobody. We’ve never had the sensation where there’s the awareness that it’s going to continue to progress.
Laura Bratton [00:07:56]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:07:57]:
And I was trying to think about how. How that would feel for somebody so young, because you don’t really have a concept of being able to lose anything.
Laura Bratton [00:08:07]:
Right, right, right. So it is an incredibly difficult grieving process of knowing how easy life was without sight, grieving, knowing what I don’t have. So that. That was a very intense depression and anxiety time because it was so overwhelming. The grief was overwhelming. Trying to figure out how to adapt life was overwhelming. The present was overwhelming. The future was overwhelming. Again, it was just incredibly difficult grieving process.
Amy Stone [00:08:45]:
And you were a teenager, and teenagers are not known for their emotional stability. I gotta be, hon.
Laura Bratton [00:08:52]:
Especially girls. Right.
Amy Stone [00:08:54]:
My. My experience with the Emotionally. The emotionality. That’s not a real word. But the emotion, ability, whatever the word is of the both genders is that teenagers can be fickle, no matter if they’re boys or girls. Yes, the. So. But yeah. So you. So you experienced depression. You say you experienced grief, sadness. Did you get some teenage rage in there, like anger at your situation in the world?
Laura Bratton [00:09:16]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Amy Stone [00:09:18]:
And so this was. You were experiencing this firsthand. You’re young. Your parents and your family are guiding you or doing their best to guide you through this. Is there any familial connection, Anybody in your family that had any kind of experience walking the road of vision impairment?
Laura Bratton [00:09:37]:
Zero.
Amy Stone [00:09:38]:
So it’s new for everybody, for everyone?
Laura Bratton [00:09:41]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:09:41]:
That cannot have been easy. All right, so let’s talk about some pragmatic things of being a teenager, going through the. Your parents or your support team. Did you stay in the same school and social community the whole time?
Laura Bratton [00:09:55]:
Yes, I did. And that was the gift. As I was incredibly anxious and depressed and overwhelmed with the grief. The gift was the support system around me. So I was able to stay in the same high school by teachers making accommodations, by learning braille, by learning technology that made the computer accessible. And the gift of. Of social. Having those friends that still continue to be my friends that I do my whole life, they just. Just because my sight wasn’t as good, they didn’t just disappear. Clearly, I have those people, those friends that did. It was just too much for them to handle. They didn’t know what to say or do. So they did disappear. But my close connections, close friends, they were an incredible gift of you’re so you. And. And I laugh at this gift now. It didn’t feel like a gift then, but another very healing gift was I have one older brother, he’s five years older, and as he continued to treat me like his little annoying sister, that drove him crazy every day, all the time. That was a gift because they continued to treat me normal.
Amy Stone [00:11:16]:
Yes.
Laura Bratton [00:11:17]:
He didn’t. Okay, you’re not going to annoy me anymore because you can’t see. I still drove him crazy. So at the time, I was like, you’re so mean. You’re such a Mean brother. But that was the greatest gift he could have given me, just treating me normal.
Amy Stone [00:11:34]:
Absolutely. So your school was able to make accommodations with. So you learned braille, which I’m guessing you learned that from. Not. Not everybody knows that. So I’m guessing you learned that from a specialty source. Yeah.
Laura Bratton [00:11:50]:
So rather than going to art and music and pee all the extra activities in school, I worked with a vision teacher on learning braille and different techniques.
Amy Stone [00:12:02]:
Within the school curriculum. Like so within your school day. That’s amazing. Okay, that’s amazing. If you had asked me how that happened, I would have guessed that you had to go outside of. To a private specialty, but say, brought in resources. Can I ask, what years were you in school? In high school?
Laura Bratton [00:12:20]:
Great question. All right, so I graduated in 2003.
Amy Stone [00:12:25]:
Okay. So because the technology has dramatically shifted between like the. Yeah, there’s a lot more resources. So you were able to use some technology in the school setting where the software would talk to you and help you read things that were on screen.
