In this special episode, Murray Elbourn and Tammy Jackson sit down for a conversation TJ has been holding back for months. She joined a gene therapy clinical trial for retinitis pigmentosa in February 2024 expecting a single injection. Instead the trial kept evolving, and somewhere along the way it started to work. Her central vision is clearer. Her field is starting to widen. She can see her hands beside her head, and she has stepped back into the hospital career it once crushed her to give up. She still walks into the occasional wall and says so herself. There is no guarantee the injections continue, no guarantee the vision stays, and no handbook for any of it.

Nobody warned her about the questions that come next. What do you tell Social Security when you no longer fit the box you fought so hard to get into? Which box do you fit in yourself when you are not fully sighted and no longer the blind person you learned to be? What happens to the services you let go of if you need them again in six months? Murray brings his own history of getting vision back and losing it again, and together they lay out what anyone considering a clinical trial needs to weigh before they sign, including the possibility that it works. TJ closes by asking the community how you cope with the highs and lows, because she could be back in those shoes in two months. They told me I can’t, so I’m proving them wrong.

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YX309dTSqdK3yuR5yrDEj?si=bcba7e7545614ef5
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blindtok-podcasts/id1896888033
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c8ac6bf4-9d3c-4fd0-afee-21d53483b734/blindtok-podcasts

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 1 of Season 2 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourn and Tammy Jackson are back from the summer break with a fresh format and a guest who was there before the hashtag had a podcast, original BlindTok creator Ruby Red. Ruby's story starts at seventeen, with a licence in her pocket, graduation weeks away and a diagnosis nobody could put a timeline on. What follows is not a story about losing sight. It is a story about what you do when the whole shape of your life changes at once, and about the moment a cane stops being something you carry and starts being something you trust.

That question, what happens if you go blind while everything around you keeps changing, runs through the entire episode. Murray, Tammy and Ruby trade hard-won lessons on mobility, on training that builds real confidence, and on why the road in your head matters as much as the one under your feet. Then the new season format opens the floor to the topics BlindTok can't stop talking about, from a taxi with no steering wheel to a ballot you can't read to the services you were promised and what it takes to get them back. Ruby has been away for a while, and her reasons for coming back may be the most honest thing in the episode. They told her she can't. She is proving them wrong.

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YX309dTSqdK3yuR5yrDEj?si=bcba7e7545614ef5
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blindtok-podcasts/id1896888033
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c8ac6bf4-9d3c-4fd0-afee-21d53483b734/blindtok-podcasts

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 15 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson close out Season 1 alongside Torbit, a former firefighter from Virginia who found the BlindTok community while learning to live with retinitis pigmentosa. His story runs from the firehouse he'd dreamed about since he was sixteen to the exam chair where one doctor delivered life-altering news with all the warmth of a parking ticket. What comes after is the part worth showing up for: the slow, stubborn, deeply human work of building a life that vision loss could not erase.

Expect real talk about acceptance arriving in stages, the freedom of a white cane and a very good yellow Lab, and all the careers and possibilities people are wrongly told are off the table. Expect plenty of laughs too, from firefighter flirting to a guide dog reveal worthy of a delivery room. Three people who refuse to shrink trade survival strategies, take a few friendly shots at each other, and land on a question that outlasts the episode: when life deals you a hand you didn't ask for, how are you going to play it?

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YX309dTSqdK3yuR5yrDEj?si=bcba7e7545614ef5
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blindtok-podcasts/id1896888033
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c8ac6bf4-9d3c-4fd0-afee-21d53483b734/blindtok-podcasts

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.