EP53: CLARITY with Shelby Perry, Entrepreneur and Founder of EYEHESIVE

About The Guest:
Shelby Perry is a Utah native who struggled with addiction from a young age. After seeking help and entering recovery, she founded EYEHESIVE, a community and coaching program for individuals dealing with eye and vision loss. Shelby is also a yoga instructor and uses her platform to inspire and support others on their journey to recovery and self-acceptance.

Summary:
Shelby Perry shares her journey of addiction, recovery, and overcoming a life-altering accident that left her blind in one eye. She discusses the importance of sobriety and the support of the recovery community in her healing process. Shelby's experience led her to found EYEHESIVE, a community and coaching program for individuals with eye and vision loss. She emphasizes the power of self-acceptance and finding purpose in helping others.

Key Takeaways:

• Sobriety and the support of the recovery community played a crucial role in Shelby's recovery from her accident.
• Shelby founded EYEHESIVE to provide support and resources for individuals with eye and vision loss.
• Self-acceptance and finding purpose can help overcome adversity and create a fulfilling life.

Quotes:

• "Everything that I learned from the foundation of getting sober... has directly coexisted and helped me get through that eye loss." - Shelby Perry
• "I just thought about other people out there that might have an eye injury and not have as many people or support." - Shelby Perry
• "I can still move my body and get on the mountain today." - Shelby Perry

Transcript

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<|0.00|> And so looking back on recovering from the snowboarding incident, I can see so clearly<|6.70|><|6.70|> right now that sobriety and the community and learning what I learned in AA has directly<|14.90|><|14.90|> affected the way that I have recovered from my accident and how I give back today.<|20.80|><|20.80|> Everything that I might have<|29.12|><|29.12|> carried from the accident has helped me get through that I lost. I'm Shelby Perry and I'm Undone. Hey friend, I am glad you are here. Welcome to yet another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. Join me, Toby Brooks, as I invite a new guest each week to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. For Utah native Shelby Perry, innocent childhood dreams of being a model were threatened by the ever-increasing pressures of life. When she discovered alcohol at the age of 13, she found herself heading instead down a path of addiction. Over time she found a job and she was doing her best to cope. Her drinking and drugs continued to tighten their grip until eventually a friend who'd battled addictions of her own convinced Shelby to move to Southern California and to get treatment. A long, tough, but ultimately fruitful few months followed and she found herself immersed in a caring and supportive recovery community. She and her new friends decided to celebrate with a weekend snowboarding trip back to her home state of Utah, she found herself incredibly happy in the idea of great friends, fresh powder, and now sober fun. Then, disaster struck. On the last run of the day, she suffered a terrible fall and a gruesome accident that left her blind in her right eye. After months of care, eventually the decision was made to remove it. Dealing with the grief and the mental and physical pain that followed, she found strength in those lessons and the friends that she discovered during her addiction recovery. Eventually, she founded iHESIV, a community and coaching program for others dealing with eye and vision loss. I hope you'll enjoy my conversation with the incredibly strong, powerful, and focused Shelby Perry in episode 53, Clarity. This week we've got a guest who I met just recently via social media, Shelby Perry is joining us from San Diego, California. Shelby, great to have you. Awesome, great to be on, thank you for having me. Yeah, and so I was really drawn to your story. We shared, I'm on several different podcasting groups on Facebook and other social media platforms. And you mentioned that you had a life-altering accident. And then as I did some more research, I found out that you've also been active in recovery. And so I'm really looking forward to hearing your story and kind of digging in to see how the setback has led to a new direction in your life. But I want to start off with a little bit of a softball. Who did Shelby want to be growing up? Oh, good question. I'm tall, like I'm six foot tall, pretty lit, like slender, so I always had a thing for fashion models and like Tyra Banks was one of my idols. I watched all of the runway shows on America's Next Top Model growing up and aspirations of being a model, your story took a relatively recent turn. I think the date I found was February 28, 2021 was the day that changed your life. So start at the beginning. Lead me through the process of this life altering event. Yeah, absolutely. I'm originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. So I was born and raised there. And then I moved out to San Diego during the pandemic. So I got to San Diego April 28, 2020, which is the start of my sobriety journey. So during the pandemic, when everything was shut down and I was out of work is when the first, I guess, situation in my life occurred that I was like, okay, things need to change. I can't really go on this way anymore. And I was having that life, trying to mask everything by work and the hobbies that I did deep down, clearly drinking too much and using other substances. And I could get away with it a little bit when the world seems more normal. But as soon as everything shut down, it was pretty blaring that I needed help. So I have a friend that lives out here in San Diego, California, and she's in recovery and we've been friends for 12 plus years. And so during that time I hit her up and just asked for help. That was my first like true gift of like desperation and needing that help confronting my issues. And so she helped me get from Salt Lake City to San Diego within like a 24-hour period, super quick. She's like, coming out here. And I was able to get set up in a sober living here in San Diego. And first I was like, I just need the 30 days and I'll be fine. I can go back home after. 