Turning 42 years old really was a pain in the rear.

Renee Morgan figured that must be the case. One morning in February of 2011, she woke up and “pretty much couldn’t see.” Everything was very blurry. She assumed that age was starting to catch up to her, so she went to a place like Lens Crafters for some glasses. They quickly sent her to an ophthalmologist, who quickly sent her to a more specialized ophthalmologist.

It took awhile, but finally one of the doctors told her. She had a rare hereditary disorder called Leber’s. Morgan could barely count a person’s fingers from two feet away, and she likely would never see better than that again.

“I’d had 20/20 vision my entire life,” Morgan says.

Indeed, 42 was going to be a real pain in the rear.

Morgan went from being the type of person who in her 20s left America with $600 in her pocket, a bass guitar and a one-way plane ticket to Europe. Now, her adventures were a bit different.

“It was getting up out of bed when I didn’t feel I could anymore,” Morgan says. “It was forcing myself just to make a piece of toast. I tried to do at least one thing a day that was life-supporting.”

Toast: Somehow it had gone from dried bread to a victory.

October is national Meet the Blind Month. Renee Morgan is certainly legally blind. She’s also a bass guitar player and manager of a band, Volition. She’s a former drug and alcohol counselor. She’s a former employee of the former Teller’s in downtown Lawrence. She has a degree in theater. She’s all those things, but she also knows that being blind defines her as much as anything. It feels bad to say that, but she says that’s just one of many things you have to get used to when you are blind.

“You don’t want the blindness to define you, but then it does in a way,” Morgan says. “It does define you when you walk into a place.”

Maybe others who are blind feel differently, because there is one more thing to remember about Morgan: She’s a relative rookie at this. It only has been three years since she saw the world perfectly.

She hasn’t yet become proficient at reading Braille. She has a white cane, but hasn’t had much training in how to use it. Cooking is still dangerous, she says. There are area organizations that provide some training to adults who are blind, but the nearest full-fledged school for adults, she says, is in Colorado.

There are other challenges of going blind as an adult. You’ve seen so much and remember it all so vividly. Morgan says driving is the thing she misses the most. But reading ranks right up there. She remembers that she read four novels the month before she went blind.

“God, I miss playing golf,” she says. “It seems silly to say all these little things, but I miss them.”

It takes her hours to do the simple chore of grocery shopping. She can get to the store via the city’s T-Lift paratransit service, and she can see grocery items if she holds them inches from her face. Some store employees will provide assistance, but it still isn’t the same.

“You don’t do much comparison shopping, that is for sure,” she says.

Mostly, she lets her husband, Charles Hurst, do much of the shopping.

Morgan’s father died when she was 14 years old, and she describes the loss of her sight in those terms.

“It is like knowing you have lost something you are never going to get back,” Morgan says. “You have to continue to live somehow, even though the worst thing you think could happen has happened.”

The good news today is there’s toast in Renee Morgan’s house.

“I’ve had to really dig deep and figure out what I’m really made of,” Morgan says. “Is this the thing that is going to take you out, or is this what is going to cause you to change the world?”

Morgan has a plan for changing the world. She’s working with a vocational specialist. She hopes to build her band’s business to the point that she can support herself without the government disability payments. She hopes her music and her poetry cause people to do a little digging themselves.

“I want people to know they can tap into their own life condition,” Morgan says. “They can find whatever truly motivates them, and when they find it, they can change their life.”

Surely, all this digging in your soul is easier said than done. Morgan’s faith has helped her. She became a practicing Buddhist during the seven years she lived in Europe. In her living room, Morgan has a small altar and a Japanese Buddhist scroll that hangs from it. She recites a prayer and chants in front of it twice a day. There have been days she chanted through the tears. But one of the tenets of the religion reminded her she needed to do more than that.

“It reminds me that if I’m unhappy, it is my responsibility to change that,” Morgan says. “You have to take responsibility for your happiness.”

She says she has. I believe her. There are signs of it everywhere. You can see them in the stories she tells about her husband, who was merely her fiance when the blindness struck. They have a relationship that is “wonderfully communicative,” she says. You can see it when she talks about the relationship she has with her 85-year old mother. You can see it with the bass guitar in the living room.

But me being me, I see it on her kitchen table. There is a box of doughnuts and, trust me, those are way better than toast. Renee is past those days.

“I’m more than a survivor,” she says. “This isn’t about surviving something. This is about creating something beautiful out of what you have.”