The Weight of Other People's Expectations

If you are new here, I am legally blind.

I'm not shy about sharing that. It's a truth in my life that has affected me in countless ways. But it isn't something to pity me for, nor is it a reason to tell me how strong I am.

It just is.

Most of us, regardless of our circumstances, are expected to participate in society and be productive members of it. But it's interesting to experience the full range of expectations that can come with being a disabled person—from very low to impossibly high.

And, of course, this isn't exclusive to disability. Single mothers, neurodivergent individuals, people who have been incarcerated, older adults, and countless others can find themselves on the receiving end of assumptions about what they can or cannot do.

I can only speak from my own experience.

I was diagnosed with a degenerative retinal disease at 11 and declared legally blind at 27. My school was immediately informed and I was taken around the school with an aide to learn how to feel my way around, and I was placed in Special Education.

I needed neither.

At the time, I still had plenty of usable vision. I didn't need to feel my way around the school, and academically, I was doing just fine in regular-level classes.

But I was a child. And I was a child who hadn't yet learned that I had a voice.

By high school, when I was beginning to think about my future, my guidance counselor actively discouraged me from pursuing higher education because, according to her, it would be too difficult with my vision.

She was wrong.

But I was young, and I had been taught to trust the adults who were supposed to know more than I did. I knew the advice didn't feel right, but surely they knew something I didn't.

Those assumptions—and the expectations that came with them—affected some of the choices I made as a young adult.

Fast-forward to recent years, and life handed me a situation that required a major pivot. I had to think on my feet, solve problems quickly, and become resourceful in ways I had been practicing my entire life.

Eventually, I found coaching.

It became something I was passionate about and, as it turns out, something I was pretty good at.

But along the way, I encountered a very different kind of expectation.

This time, people close to me—people who understood my disability intimately—had decided I wasn't where I should be in life.

The expectations were no longer too low.

They were too high.

I was compared to people without my limitations and told, essentially, that I should be doing things the way they did them. The reality that I cannot drive, for example, creates practical limitations that other people don't have, and sadly, they forget to take into consideration.

And yet, somehow, I was still expected to operate as though those limitations didn't exist.

That experience made me realize something: being underestimated and being overestimated can both be damaging.

When people expect too little from us, we can begin to question our own abilities.

When people expect too much, we can begin to question our own judgment.

Sometimes other people see things we cannot see for ourselves, and there is value in being open to that perspective. But ultimately, you are the one living your life. You are the one who knows your circumstances, your capabilities, your limitations, your priorities, and what feels right for you.

Sometimes the work is simply getting quiet enough to hear yourself again. Because when the expectations coming from the outside become louder than what you know to be true on the inside, it becomes very easy to lose sight of your own direction.

And maybe that’s something most of us could use a little more of—more trust in our own ability to decide what belongs in our lives.