Brian above left, with Senator Patrick Kennedy
One evening, when Brian was eight years old and his brother Mark was eleven, they walked home at night from a local store in their quiet, middle-class neighborhood of Lynn, Massachusetts . Brian was walking in the middle of the street, waiting for the next lamppost to light his path. By following the light of each lamppost, he was able to make his way around the neighborhood at night. He assumed that every child had difficulty seeing in the dark and navigated the neighborhood the same way.
Suddenly, his brother Mark hollered out at him to hurry up and get back on the sidewalk. Brian could hear him, but he was confused. He couldn't see Mark in the darkness. He couldn't see the sidewalk. While attempting to follow Mark's voice, he suddenly tripped over the curb. A curb that he couldn't see.
The excerpt above is from Following the Street Lights, Brian Hubbard's Story, an article written for the Hands & Voices Communicator.
Brian provides online therapy through his business, Empowerment Therapy. "If there is one word that describes what Empowerment Therapy helps people with, that word is ‘loss’," says Brian on his website. "That loss may be a natural loss, such as loss of job and identity when retiring, others are traumatic, such as the loss of ability to see, hear or walk, and Empowerment Therapy focuses on both these types. More significantly, however, Empowerment Therapy focuses on losses that are too overwhelming to bear and getting relief from these gut-wrenching losses so productive lives can be acquired."
More about Brian can be found in an article printed in the Providence Journal: "Brian, Can You Hear Me?"
Photo description on top: Brian is standing on the left in a dark blue suit, Patrick Kennedy on the right in a white shirt and black tie.