30 days turned into 60 days and then into 90 days. And in that time I'd gotten really involved with the sobriety community here. I go to a lot of meetings and then I was secretarying and taking a lot of service positions and working the steps through Alcoholics Anonymous. And I just really started to enjoy sobriety and enjoy the community that I had built and this foundation I had built with all these sober people and living really fulfilling and happy lives. So I continued to stay in San Diego and things slowly started to reopen and life started to come back to normalcy as COVID restrictions lightened. And it was 10 months after I'd been out here. So exactly on my 10 months of sobriety, I decided to take a group of friends back to Salt Lake City and go on a snowboarding trip. Like I said, I'm from there. And so I grew up on those mountains. My whole family are big mountain people, we're avid skiers and snowboarders and just all things mountain. So I felt like going there is just like, it's like home. It is home. And I get out there with this group of friends and we're having like an awesome weekend. We just got dumped on. There was like so much snow and yeah, so the weekend was really, really fun. And of course, it's always the last day, the last run, and I get into a snowboarding incident which ultimately ended me up in the hospital. Immediately they tobogganed me down, brought me to the Moran Eye Center, which is like actually a really well-known eye center, so the good thing that was close. And they did an initial surgery that day trying to repair the eye. And about three days later they did another surgery. So I stayed in Salt Lake for about a week after the snowboarding incident, and then made my way back to San Diego and established care out here at the Shiley Eye Institute. They continued to observe the eye, and two months after the initial incident, they decided to remove the eye completely. There was zero vision in it, and at this point, the eye had really started to deteriorate. They had to put initially in the eye like 30 some stitches and they weren't able to stitch all the way to the back. So the eye just like slowly started to lose its shape and color and it was painful. So the day after I took one year of sobriety which was April 28th, 2021, they removed the eye from its socket. So on April 29th, 2021. And as you had already mentioned, the incident happened on April 28th, 2021. So it's all coincides quite a bit between the two events, you know. So I have this big celebration of celebrating one year of sobriety with my community. And then the very next day, I go into surgery to have my eye removed. And lucky for me, I guess, that I had already spent that 10 months really getting into the AA community and building that foundation and that network of people that really carried me through the whole injury, all of the surgeries, having my eye removed, and then just that process of relearning how to drive and live my life again. And yeah, so both of those moments in my life brought me to this place of some clarity or some realizations, I guess. Did you catch that? The timing. The lessons learned. Even the word choice Shelby uses here. She had been severely injured in a snowboarding accident ten months after starting her addiction recovery and her sobriety. Despite attempts to repair it, her right eye had been so badly damaged that doctors and she ultimately made the difficult decision to remove it exactly one day after her one-year sobriety anniversary she entered the days, weeks, and months to follow better equipped than most her addiction recovery journey had prepared her not only with the concepts of healing but also with a community of support and ironically despite irreparable damage to one of her eyes you heard her say it, that word. You'll hear it more than once in this interview. Clarity. The Shelby who was struggling to survive, with two perfect eyes, but a steadily worsening drug and alcohol dependency in early 2020, may have emerged with physical evidence of what she's been through, and with one fewer eye. But in the process, she gained clarity. And that clarity led to a new sense of purpose. And it was kind of one of those moments, like, what do I want to do with my life? I was in definitely up and down during that time. There was areas where I was very victim or like, why would this happen to me? Or what does this mean? And then, you know, there was one day I was just laying in bed and I just thought to myself, I could not imagine doing this without the community or the support that I had and I just thought about other people out there that might have an eye injury and not have as many people or support and then also for myself it's like okay so I have this great community for sobriety but they don't quite understand the eye loss the prosthetic eye process because they haven't gone through that and I know how important and invaluable it is to speak with someone that has gone through something similar. So I set out to social media, shared my story, I was just trying to find one or a couple people that may have lost an eye some way and just to connect with some people and all of a sudden a big community has like really formed and I had no idea that people really even lost eyes. I never knew anyone with a prosthetic eye. I didn't know there were so many ways to lose an eye. And so as I started out on social media, I shared my story and I just first started sharing other people's stories that were willing to share it. And I still do that. So once they submit their story, it's on my blog, on my website, and