Laura Bratton [00:12:42]:
Right. And that was incredible. Again, that was a gift that as I’m anxious, as I’m depressed, I had to develop that mindset of being grateful for what I did have. Being grateful that there was a software that we could load onto the computer and make it accessible. So it was all that that helped me move through the grief process, through the anxiety, through depression, changing that mindset.
Amy Stone [00:13:10]:
And I. You did definitely say that, that you’ve talked about having the awareness to be able to work on your mental state and, and your mindset. I think that that’s very, very aware and very prescient, especially for someone as young as you were. So I was wondering as I was thinking about that, you know, as a, as a 15 year old, you know, living your life, how like, were you able at that time to like focus on those things? Or is that something that you’re aware that you like? It’s like a rear view mirror kind of thing. It’s like, oh, that’s when I began to work on this.
Laura Bratton [00:13:45]:
Totally review. Okay, so in the moment, as a 15 year old, I was not saying, wow, I have so much grit. This is. This will all work out. It was all the perspective of focusing back, I realized. And again, the reason I was able to do all that was because of the support around me. So I can’t say that enough. As we go through change, as we navigate uncertainty and trauma, our support system, at least for me, was crucial. When I didn’t think I had the strength, they were telling me every day through your act, through their actions, you do have the strength. You can keep going.
Amy Stone [00:14:28]:
So when we talk about this, we talked about your parents and your brother, and then who else was part, would you say, was part of this support system when you were going through this transition?
Laura Bratton [00:14:38]:
So another huge support system was my guide dog. So I decided to, between high school and college to get a guide dog. And that was an incredibly healing experience. And again, that was the time when I had to make the shift and the mindset perspective of, okay, I’ve had so much support around me, at some point I had to accept and decide that to have the courage, to have the grit, to have the gratitude for myself, the support system just couldn’t do it, do it for me forever. So getting that guide dog, yes, obviously was incredible, valuable resource to physically keep me safe as I navigate the world. Yet also it gave me the confidence of, I choose this grit, I choose the gratitude, I choose to have the courage for myself to move forward.
Amy Stone [00:15:43]:
Yeah. So in the guide dog would give you another layer of independence, right? 100%, yeah. So one of the things. So I am not sure that the next thing I’m going to ask is like a truly great question, but I’m going to ask it anyway because I’m like that. The majority of the people that are watching and listening to this show have never experienced life as you have. And there’s this weird phenomenon where it’s very hard to actually imagine something we’ve never experienced. Right. We can pretend and we can guess, but when you actually go through it, all of the stories I tell, you know, there’s so many times where it’s like, I thought I knew what this was going to be and then it happened and I did not. I’d love to take some time and talk about some of the ways that your days and your life are quite potentially very different from somebody else who is moving through with sight. I think back to when I was in high school. I was. I don’t even know. I definitely had no experience with somebody my own age who had a significant vision impairment. I had experience running into them in the world, but not within my high school. So talk us like through what was your day like at that time? Like, what were, what were some of the things that you did that you maybe have the awareness are very different for us.
Laura Bratton [00:17:05]:
Obviously, life is very, very different without sight because you’re doing everything auditorily, you know, by. By hearing or, you know, using the technology. So in our huge differences, again, what every day was like was mentally surviving the day from a mindset, emotional perspective. That was the hardest part. That was the most difficult transition of. Yes, Learning braille was hard. Yes. Having my books and audio took a lot longer. And to complete my homework at night was double or triple the time that it took someone with sight. Yes, that was hard. Yet the hardest part was the emotional mindset piece.
Amy Stone [00:18:00]:
What was it like moving through like this space? So when you were in high school, the space itself, the building and the facility, was it, was it a challenge for you? How did you navigate the day, finding the classrooms, learning the things? Were there other vision impaired students that were on the campus or were you, what, what kind of adapt adaptations did you make? Because at that point you didn’t have the dog.
Laura Bratton [00:18:24]:
Yeah, so at that point I didn’t have the dog and I had a lot more vision than I have now. So, okay, I would make accommodations and this is where the, both the, the grit and the gratitude come in. So one of the combinations that we made was I would leave class literally like two minutes before the bell would ring at the end of each class.
