What lessons has your life journey taught you?

Jared | Kirikiriroa

Jared reflects on the emotional journey he and his wife Steph have been on since learning their son Micah is blind, and how initial shock transformed into a deep sense of purpose and gratitude.

“I think the initial reaction we had to Micah’s diagnosis and our initial reaction of how negative that was going to be for his life and what that was going to look like for him. We know now that how positive his future is and how full of a life he will be able to live, and all the opportunities he’s going to get are equal to, if not more than, what other kids are going to get around him.

It was a big journey. We eventually found out, after we had stopped trying, that we were lucky enough to have Micah. You have all those plans laid out – what everything is going to be like – and everything’s ideal and then we found out about him being blind.

It was a bit of a shock to us initially. A big shock to us. We didn’t really know how to feel, and it was quite negative for the first couple of days, to be honest. But we were lucky that we had a great midwife who was very supportive. She brought us in a lot of resources and introduced us to some kids in New Zealand that were born blind and how amazing their lives were, and the lives they were living were very positive and very happy.

It really changed our perspective. Maybe in the first day it probably did feel unfair. You’d sort of fought for something for so long and then you felt like you’re dished another bad hand, but I think now, we almost feel like we were chosen to be parents for Micah.”