then I share it across the social media platforms. And then the community, we've just grown so much that I've been able to now offer other things. We've done two virtual conferences for the community and had pretty big speakers in the community speak at these virtual conferences. I do monthly meetups for the community just to come together. Similar, I guess, if you've ever been to like an AA meeting. I mean, obviously, we just talk about prosthetic eyes, but that's kind of that energy where you're just getting to be in a space. And of course, people live all over the world, so we have to do it virtually in a space where you can talk with one another that have gone through similar surgeries or just thoughts or just navigating life with one eye and a prosthetic eye. And then I've also started coaching within the community. So I offer a one-on-one coaching for anyone that has one eye or a visual impairment. Their eye doesn't have to have been removed because there are people in the community that still have their eye, it's just blind, or maybe they're more visually impaired. The stories range so much, but I really focus on in the coaching, so any stage of that vision loss or eye removal surgery, and it's just about getting that self-confidence, that self-love, and that power back in their lives, because for a really long time, I felt like I had lost all of that power. But I felt that once before getting sober and then to feel it again so quick after kind of getting on my feet from sobriety when it was just like everything was taken away. You know what I'm like, am I going to be able to drive or live this normal life again? And slowly with encouragement of other people in the community, I learned I can, you know, and I can be confident and I can do a lot of the things I was doing before. Your story is definitely powerful. And either of those portions are an episode for this show. Your recovery is an episode. Your eye loss is an episode. The fact that you went through both and within a relatively short period of time. So let's go back to the recovery. I had a friend who's in recovery. He started a community-based action resource center in a rural area, and he's really doing great things. But he was one of my first guests, Mike Tyson. And one of the things he said that has really stuck with me, and I shared with you off camera before we started, just the bravery of people in recovery. And so many times there's this stigma associated with someone who, whether they get fired or they leave their job, whatever, I mean you can't work full time at your job and be full time in a residency recovery program. So you uprooted yourself or were uprooted and left your community and find yourself in another state. Talk me through the mental process for you that ultimately led you being brave enough or for whatever reason having the strength that it took to go from one day trying to struggle through addiction and the next day admitting you had a problem and submitting to this recovery? Yeah, that's a great question and it is kind of hard to explain unless you've gone through it and people that have gone through it and maybe they've gone through it multiple times. Understand as well too, it's typically not like, it's rare for someone to come in and get sober and stay sober the first time they try. Usually with addiction and alcoholism can be a thing where, yeah, it's just a really hard disease to combat because in our minds it tells us, okay, we don't have a problem or maybe this time it'll be different or let's just try one more time and it's the same result every time. It's really hard for our brains to fully grasp that and it comes from a place of complete surrender and that is a hard thing to really explain unless you feel it and you can really get to this place where you are completely surrendering. At the time, I didn't even know that's what I was doing. I just knew that things weren't going well and it wasn't the first time. I had a long history starting really young and lots of things in between that were a lot worse, quote-unquote, that you think would have created or pushed me to get sober before. So when I hear these kind of stories all the time, it's not one specific thing or it's not even the worst thing that happens to us that makes us get sober. It's just when we have this brief moment in time where we are able to surrender and be like, you know, I need some help. And that's just what had happened. I can't even explain it, maybe a universe or God or whatever you want to believe in. But I had that gift of desperation for the first time. That was enough for me to pick up the phone and call for help. And my friend being in the community and knowing how quick those moments can go for most people because then you get a little clarity and you're like, wait a minute, maybe I don't have a problem or maybe it's okay or maybe I was being overdramatic. And so she knew the importance of getting me out here quick and kind of getting me surrounded by the community and into a sober environment rather quickly is key. But you see that when intervention type shows as well too because so many times people are like, okay, I'm ready and then they are, wait a minute, I'm not ready. I don't think so. So yeah, I was just gifted and blessed with this opportunity that she was able to get me into a sober living right away. And for whatever reason, again, it just kind of clicked that I needed to just keep pursuing this. And in my head it was, well, eventually I can drink. But now I've taken over three years of sobriety and I've cleared up a lot of that mental battle that I was talking about, maybe next time will be different or maybe I can drink normally later on in life. I don't believe from my drinking experience and the way that when I take a drink, I continue to want more, it's never going to change. And so I just know that the result no matter what is still going to be the same. So knowing that I have to stay really