Amy Stone [00:18:46]:
Okay.
Laura Bratton [00:18:47]:
And the point was that I could go from class on the first floor to class on the third floor and I would be in my next place when the bell rung. So then when hundreds of students are in the hallway, I’m already safely to the next class.
Amy Stone [00:19:04]:
That was what I was thinking. Like in a crowded situation with a bunch of self centered teenagers. I was trying to imagine how that works.
Laura Bratton [00:19:13]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:19:13]:
And I didn’t want to guess. I didn’t want to guess right, assume.
Laura Bratton [00:19:16]:
And again, that’s where the emotional mindset piece comes in. When we explore, experience, difficulty and change. I did not want to be different. I absolutely hated being that one person. Why she can’t leave two minutes before class. I want to leave. I didn’t want to have to be different yet I had to learn. And all this was again through mentors, through my support. It wasn’t through me as a teenager realizing this. I had to realize that was the source of strength. Because in that moment, that’s what I needed. That’s what kept me safe, that’s what kept me in my high school and moving forward towards graduation was making that accommodation. So yes, while I did not like being different and sending out that I’m the one girl leaving the class walking down the hall by herself, I had to learn that that’s just a part of my new normal. And how do I be grateful that they made that accommodation so I could get to the next class safely rather than being stuck in that anxiety and depression of, I don’t like this. And so I’m not going to receive this accommodation, which when you say that.
Amy Stone [00:20:30]:
You say it so eloquently and so calmly. But I think that in the moment, it must have really been very hard.
Laura Bratton [00:20:37]:
Oh, it was incredibly difficult because again, I was fighting being different.
Amy Stone [00:20:42]:
And it wasn’t your choice. There was nothing. There’s no. There’s no other option out of there. Right. Right. Yeah. I’d like to talk to you about the choices we make and how it impacts us, but there’s also times where we have to adapt because we don’t. We don’t make the choice.
Laura Bratton [00:20:56]:
Right, Right.
Amy Stone [00:20:57]:
For.
Laura Bratton [00:20:57]:
Right.
Amy Stone [00:20:58]:
How do. So. And let’s say you had friends that you had in your lifetime, and they were part of your school community. And so your social. Your social situation was strong, but when you then graduated and went on to college.
Laura Bratton [00:21:14]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:21:15]:
Did you then shift social communities? And were you in a. Was it. Were you in a position where you had to meet new people and start and meet them where you were like, how did that. How did that sort of shake out when you were in college finding new friend groups?
Laura Bratton [00:21:28]:
Yeah. So that all goes back to, again, our emotional mindset perspective. So the gift of college is that I wasn’t the only person who was blind on campus. I wasn’t the only guide dog user on campus. I wasn’t the only person who had a disability. And the gift of that was it gave me the opportunity to regain my confidence and become confident in my new normal through the college experience. I had the gift of being on a large campus. So, yes, there are students with disabilities, there are students without disabilities. I mean, clearly students with disabilities are the minority, but yet I still wasn’t the only one. So it gave me the opportunity to be comfortable in my own skin. And what I found was, is I was comfortable in my new normal. And yes, I’m a person who’s blind, and I’m also so much more like I’m not. The blindness, as I learned that and became comfortable in that, the friendships, the social was natural.
Amy Stone [00:22:41]:
Okay.
Laura Bratton [00:22:42]:
Because we could connect around similar interests, we could connect around our major. You know, we’re majoring in the same thing. It just so gave me an incredible opportunity, again from that mindset perspective, that in change we can have that confidence and know that our new normal is just who we are and be okay with that.
Amy Stone [00:23:10]:
I love that. One of the things that I was thinking about this because we were talking about school and the age at which you experienced this was the choices that you were thinking about as a kid, like what you wanted to study in university, what you wanted to pursue as a job and those kind of things. And I wondered if you talk a little bit about how did you. Were there things that popped up where you had to make a decision, like, well, I’m not, not, not on the table for me to be a pilot.
