✈️ One fearless traveler

As Sassy Wyatt stood atop the Empire State Building during her most recent trip to New York City, she shared that she felt the "essence" of New York more than ever before. 

Sassy felt the wind in her hair, heard the birds chirping as they flew by, and descibed the smell of the air as "gritty – where it’s part clean air and part dusty." 

It didn't bother her that she couldn't see the view. 

• Sassy lost her sight ten years ago due to juvenile arthrits, which attacked her organs and then her eyes. The travel-lover spent two years after her vision started to disappear depressed and grieving for her loss of sight. Finally, she decided she wouldn't let it stop her. 
• "The more I built my own confidence [and got] back on my feet," Sassy shared of that difficult time period after her vision loss, "the more I was like, ‘I would like to see the world. I don’t want my blindness to stop me seeing the world.’"

Now, Sassy and her husband and/or service dog Ida travel the globe, bringing awareness to what traveling is like with a disability, in addition to advocating for more accessible options for others with the travel bug. 

Sassy also runs a blog called Blind Girl Adventures, which chronicles her travels and experiences as a blind woman traveling internationally. 

Her following grew very quickly. She now attends travel conferences and industry meet-ups often, advocating for the disability community at every point she can. 

• “People were interested in my lived experience," said Sassy. "How I travel, how I do things and how other destinations can make their marketing or their digital inclusion or their hotels, their clients – the whole aspect of travel – how they could make it better for disabled people. And then that light bulb flicked on. I realized I could scale this into making it into a career.”

🌊 Sassy remembers her first trip after losing her eyesight well. The vacation brought her to Malta for her friend's wedding: 

• She was “standing on the beach with my toes curled into the sand, feeling the heat press upon me, and listening to the waves lap against the seashore," she recalls. “just breathing in that fresh sea air, and being surrounded by nature, its beauty, and feeling significant and yet completely insignificant. I was like the grain of sand that’s upon the beach. I didn’t have to be able to see the blue waters and the golden sand to know how beautiful and extraordinary it was and experience being there."