really close to sobriety, people that are in sobriety and like working programs and giving back and being in service as well too. Yeah, so I've heard it said that rock bottom teaches us lessons that mountaintops never can and what do you think at that point in your life, absent the accident, you're 60 days, you're 90 days in recovery, and recovery comes with ups and downs, but if you trendline it, it's progress out of that low point. What do you think addiction recovery taught you that helped you cope or deal with the accident? That's a great question too and looking back at it now, like at the time again I think I was just doing whatever I needed to to get by, similar to coming into sobriety, nothing was that clear. I was like okay just gonna follow what people are doing, I'm just gonna do what I need to do and until I look back on it months or years later I'm like oh that's what I was doing or that was helpful or I needed that or good thing I did that. And so looking back on recovering from the snowboarding incident, I can see so clearly right now that sobriety and the community and learning what I learned in AA has directly affected the way that I have recovered from my accident and how I give back today. So like I said, the little virtual meetups that I do, for me, it feels just like an AA meeting, even though nobody else in that space would know that because they're not in meetings. Most of them, I don't think any of them. But everything that I learned from the foundation of getting sober and that surrender portion and even knowing that I needed to surrender to end the acceptance portion too and like accept the eye loss and the vision loss and then working all the way through any resentments that I might have carried from the accident and not doing a self-blaming and just everything that I learned in sobriety has directly coexisted and helped me get through that eye loss. And then today the serving and giving back and being of support to others which is taught in our program of recovery as well too. Right. Well for those not familiar with the space, recovery is a lifelong thing. You will forever be in recovery. And so for you to experience this setback that early in your recovery, less than a year, right? Yeah. Ten months. And if I'm not mistaken, a typical coping mechanism, you're dealing with the depression of this loss and a new reality of what life with one eye is like and coping with this new normal. And many times the temptation is going to be there even for someone who's not addicted to turn to substances, to turn to alcohol. So talk me through what those months following the accident were like, not just for Shelby, the the injured snowboarder, but for Shelby, the recoverer. Yeah, so luckily the people that I was with on the trip were all part of the program in sobriety, so they were able to help. Some of them stayed back in Salt Lake and stayed with me during all of my surgeries and then actually flew back with me to San Diego and I was still living in the sober living with 10 other adults that are at different ranges of their sobriety. But that was helpful. I was already in an area or environment that I needed to stay sober in order to continue to live there. And then the community itself, everyone I'd ever met in AA was pretty much on my doorstep and they were bringing food and flowers and ice cream and watching movies with me or helping me to do my laundry or clean my room or whatever. Also, I wasn't driving for a really long time and so they took me to all my appointments and really just made sure I got everything and everywhere I needed to go. So I can just say that the support of the AA community really did help me get through that time. So I never felt alone alone. Looking back, I joke with them now. I'm like, oh, because they're like, that would have been the perfect time to relapse. I could have used that. But I wouldn't blame anybody that because I do hear a lot of injury stories of people coming in and then they have injuries and it does set them back or set them to go back out, which I totally could see happening. And it's just a miracle that I was able to maintain my sobriety. And I think just another God shot, if we call it, that I had this community that really, really carried me through. Absolutely. I think it's so, it's kind of a mind bender for me because in a way your recovery prepared you to deal with the setback of your eye loss. But in a way your eye loss would have been so much more difficult if you didn't have that community of support. Because I've met countless people who suffer a back injury and then they get addicted to pain pills or you know they lose a family member and they turn to drugs or alcohol as a coping tool. And so it's really common for someone in your post-injury circumstance to turn to substances and really lean into a substance use disorder, but you had a community in place because you had been in addiction care previously. So it's kind of a chicken or egg, but either way you emerged from this with a powerful story. You wouldn't have chosen it obviously, but at the same time, it's given you a platform. So going back to the month or two prior to you going into addiction recovery. What were your dreams? Where did you see yourself now as Shelby at that age? Yeah, so and it's funny to just see the growth that I had or where I'm at today where I am so goal oriented and big dreamer. I just see a lot more possibilities for myself when back before recovery. I mean, that's just not how I was thinking. I just wasn't in that place. So my life looked pretty much the same like day in and day out, we'll call it like a hamster wheel, you know, of life. And I didn't have a terrible life. I was functioning in the fact that I had an apartment, I had a vehicle, my bills got paid, I had a job. And I liked my job, you know, and I'd been there for a long time. I'm not really sure how they kept me on for so long, but they did, which is another blessing. But