Laura Bratton [00:23:41]:
That’s what I was getting ready to say.
Amy Stone [00:23:44]:
I mean, because we look at that, we look at that as when we’re young and all of us have strengths and weaknesses, but there’s also this like, sort of counter idea that we feed youngsters, which is sort of anything is possible. Chase your dreams and. But you had the very, very real situation where it’s like, maybe not everything is for me. So how did that.
Laura Bratton [00:24:03]:
Right.
Amy Stone [00:24:04]:
Are there things that you thought about that you were like, no, these are my options. This is when I look at doing these, these are things I’m interested in. These are my options. How did that feel for you?
Laura Bratton [00:24:12]:
So definitely, literally what you were saying about exactly what I was going to say, well, I’m not going to be an architect, I’m not going to be a pilot.
Amy Stone [00:24:20]:
Yeah.
Laura Bratton [00:24:21]:
And so I majored in psychology for two reasons. One, because I was just passionate about that anyway, but more so because of my lived experience, because of the traumatic transition, because of the grief process. I wanted to understand from a psychological perspective, how do we heal, how do we grieve and move forward at the exact same time. So I didn’t just want to study it for my understanding. I want to study it for my understanding and to be able to help others as they go through grief and loss. Because as you referred to earlier, this experience is very, very unique. Yet the human experience of anxiety and depression and grief, we all experience. So that’s why I majored in psychology, to have a better understanding of how we navigate through the anxiety, through the depression.
Amy Stone [00:25:19]:
All right, so we’re going to talk a little bit about what you do these days in a minute. When you were studying psychology, did you have an idea or a vision of a job that you thought you wanted in the future? Were you thinking of being a clinician, being a therapist? Like, what were the things in your mind?
Laura Bratton [00:25:35]:
I was definitely thinking about being a therapist. And then towards the end of college when I was thinking about career, you know, next was grad school or whatever was next. That’s when I wanted my focus to be a holistic mind, body, spirit connection. Why I spent those four years Focusing on the psychology and our cognitive perspective. I also knew that so much of my healing was spiritual. It was emotional, it was physical. It was all of it combined. It wasn’t just one part of me. So that’s when I decided to go onto my master’s in theology so I could focus on an academic perspective and connect all of us so it could be a holistic perspective of healing.
Amy Stone [00:26:25]:
So I didn’t. So I didn’t know either of those things. So you have a. You majored in psychology and undergrad and then you went on and you studied theology for the spiritual side of it.
Laura Bratton [00:26:34]:
Yes. To be able to focus on again that how as we as humans, how do we heal again? To become comfortable in our own skin.
Amy Stone [00:26:46]:
Yeah.
Laura Bratton [00:26:46]:
And that. That comes through so many different modalities, not just the psychological.
Amy Stone [00:26:53]:
It does. And I will say so. Earlier I said something like, there’s this experience you have where, you know, it’s a thing that can happen, but until it happens to you, you just don’t know what it’s going to feel like. I have probably done seven or eight interviews about grief unrelated to, you know, personal experience, where people experience that. They say, of course we know that we can have this, but we do a pretty terrible job, which is weird. Getting each other ready for grief, which is kind of a crazy thing. So I love that that was your focus. All right.
Laura Bratton [00:27:25]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:27:26]:
So you wrote a book. You have written a book. You call it Harnessing Courage. It’s not new. It’s been out since 2016, I think.
Laura Bratton [00:27:32]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:27:33]:
Overcoming adversity with grit and gratitude. A definite theme of today’s conversation. How did you decide to write the book? Talk us through how that came about.
