Amanda’s Story

She Came to Learn. She Learned to See Herself: Amanda’s Journey to Her GED

“Every day I still think about her,” Amanda said of her little sister. “She motivates me. I wanted to prove I was still there for her — to be her role model.” 

That phone call — the one Amanda had been waiting years for — told her she had passed her final GED exam. She burst into tears. Then she called her mother. And together, they cried. 

Amanda was a good student as a teenager, often making the honor roll. Then a medical crisis nearly killed her. Fluid built up in her lungs. Brain surgery followed in 2017. With each attempt to re-enroll in school came another health setback — and the creeping loss of her vision. 

Most education programs weren’t built for someone whose world was changing the way Amanda’s was. She found herself falling through the gaps, exhausted and increasingly isolated. “In the outside world, people didn’t always understand me,” she said. “Sometimes they’d forget I’m visually impaired.” 

And then tragedy struck. Elisa, her four-year-old sister passed away, devastating Amanda to her core. 

“I couldn’t be home anymore. I lost all hope, and that’s when I decided I wanted to go back to school. I wanted to complete this to prove I was still there for her,” Amanda says. “In her honor.” 

When she found her way to Lighthouse Guild, something shifted. For the first time, she was surrounded by people who shared her experience — people who didn’t need things explained to them. 

That community saved her more than once. When the weight of her studies finally became too much and Amanda was ready to quit, one phone call from Jacqui in Academic Services pulled her back. Her reading instructor Gabriela quizzed her relentlessly — “it drove me crazy!” — and stayed in touch through Amanda’s surgeries. Her math tutor Theresa, who is blind herself, gave her the one-on-one guidance that made the difference. And Jeff, her orientation and mobility specialist, did something that might sound small but wasn’t at all: he helped Amanda walk outside again for the first time, cane in hand. “He made me feel safe,” she said. 

The exams themselves were a physical challenge as much as an academic one. With tunnel vision in one eye — “like looking through a straw” — Amanda struggled to read graphs, maps, and images. Long sessions caused eye strain and exhaustion. She had to find workarounds for nearly everything.  

Passing her reading and writing tests gave her something she hadn’t felt in years. “A rush, a hunger,” she said. “I was getting more proud of myself.”  

Watch Amanda’s inspiring journey

All the while, Elisa was with her. “I wanted to complete this to prove I was still there for her,” Amanda said. “In her honor.” 

She kept going anyway. Every exam passed was a step taken in Elisa’s name. 

Theresa phoned one morning, casual, as if she were just checking in. Amanda knew immediately something was different. When Theresa finally told her she’d passed the math exam — the last one standing between Amanda and her diploma — Amanda couldn’t speak. 

She thought of Elisa. How proud she would have been. How her memory had kept the fire burning on the nights it nearly went out. 

Amanda is now looking ahead — to art, to health, to a fuller version of the life she’s reclaiming. But what she carries most is something harder to name: a sense of who she is, separate from everything she’s endured. 

“Having a disability doesn’t make you any less of a person,” she said. “And I learned that at Lighthouse Guild.”