it was one of those things where I just didn't see many goals. I was just more concerned about when there was going to be a party or an event. And so now thinking today, how much more my world has opened for me and the kind of goals I want to achieve and the way I want to show up and help people is just night and day. I'm such a different person and I think this was always in me for sure, you know, and it's just back then I just couldn't get there and I know that girl like was desperate for this and I tried some things and then would fail and then I would just resort back to, oh I guess I'm just not good enough, I'm not educated enough, I don't have what it takes. When today I don't have those thoughts because I know I can figure it out, I know I can get the education, I could ask for help. So it's just a very different mindset from that girl before April 28, 2020. It sounds like you're a person with a purpose now and maybe you were lacking that before. This show is about overcoming adversity, failure, setback, whatever you want to call it. Based on your story up to this point, what would you classify as maybe the biggest hurdle you've had to overcome? That's a good question. And I don't know, I wonder how other people respond to this. I haven't asked too many people that, I'm curious. Because I feel like when you're in it, and you're living in it, and then even looking back, again, it's just like what you had to do to get through it. And so, I mean, sobriety has definitely had its challenges, even to this day. I have moments where it'll be a perfectly sunny, nice day, and I'll want to just go to the beach and drink or go to the bar. So that's really hard, because in those moments, it's like it takes everything out of me to just go to bed or sit on my hands or do whatever it takes to just kind of not do that action. That sounds so good in that moment. So I would say the sobriety and I think that's maybe a lifelong kind of a battle. And I had these things, it was definitely really challenging for a really long time at the beginning, but I feel pretty confident today and I have such a strong, beautiful community on the online space that really helps me through that too. So I, yeah, I'd say the sobriety just because I still know that that's like such a challenge for me on some days And it'll come out of nowhere So today you're a young lady with a purpose you alluded to some of the things you're involved in What's your day-to-day look like today? So I'm also a yoga instructor. I guess we didn't really talk about that, but that's my main source of income and I got my teacher training through Core Power and I actually did that pre sobriety that was one of my attempts like okay yoga instructors they don't drink you know they're not alcoholics or they got their stuff together so I did my teacher training back in Salt Lake City before getting sober and that did not get me sober whatsoever or even help I thought it was going to but I still really enjoyed it and I loved it. And when I got out to San Diego and after the pandemic, I was able to continue to teach out here. And I actually teach at quite a few of the treatment facilities. So two different detox centers I teach at twice a week. And then I'm at an all-male facility and an all-female facility here as well, too. So depending on the day, I've got at least one to two classes every day at different treatment centers or at the studio that I teach at. So that's definitely blocked in there and then all of my other time, well it's not really downtime, I'm devoting to iHESIV. So I either have coaching calls because I do have quite a few one-on-one coaching clients that I work with. So we do that virtually and then I do obviously email marketing and social media content. I try to network and do podcasts or just meet with people whether they are in the visually impaired prosthetic eye space or outside of that space as well too. So every day looks a little different but luckily with the yoga I do have chunks of my day that I can dedicate to just really working in adhesive and on adhesive. I also sell t-shirts too that say like one eye gang on them. I don't know if you saw those. But so just chipping out shirts and just yeah, anything I can do to interact within the community. I'll do, you know, different social media content with polls or questions or dialogue on there too and then the virtual meetups. So I stay really busy. And I think a little bit of my addiction probably has gone into work. So I have to find a way. Addictive personality can serve us well sometimes. You know, the same thing that makes you single focused in destructive things can make you single focused in constructive things as well. As you're talking, I'm, again, blown away at how you've been prepared for this without even really realizing it. When I was out of Betty Ford, one of the things I was surprised by was how important exercise was and you mentioned like one of the reasons for recidivism and and relapse is in residential care everything about your day is scheduled. You're told when to eat, you're told when to exercise, you're told when to study, you're told when to go to therapy. Everything about it is structure. And then when you're pulled out of that, you know, the reason why sober living is so important is because it's kind of that in-between. You can't just pull somebody back out of care and plop them back in the environment that created the addiction. We'll just go right back to those behaviors. But I was really surprised at how important physical activity and in particular yoga was because the psychological component as well as the physical component. You know, the fact that you were preparing to be a yoga instructor was in many ways serving you before you even really realized it. Yeah, I love yoga and then I do try to work out and do weight training or whatever. That alone makes me feel really good. Obviously, teaching is amazing, but having my own practice aside