'Blind Not Broken' TikTok Star Lucy Edwards on Finding Strength Online | This Morning

now at just 17 our next guest face a life-altering challenge when she lost her eyesight due to a rare condition yeah after struggling with the grief of that and the daunting Prospect of navigating a new world Lucy Edwards found unexpected strength in sharing her journey online yeah from a viral makeup tutorial that captivated the world to becoming a much loved Beauty blogger with 1.8 million Tik Tok followers Lucy has touched the hearts of many and now she's releasing a brand new book blind not broken and she's here alongside her guide dog Molly good morning to you Lucy morning guys oh brilliant and thank you so much for coming on because um I've always wanted to meet you I've been following you online and I've always wanted to meet you now Lucy when you first meet people you do like them to describe what they look like don't I do I love a good audio description J right okay so D you go first oh I see so I have uh a man uh hello very nice to meet you generic guy I'll put you on the I've got g a light blue t-shirt um on and dark blue strides uh with brown shoes and I'm hosting this morning on a blue sofa with Miss Josephine Gibson and I'm so you know when people ask you to describe yourself you think oh what do I look like what so um who am I yeah that's what you go through so Lucy I'm with you I've gone copper now so I've got copper hair babes we're copper together copper Twins and I'm I'm bit freckly a bit chunky or hourglass however you like however like to describe it um tall I'm really tall and I've got like a a Snak skin sort of green top on and some black trasers and some really funky shoes oh they're lovely I quite enjoyed that at the end of it thank you so much that's really built up a picture in my mind it's so important cuz obviously I had Vision before I lost my eyesight and I still want to be in the visual world so thanks guys and you you you actually got royan Goslin to do that what was that like the red carpet cuz I was hosted a premere and I was like babes could you just you know AE describe yourself and it was just very lovely I think it breaks down that barrier you know it in also I think he gave me a few more questions on the Press junk kit L CU I was like oh Ryan thank you and it just got him to describe a bit more about himself and also I think you look within yourself and go oh what am I wearing but actually I've had a good morning too and yeah this is I've spilled a little bit of whatever down me and my C or whatever and yeah it creates a convo doesn't it forever the journalist tell us a little bit about your for people that don't know you too well tell us a little bit about your journey then yeah so I lost my eyesight 11 years ago now nearly to the day um I have a really rare genetic condition called incontinent pigmenti bit of a mouthful we say IP but it runs down the female line of my jeans um although my mother isn't blind or anything so it's really rare if we look at IP as a whole it's only really a thousand people in the world with the condition and then 5% of those actually lose their eyesight from it so so yeah l i mean I couldn't imagine you know because you've add your eyesight and then you lost your eyesight what was life like navigating after you've lost your eyesight then and is that that all in the book it's all in the book so you know when we when we think about surviving not thriving all my best friends go to university uh my boyfriend and now my husband um you he's lovely I met him earlier he love him I just love him he's my rock and I just think you know it back then I was in a dark place you know when we think about uh my mental health it was at Rock Bottom because I had to learn how to live again guys you know you have to learn how to pour a Cupa and I'm like oh well I'm 17 and I'm learning again how to like put me toast on it's all very frightening and you know having my guide dog and I think you know when you hold a guide dog harness for the first time you're like oh my gosh this two-year-old dog is going to guide me everywhere I'm used to me myself and I so you know I didn't really think about the loss of my vision as affecting me but my sense of self was really shattered and I was like the world around me views me so differently now but I'm still the same Lucy and it's so weird you know you did say that your dog Molly would face plant as soon as you started and you were not wrong so yeah I can't imagine that that level of grief and panic is the first word I put down yeah because you had you lost your eyesight in one eye didn't you when you were when you were younger and then the second eye went yeah where how did you get out of that where where did where did when do you start to bottom out and you start to approach the world with a bit of positivity how long did that take and and what what were the steps I think you swim in a sea of grief for so long like all of us have that grieving story and maybe in some capacity maybe you've lost a loved one M you know we all understand what grief is like in some ways but I think in my grief I just wanted to tell the world that I I am capable I am confident