Amy Nichols and her guide dog, Sheba, visit thousands each year to promote understanding and acceptance of blindness. (Photo: David Lazar)

At 29, Epsom’s Amy Nichols was a former Miss New Hampshire contestant, a mom of two young children, and just starting a career as a certified public accountant, when the world she knew began to vanish before her very eyes.

Over the course of one long year, Nichols came down with a rare disease in which her own immune system attacked her retinas. By the end of that year, she was legally blind, and left to figure out how to live and adapt to a dramatically different reality.

“I had no idea what was going on,” she says. “At first I was angry, very sad. It does depress you because you know you won’t be able to drive anymore or read the same way.”

Nichols would eventually leave her accounting firm, but not before making some important new friends and discovering the services of the NH Association for the Blind – a 96-year-old Concord-based nonprofit that provides vision aids, guide dog training, home adaptability training, and rehabilitation aid to about 2,000 NH residents each year.

“I started seeing people blinder than me being very successful and continuing to be independent; it was very inspiring,” she says. “One day you wake up and make a decision: ‘OK, you can stay angry and mad, or you can look at what you’ve been given and make the most of it.’”

Nichols emphatically chose the latter. For the last six-plus years, Nichols – with the aid of her guide dog Sheba – has made it her mission to show people at all levels of blindness that their condition is not an obstacle to a productive career or a normal life. Now 39, she uses her volunteer position as NHAB’s treasurer to speak to thousands each year, from students to seniors, about both awareness and acceptance of visual impairment.

Nichols earned a Master’s degree in Human Resources from SNHU after leaving her accounting job. Today, she makes it her goal to create a career placement program for NHAB clients. In the meantime, she remains active as treasurer for the NH Highland Games, as a member of the Governor’s vocational task force for the visually impaired, and as the founder of a spousal support group for Concord police officers, where her husband serves as a 20-year veteran.

“There is no reason that a blind person can’t be a productive person who contributes to the tax base rather than taking away from it,” she says. “For anybody who encounters this, they need to know that it isn’t a disability. It doesn’t define who you are. It does not have to change your life.”