from teaching, whether that be through yoga or just physical routine, because I can tell such a difference if I'm not working out consistently or being active, it really messes with like my mental clarity and focus and I get really irritable much quicker. There's no doubt. I mean, the research supports the fact that physical activity helps regulate our emotions. It helps stay off depression. A lot of the things that we would seek to medicate with outside substances, exercise can do. And in the process, it's building us up and making us healthier. One of the most powerful things I emerged from that experience out of Betty Ford was we sat in on some group therapy sessions and on one of the days I was with one of the residential groups and there were seven or eight guys it was all in an all-male dorm and it was one of the residents turn and they sat the chairs face-to-face and one of the residents played the role of younger him and so it was his day to stare his friend in recovery but pretending it to be younger him and it was so powerful tears were shed it was a powerful moment where the mask came off, this guy was vulnerable and honest, he dug into issues from his childhood that ultimately probably contributed to his addiction, if not caused it. If you had an opportunity to sit across from young Shelby, 5, 6, 7 year old, precocious, I was a very anxious, restless, irritable, discontent child. And I think now knowing my alcoholism, like that was just it. I didn't know how to channel any of my emotions. I was always crying and very, very sensitive and all the things until literally I turned 13, 14 and I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. I was like, I'm going to die. and very, very sensitive and all the things until literally I turned 13, 14 and found alcohol and that was the way that I got to find relief and to cope and to let go of some of those emotions and that way that I was feeling inside of anxiety and just that irritability and discontent. But I would just tell her that everything's going to be okay, you're going to be okay. I have this fear of things are just not going to get done or in the time that I think that they're going to get done. So just reassuring that everything is going to get done and in the time that it's supposed to get done and there isn't really even a time. Enjoy the journey. It's great advice. I think we could all benefit from some grace and understanding that sometimes bad things happen to good people and no one's passing judgment on anyone for adversity or setback like you've encountered, certainly more so than many. What would you do if you knew without question you couldn't fail? I'd probably go bigger, do it all, hold nothing back, just show up like I am, but in a way that, yeah, I guess knowing that I can't fail. So I'm always on that line of caution and trying to make sure everything's done right and not to upset anybody and not to be misunderstood or be judged. And so I guess if I knew none of that was to be worried because there wasn't any failure, then I would just go in all without those concerns of judgment or being misunderstood or what other people think or say. Right. Yeah, I think for a lot of us fear is it's protective but sometimes it's crippling and sometimes it might you said go big and what's the Stay small, you know, small is safe and safe is protective. And none of us want to unnecessarily expose ourselves to danger. So I love that answer. I love music and the emotions that it can convey. If we had a montage of Shelby's life, what music would be playing in the background? Well, I think it's changed a lot, but right now it'd be country. I mean, for a while I've been the big country fan and I went to stagecoach just recently and I'm actually leaving town tomorrow to go to Ohio for a country music festival out in Ohio. So probably any country music would definitely be playing. Probably not in my childhood because I didn't like it then, but all twenties and adults. And then I was trying to think what I was listening to as a kid, like definitely like emo, sad music. We are tearing down stereotypes today. Cause I'm here in Texas and I don't want anything to do with country and you're in California and that's what you like. So we're showing diversity in the world. I grew up in the country and it was somehow in my mind, it made me less athletic if I listened to that. So I tended to listen to more urban oriented music. Well, certainly your platform, your work, your purpose is fantastic. How can listeners connect with you and follow what you're doing or get involved? Thank you. I really appreciate that. So I run social media, so Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all under iHesive. And then my website is iHesive.com. So they can follow along on any other social media. Like I said, I post all of my stories and journeys and then other people's stories and journeys as well on there. And then the website has the t-shirts if anyone's wanting to get t-shirts. And I have them in all sizes. We have these little 18 month old t-shirts or onesies that are so cute. There's a lot of like young kids in the community as well too. So yeah, got t-shirts there and then the coaching you can schedule there or just for other collab projects all on the website as well too. So yeah. All right, well what for Shelby Perry remains undone? I mean, I love how you said that, like the community, you know, my community picking me up and now I feel like I'm picking up this community through what I post and the way I connect with them and the conferences and all this stuff that really did not exist for the one-eyed community. There's been some little Facebook groups, but nothing compared to what is out there now. So continuing, obviously growing that, I really want to have an in-person conference here in San Diego. So anyone in the community that has a prosthetic eye or visual impairment, a big conference type event retreat thing is next on my