Laura Bratton [00:27:45]:
So there were two reasons for the book. The main reason, the goal of the book was as I realized the support. As you were saying that rear view mirror. As I realized the incredible support that I had from so many different people in places, I wanted to be able to write a book that could be a resource for people as they’re going through any type of change and loss, that they can use that as a resource, as support to be that support to them that I received. So what I didn’t want to do is say, okay, I’ve received all the support. That’s great for me. I wanted to go and be that support in the world. So that was the reason. That was the passion for the book. So I tell my story, and I tell it through the perspective of grit and gratitude, how I use each of those resources. The title of the book was very deliberate. So the harness is what is the leather shop that goes around the dog and the human holds the handle of the harness. So as you walk forward as a team, the guy, the guide dog, is guiding you as you’re holding the harness. So I named it Harness Encourage. I tout it Harness Encourage as a respect for the. The two soft had two guide dogs. Each of the guide dogs gave me that courage to physically move through the world.
Amy Stone [00:29:17]:
Yeah.
Laura Bratton [00:29:18]:
So that was the main reason I named Tarns of Courage. The second reason was just the emotional mindset perspective of every single day. It takes so much courage to choose to move forward. When we face change, when we face loss, when we’re in the midst of grief, that’s intense courage to choose not to be overwhelmed and shut down by the grief, by the loss. So that’s why the title was very, very deliberate, very specific.
Amy Stone [00:29:50]:
I love that. One of the reasons that the theme of this show is so broad is that in my own lived experience, just going through the things that I’ve done, I realized because people would challenge me on it, people would push me on it, and certain things that we sometimes teach the skills of adapting to change in very, very specific ways. This is how we handle this one and this is how we handle this one. But in reality, it’s actually almost always the same steps. Whether we are talking about a challenge like you’re going through, which is a very physical challenge, or a grieving challenge, or a life stage challenge, where your identity is shifting, the process is often very similar. So I love the way you explain that. All right, so you didn’t just write a book. You also have founded your own company, which I’m going to say it. And if I say it wrong, you correct me. Is it ubiquitous?
Laura Bratton [00:30:43]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:30:43]:
UBI Global. This is an organization that provides speaking and coaching to empower people to overcome challenges and obstacles with grit and gratitude. Love it. So I want to hear all about this. And. And I do. Did you, when you graduated from school, did you go through a period where you were looking for jobs with other people or did you launch straight into building your global empire writing a book as an entrepreneur?
Laura Bratton [00:31:07]:
No. Yeah, I didn’t. So I did just graduate from college in start an llc.
Amy Stone [00:31:13]:
People do. People do. Don’t get me wrong. So, yeah, so. But I was curious. All right, so UB Global, tell us how you. How. Why, what, what. Where did that come from? And. And how. What is it?
Laura Bratton [00:31:25]:
So the passion for the speaking and the coaching is the exact same as the passion for the book. So I wanted to do something again that could support people as I had received that support, because I know through my lived experience, the difficulty of going through loss, of going through change. So through the speaking, through the coaching, through the book, it’s my goal to be that support and be that voice to say, yes, it’s really, really hard. So we can acknowledge the hard. We can acknowledge the grief. We can acknowledge the pain and choose to move forward. We can do both at the same time. It’s not one or the other.
Amy Stone [00:32:08]:
Yeah. It almost has to be at the same time because time doesn’t stop. I have not experienced what you have gone through, but my limited experience with grief, one of the just gobsmacking experiences, that I was completely overwhelmed with the sensation of grief, and I would find myself in a situation just stunned by the fact that the rest of the world was moving forward.
Laura Bratton [00:32:31]:
Absolutely.
Amy Stone [00:32:32]:
How can you do this? How can you be going to movies and go to grocery stories? Or don’t you see I’m in this enormous pain, you know, so how can you be laughing? How can you be laughing? Exactly. But the thing is that life continues to move forward.
Laura Bratton [00:32:45]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:32:46]:
And I do. I think that it is very, very tuned in that you are so aware of the fact that it is a major action step. It is a lot of work to make the choice to keep moving forward. I think we under. I think that when you have a story like yours where the. The change was very overt and dynamic and a big part of your life. We. That’s true, but we. It’s also the action of going from class to class, because at some point there probably was a time where if you had said to your parents, I don’t. I don’t want to.
Laura Bratton [00:33:21]:
Right.
Amy Stone [00:33:21]:
They might have been like, yeah, we get it and let me not do it.