in the end but I think it a long time to get yeah it was it was a long time to get there I think you know it was telling myself affirmations every day even if I didn't believe it you know it was it was those two years where I did s sit in bed with ice cream it was you know thinking about every day as if it was like just a day that I needed to think about positive things not negative things yeah about myself do do you know what I loved and um is when I read that you wrote a letter to and I think we should all do this you wrote a letter to like little lucy so you wrote a letter to to your younger self can you tell us about that L honestly so at the end of my book so here we here it is I just I can't believe I'm holding it in my hands so at the end of the book I say you know I've been through depr I was diagnosed with depression I've been on anti-depressants I know what it's like to have mental health and it's a massive thing you know um to understand yourself in that way I still have a psychologist you know I deal with a cited wealth every single day that isn't made for me but um yeah I wanted to tell those little lucies you know on day one someone's losing their Vision right now today someone's grieving today right now on their day one I wanted to be their role model um because I didn't have one and and I was grieving and what I want to also say about about this book is that I've got Braille on the front cover I don't think anyone's ever done that before which is so cool it's like bringing like the visual world and the blind world together because that's what I'm all about and the lovely Naval lens code which you can scan with your phone and it just tells you a bit of an audio description of the front of the book which I think really cool what's uh what's the process like learning Braille how tough how tough a language is it to to learn you know what I did at school so I think as a young kid it's a bit malleable your brain is right but I think uh having a visual language for me ABCD and and then kind of learning the tactile version grade two kind of condenses it so um it's like Tech speak I can't really get on board with that but grade one because I've got a visual brain it sounds really weird being a blind person with a visual brain but it is tough to kind of the actual process of writing the book do you do you do you record it like you know I I type it yes I'm a touch typist like olly would come in my hubby um in the sometimes in the late depths of the night because I haven't really ever talked about you know the moment that I lost my vision the consultant when he told me like how many fingers am I holding it l like no one's ever really heard me say that online before so I was like in the corner of my bedroom like oh my god I've never written this before and through my tears I'm like it's okay I don't need to see the screen so I can keep typing you know the positives so um and I can't have you on without talking about your lovely husband Dolly he's so nice and I've watched podcast of you two together he's hilarious you two together are so funny but you did do your wedding a little bit differently didn't you oh my gosh that that was a movie moment for me yeah so walking up the aisle to just arrival of the birds like that song always gets me because the theory of everything is just a massive film for me and yeah Steph Hawkin has always been a massive inspiration so yeah up the aisle we had 3D audio and it he actually made my hubby made the track of um it kind of crescendoing as I got to the end so I knew where I was was the scented flowers up the aisle we're talking about everyone being blindfolded in the on my in the audience and Ollie being blindfolded then feeling my dress for the first time Miss Molly having a collar on and a bell so she could hear all my bridesmaid being audio described it was just I I love the fact dolly was BL blindfolded so we had exactly the same experience as you it was just beautiful because the blind experience isn't a less than experience it's like he just sees it it's his world too yeah and I feel like we went blind together and that's probably like a cont statement but the emotion of it because I saw him before I lost my vision like we just went through it together and Miss Molly had a star moment I mean she was matched to me a picture of her asleep though again at your wedding CU she's like babe I mean the camera is always here her sparkly color that's why she's called Miss Molly you know Lucy do you know what I'm so glad I've met you it's such a pleasure having you on um blind not broken out now um thank you so you're such an inspiration thank you so much for coming on so much the Braille copy is also available for the rni IB what a marketer what a marketer thank you thank you guys all right good luck with everything

Channel: This Morning

Views: 10,361

Keywords: This Morning, This Morning ITV, Holly Willoughby, Phillip Schofield, Alison Hammond, Dermot O'Leary, ITV, STV, Josie Gibson, Craig Doyle, Rylan, This Morning Funny Moments, This Morning Funniest Moments, This Morning Interviews, Alison Hammond Interviews

Id: xpslkCRwAQ0

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024