list to start planning and executing. I would love to just roam in other communities that may be having what I've used to build this community, to help people in this community. It could be a very similar blueprint, if you say, for other communities to be built up that maybe won't have quite as strong a community presence. So I do have a lot of ideas. So I'm just going to keep showing up. Just keep showing up. Let that sink in, friend. If I'm honest with you, I've struggled with being judgmental in the past, and heck, I still struggle with that now. But if the experiences that I've had with the people like Shelby, who've been kind enough and brave enough to share their stories with me, have taught me anything, it's to not judge. You heard Shelby talk about the version of her who was spiraling out of control and needed help. While she was thankful for the job she had, you have to wonder, in that season of her life, how reliable was she? What was the quality of her work? How much did her colleagues and her co-workers have to cover for her? Judgmental me would have been quick to condemn her, to be angry, to be unkind, to show her the door. But when you see what Shelby's become today, a leader, a young professional who's worked through some demons of addiction and tragedy of a serious accident, to become a visionary, she's grown from someone who was probably unreliable to someone a bit older, a lot wiser, who now has the grit and the determination that younger Shelby probably couldn't even have imagined. That's what trial and adversity and setback have done for her. Seeing and hearing stories like Shelby's should help us all to be a little kinder, a little more patient, and a little more human in the process. Listening to my own advice of going big. Absolutely. I teach athletic training students, and one of the courses I teach is behavioral medicine, where we talk about psychological aspects up to and after injury. Last time I talked to class, we watched the ESPN documentary about Drew Robinson. Oh yeah. The minor league baseball player, I'm sure you're familiar with. I thought it was interesting that in the documentary, I mean, Drew obviously dealt with some pretty crippling depression and anxiety and COVID compounded that. And then he attempts to take his own life. And in the documentary, they show him with this prosthetic eye and he's like, it's art, it's beautiful. And, you know, he's visibly moved by this prosthesis. But then when you see him today, he doesn't wear it. And I'm just, I'm interested, and obviously you've experienced this as well. Talk me through the mentality, the thought process of what that prosthesis represents and your decision to wear or not to wear one. Yeah, that's a great question and I do follow him and we've had a few little minor interactions on social media. He's definitely someone that I think at some point I would love to speak at one of the conferences. We'll work on him from both directions. If I can get in touch with him, I'll put him in touch with you if you promise to do the same for me. Awesome. I got you. Yeah. Yeah, we'll definitely make that happen. So I'm not sure, you know, his whole structure and what is in his eye or behind his eye or what surgeries he's had done, because I have also noticed that he doesn't wear a prosthetic eye, but I wasn't sure why he chooses that or what's going on there other than that I mean everyone's story is a little bit different so for my situation they've actually removed the whole eye and I had enough structural stuff left in there that they could put an orbital implant in there and with that orbital implant they attach it to the existing eye muscles so it could be if somebody doesn't have as much of that left it could be a lot of factors so if there's no eye muscle, then you put a prosthetic eye in there, it's not gonna move at all because it already has such limited movement. But luckily I have some of that muscle left, so they were able to attach it to the implant. So my prosthetic eye moves as much as it can. Some people don't even have their eye removed, it's still in there, and then they can put the prosthetic on top of their damaged blind eye. So that's like, you know, kind of one factor that we're looking at. And then once they get the prosthetic eye, they always make a very natural-looking one first. So the first natural one that I received, I had a really hard time with as well. So I can relate to anyone that has a natural looking one that just is really struggling with the appearance of it because again, it doesn't track the same. If they don't match the colors just right. You know, there's a lot of things that could make it look uneven, unsymmetrical, or just a lot. I felt like mine just filled that space so much that it stood out more. So I had a really hard time with it at first. I eventually went to a different ocularist, which are the people that make the prosthetic eyes. The other ocularist that made me one did a much better job at fitting it and molding it. So I do have one that I'm really happy with. But now there's Ocularis and they've been doing it for a while but I was able to get in touch with one of them that's up in Portland and she makes fun custom ones and that's what I'm wearing today. It's like a rainbow apple eye. You can see it. Yeah and she's made me a few little fun ones but not all of the Ocularis do that because that's a whole different artistic skill and ability because they hand paint these eyes. So leading now with the fun artistic one, I personally just feel more comfortable with the fun one in for a couple different reasons. I think it just expresses more of who I am. It allows me to not feel like I'm hiding anything. I get mostly really positive comments, like, that's so cool, or is that an apple, or what's on your eye? And a lot of people, they do, they're like, is that a contact? Can you see out of that? Some confusion, and I'm just used to it, so I tell them, no, it's a