Laura Bratton [00:33:24]:
Absolutely. And that was the gift they gave me. And that’s why I focus so much on grit. Is there. I absolutely said that a million times. And the gift of the support was. I know, we get it. It’s really, really hard. And so all we have to do is the next hour.
Amy Stone [00:33:41]:
Okay. This really move the goalpost. Like, we’re just going to do this hour and then we’re going to talk.
Laura Bratton [00:33:45]:
About it again and then we’ll do the next hour. So focusing on the whole future was absolutely overwhelming. All we had to focus on was the next hour, the next 30 seconds.
Amy Stone [00:33:57]:
Yeah, just move it as close as you need to to know that you’re going to make it. Yeah, I think that’s. That’ all right, so I want to, in a second, we’re going to do a final fun questions, but I want to give you a chance to directly talk about how people can connect with you and find you after the interview.
Laura Bratton [00:34:15]:
So the best way is my website, Laura Bratton.com has all the resources for the speaking, the coaching, the book, all the information getting connection, all that is on the website.
Amy Stone [00:34:27]:
Very, very nice. I’m going to put that link in the show notes so everybody who’s listening to it on a podcast player, it’s there. If you’re watching the episode on YouTube, it’s in the show notes. If you are subscribed to my email community, which everybody should do, because that’s the best way to get these links, then it zips into your email box and you can just click on it. So that’s the easiest way to do it. So, Laura, are you ready for the final questions are very, very good. Okay. If I invited you over for dinner and I said, laura, I want to make you your very favorite meal for dinner, what would you say? What is your favorite meal?
Laura Bratton [00:35:00]:
Seafood. Seafood. Seafood.
Amy Stone [00:35:02]:
What kind of seafood? Like, like, like scallops or what do you like?
Laura Bratton [00:35:07]:
Shrimp? Fish? I love, love, love seafood.
Amy Stone [00:35:12]:
Okay.
Laura Bratton [00:35:13]:
Obviously, I love the bees. All of everything connected to the beach.
Amy Stone [00:35:17]:
Very, very good. All right. Very good. Okay. So we are you. So when you, you read Braille, but you also would listen to audiobooks, what’s the last, what is the last book that you read or listened to that you really enjoyed?
Laura Bratton [00:35:33]:
So, but this actually helped me both professionally and personally. I love, love, loved Winning friends and influencing people.
Amy Stone [00:35:43]:
Oh, from Dale Carnegie, the old one. Yes, yes, that’s it. I mean, that is an old book, I think that was written.
Laura Bratton [00:35:49]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:35:51]:
So then you. The only thing I remember from reading that book is the importance and the value of referring to people by their name.
Laura Bratton [00:35:58]:
When he says the personal connection.
Amy Stone [00:36:00]:
Yeah.
Laura Bratton [00:36:01]:
And that’s so valuable socially and professionally. That’s why I love. That’s the book that first came to mind because it, it applies in so many different areas of our life.
Amy Stone [00:36:10]:
It does, it does. And, and so that’s, that’s a good one. All right, Very good. So do you have or have you ever had sort of a bucket list, a list of things that you want to do in the future, things of all kind of things. And if you do, do you want to share with us one of the things that you still hope to accomplish off your list?
Laura Bratton [00:36:29]:
So I love traveling. So definitely on my bucket list is lots of traveling. There’s not one specific place. Just I love traveling. So visiting new places and exploring. Absolutely. Love it.
Amy Stone [00:36:44]:
What’s the first, like if you could pick any place to go next, you have a place that you is on the top of your list that you would like to experience.
Laura Bratton [00:36:51]:
Honestly, anywhere with a beach.
Amy Stone [00:36:54]:
Anywhere with the beach.
Laura Bratton [00:36:55]:
Yeah. Love, love, love experiencing different types of beaches. I just love it. So. Yes.
Amy Stone [00:37:03]:
That is a phenomenal answer. Laura, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest onto the show today.
Laura Bratton [00:37:09]:
Thank you for the gift and thank you for this platform.