Hey Friends

 My whole entire world centers around my family. I am married to the person who keeps my soul grounded, yet he can't see a thing!  I have 3 grown babies and I call them babies because well you know they will always be my babies., 2 bonus daughters and five Grandchildren. but even with a full heart there was still something missing, something I didn't even know existed. Until that one day I took a GIANT paycut & a chance to complete an apprenticeship to eventually become a Licensed Dispensing Optician. If I said It was hard for me that would be an understatement for so many reasons. I doubted myself a lot in the beginning and pretty much continuously throughout the next 2 long years. I have ADHD so with everything in Optical being the opposite of what brain is thinking I really had to slow down and think each and every little thing through. After all the hours put in,  all the practice, fitting & adjustments, having to be able to perform a miraculous repair at the drop of a dime,  and all the mathematical formulas you had to remember then came studying for my ABO which you had to do on your own time after working all day, but somewhere in the middle of all the chaos I became this wonderful Apprentice Optician. Every patient I helped from an older man who had lost his wife and thought he didn't need to fill his eyeglass prescription because he was going to die soon and his other pair would work fine until then, a little boy with down syndrome who had been abused and was adopted by his Grandmother whom I had to gain his trust  and connect with him instantly on some level in order to do what I needed to do to help him see because my world in that big Optical Store was just too overwhelming for him that day, a tiny 2 year old little girl who had been born drug addicted and could not barely see anything and she was prescribed bifocals of course her insurance was going to make everyone jump through hoops to help this little girl and her new family. I jumped through hoop after hoop with phone calls and prior authorizations for each and every part the frame, the lenses, fitting her for her bifocals. That day I pretty much had to do a headstand on top of a chair while taking her P.D. and performing a one person circus act to get her measurements while keeping her happy but the day she her glasses were ready and she could she her beautiful mother clearly for the first time was something I will never forget, or the time my Optical Manager & myself paid out of pocket for a brother & sisters replacement eyeglasses bc their insurance said they weren't eligible and the school nurse was going to do it, or the young girl that was 6 years old in a wheelchair and was getting ready to receive her make a wish because it wasn't her time for her kidney replacement just yet came in and I met this little girl and she was the most amazing little girl I had ever met, her smile, personality and her love for life was an inspiration for all the other miserable Opticians I was working with that day and I told them just that when she left but before of course another insurance issue this time her insurance would only allow her to pick a $9 or $17 dollar frame and unfortunately the little girl was very tiny so none of those frames fit her correctly. My heart just could not allow what happens each & every day in those big box Optical stores. I could not allow her to walk out of there with a pair of glasses that where just going to continually fall off her face because they were way to big and the temples were so long they would of had to be adjusted down the side of her neck. I went to my Manager once again hoping again that this was another day in which her heart was big, it was and we were able to get her in the proper fitting frames and that day we just let the store eat the cost of her frames. It's all these moments & the ones in between that I haven't mentioned that are so very important, these are the people (friends), kids in need, someones loved one in a nursing home or locked in a prison for a crime that maybe they didn't commit or have done their time for that I have met along the way. The ones who are taken advantage of in our governmental health care systems, judged by another human based on how they pay for their eyeglasses & most times not even given an explanation or a why as to what their prescription may recommend, or the opportunity to be told all the information so they can make a decision weather they can afford to pay with a different method or choose another way to obtain their glasses. After all we all deserve to see the world as it was intended. Don't we? I began digging deeper and learning not only from the providers rights and responsibilities but also the patients rights and responsibilities and what is required of the provider or providers. My colleagues & providers started to get annoyed with me and I started to slowly push buttons I guess you could say calling people out and stating facts but ultimately I took my ABO & I'm still not sure how but someway I managed to stay in that seat at the testing site after wanting to get up and leave so badly after reading the first 3 questions and suddenly forgetting everything I had worked so hear to learn in that very moment and how I had trained myself to think of everything backward.  But somehow or for some reason I sat there that rainy afternoon and I worked until I no longer had any more seconds left and I hit submit. I just knew there was no way I could have passed, but I did and it was that day that I had had successfully become a Licensed Dispensing Optician and on that day I gained my wings of freedom, it was an amazing gift in disguise. In the moment as so many before I knew that I was given this gift to share, to genuinely help others navigate the challenges of finding affordable optical choices and I knew exactly what was missing! There is no middle ground. So here I am ... This is the middle ground, to bridge the gap in anyway possible so people don't have to sell their soul or give up their food or medicine for the month to get the proper pair of eyeglasses with the right lens type & features needed to get the most out of their eyeglass prescription allowing them to see the world and all its beautiful things clearly. I never thought in a million years I would say this but I am so extremely grateful for all the struggles internal and external and all the different opportunities I have had in the mean time learning how things work and how other practices do business while searching to find my way bc leaving that big box store with a new toxic Manager was the hardest but best decision I have ever had to make I had never loved a job like that or felt a passion like that for a job I was working. I had made so many friends and family during this time there I had helped so many that others would have not. The silence day in and day out while everyone was ignoring all the things I was bringing to light from the Doctors to the other Opticians and even the Market Manager did not silence me or the things I had figured out that were happening, it is exactly how I got here!