prosthetic, I can't see out of it. So if people, depending on their comfort level and the attention that they want or don't want, they're going to choose different options for their own eye, but I just like that option for myself. Also something that recently just occurred to me is I was here in San Diego, California, I was just like down in PB, this very random person came up to me, never seen him, never met him, he introduces himself and he starts to tell me that his sister has a prosthetic eye and that his sister went to Portland to meet up with this support group back in April, which I was like, I was in Portland at the support group in April, like, who's your sister? And he tells me who his sister is. And of course I know her. And so I just had that moment too, that it's like, okay, if I wasn't wearing a fun prosthetic eye, he probably wouldn't have known or said anything. And the fact that I met this guy who's randomly on vacation here and that we run into each other in San Diego, they're not even from here and I know his sister. It just kind of, I don't know, I just love those kinds of like opportunities and experiences to meet people and connect either in the community or family members or people that do need help. I even have people come up to me that are like, I know this person with a prosthetic eye and I'm like, get them in touch with me, bring them into the community. So for me, it just opens that door for more connections and conversations. Oh, I think that's such a strong and powerful way of thinking about it, because I think your purpose is clear now. You're prepared to serve people in this space that are navigating this without the support that you had. And that's awesome. And you're to be applauded for that. Have you been back on the slopes since? I have, yes. So I've gone twice. I went, obviously not the rest of that year, but then the very following year, but I've gone twice. Okay, so talk me through the the mental process. Was there fear? Was there trepidation? Was this a big thing that like a landmark you had to overcome to to feel victory or did you just hop on your board and do it the way you always did it? No, there was definitely some something in there and I definitely knew at the time of the incident and not even knowing the full extent of things or that I was going to have to have my eye removed, that I was going to probably get back on my board. I just was like, I love it so much. I grew up doing it. And we were always kind of drilled, like as young kids, like never to quit on the ski sports, just because it was such a family thing. And so I just remember my dad's like, never go a year without snowboarding, you know? And so I just always kind of had that in my mind. And so after I healed and was really starting to feel better and kind of get that energy, I was like, okay, I could definitely do this again. So the first time we set out, we just went to Big Bear here in Southern California, and I actually went with the friends that were on the trip. So that was kind of special for us all to go again. And everybody was like under the same understanding, we're just going to take it easy, feel it out, no pressure. I wasn't going with people that I would normally go to that I would ride all day and it's gonna be super crazy and fast and we're gonna hit the whole mountain. So it was just a very chill experience mentally. But I still, I remember the whole car ride up there we were doing little gratitude conversations or just anything to really set the mood of just being less nervous and just more grateful. And that's really how I have to look at it a lot of times. It's like a good thing I was wearing a helmet. They told me at the hospital, this would have been a different story if you weren't wearing a helmet. And a lot of other injuries that I hear about, being paralyzed or being brain dead or not being able to speak or the fact that I can still move my body and get on the mountain today. And yeah, I ride differently. I'm more cautious and hesitant on some things, but I can still do it. That's really cool. Well, Shelby, thanks for joining us. Again, ihesive.com, definitely check it out. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. For Shelby Perry, it's been a journey marked with trials and adversity. The psychological pain of addiction and loss, as well as the physical pain of a serious injury that eventually led to the loss of her right eye, yet remarkably helped her find clarity and purpose and a cause to fight for. While she's quick to admit that some days are harder than others, and that no victory over an addiction is ever truly final, she remains in recovery today. I'm thankful for the time I got to spend with the remarkable Shelby Perry, and I hope you found as much inspiration from her story as I did. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com backslash EP53 to see the notes, links, and images related to today's guest, Shelby Perry. I know there are great stories out there to be told and I'm always on the lookout. So don't be shy. If you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, tell me about it. Surf over to undonepodcast.com, click the contact tab in the top menu, and drop me a note. Coming up I've got former Texas Tech basketball and current NBA G League forward Norence Odiasi, followed by the powerful story of former college football player turned motivational speaker, Fletcher Cleaves. Then, state champion Lubbock Estacado Matador, head basketball coach Tony Wagner. Stay tuned. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone. Becoming Undone is a NitroHype Creative Production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, contact me at undonepodcast.com. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Becoming Undone Pod, and follow me at Toby J. Brooks on X, Instagram, and TikTok. Listen, subscribe, and please leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time everybody, keep getting better.