Kiana Glanton won't step to the plate without a fresh swipe of red lipstick and a pair of hoop earrings. Only then does she feel ready to enter the batter's box. To most, these accessories may seem optional, but when Glanton decided to join to the US Blind Baseball Association (USBBA), she promised to do it her way. "Blind is my circumstance, but Kiana is who I am primarily," she tells Popsugar in an exclusive interview. It's taken years for her to arrive at that perspective.
At age 4, Glanton was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition [1] called sarcoidosis [2], where inflammatory cells in the body attack it from within. For Glanton, the condition resulted in intense skin and joint discomfort, rheumatoid arthritis [3], and inflammation of the eye. Over time that inflammation became increasingly more prevalent and she had to go through chemotherapy for 10 years, starting at age 19 through the day she found out she was pregnant. During pregnancy, Glanton says her system regulated and her vision stabilized.
"I became a competitor and I was dead set on being a champion."
But in 2018, as her daughter turned 3, her vision rapidly declined. "I had to accept that it was going to go," Glanton says. "The last images of my child that I could recognize became really really important to me to lock in."
Today, Glanton has no vision in her left eye and 20/800 in her right, which she describes as looking through the static of a snowy television. "Some days I can see some colors and some some images, and some days I can't," she says. It's a reality that she's learned to manage, but struggled to accept. In 2018, one of her teachers at Lighthouse Guild [4]
, a nonprofit for the blind and visually impaired, recognized this and recommended she join a blind baseball team. He knew that what she needed most was to "find my space within the blind community," Glanton says.
Kiana Glanton with her daughter on the practice field.
She declined the first invite without any real consideration. "At the time, I had a lot of internalized self-hate for my blindness and I just had a hard time accepting it. So the last thing I wanted to do was be seen with a bunch of blind people for fear of what that would look like." But the invites kept coming, and when Glanton finally agreed to attend one of the practices, she was met with an overwhelming amount of motivation, rather than judgement.
"The first person that I saw there was a young lady who had on an Aaron Judge Yankees jersey and some cute shorts and the cutest hot pink sneakers. She was so fly and so confident, and I was like the nerve of this girl to come here and her blind self and be this beautiful and this fly," Glanton says. Then, she watched her run a drill. Glanton, a bodybuilder and self-proclaimed "gym rat," found herself in shock.
"She ran so fast and as soon as I saw her running, I said, 'I will never let another girl beat me. I will never let anybody beat me on this field.'" Glanton says, "In that moment, I became a baseball player. I became an athlete. I became a competitor and I was dead set on being a champion."
Three years later, Glanton would travel to Europe to compete for the USBBA and bring home a bronze medal. And when she returned, all she could think about was expanding access to the sport. Today, she's captain of the New York-based team sponsored by Lighthouse Guild with 30 members and counting. And Glanton is encouraging others to follow her path.
"My advice to someone that is new to the blind, low-vision community is to seek help and seek community. Find your local organization that will give you the necessary skills to feel independent and empowered. And after that, you find the nearest blind sports program to invest in your body, your mind, and your spirit," Glanton says.
When she first walked into Lighthouse Guild, Glanton was filled with nothing but fears — from her ability to care for her daughter to the loss of her independence and lack of identity outside of her condition. Through their programming and blind baseball, she not only found confidence and community, but a version of herself born of — yet uninhibited by — her blindness. "I became an athlete at 39, so anything's possible," Glanton says. "You have time to change the trajectory of your life."
Alexis Jones [6] is the section lead of the health and fitness verticals at Popsugar, overseeing coverage across the website, social media, and newsletters. In her seven-plus years of editorial experience, Alexis has developed passions for and expertise in mental health, women's health and fitness, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women's Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.