Living with LCA: Finding Her ‘Light’ In the Kitchen

A recipe for addiction recovery transformed Orly Shamir’s life, and now it’s about to change her future.

Orly, who’s name in Hebrew means “My Light,” lives with LCA4, a form of Leber congenital amaurosis caused by a mutation in her AIPL1 gene. 

The 52-year-old Canadian, newly transplanted to southeastern Florida, takes her Hebrew name literally.

“I am light, and I am vision,” she said. “I want to offer everything I have for others to realize their perfect light and vision is possible.”

As a child she had enough vision to read large print, but in her 20s, Orly’s sight deteriorated to minimal light perception and shadows. In 2014, she was part of a clinical trial in Canada for the Argus Retinal Prosthesis System (Argus II). The Argus II, known as the bionic eye, stimulates the eye with electrodes to transmit visual information captured by a video camera to the patient’s brain. You can read about her experience in the trial here.

“Still, I have true 20/20 vision,” she said. “My blindness forces a mindful clarity through all my other senses and that enriches everything from my cooking and healing, to my service to others.”

Along her journey through the darkness of an opiate addiction, she rediscovered her mother’s traditional Moroccan fish dish, served as part of each Friday’s sabbath dinner. 

Little did she know the importance this recipe would have to her survival.

From 1999, after having her third child, until 2012, she said, “My opiate addiction took a huge chunk of my life away because it

was a fight. That’s why I want to give back and give light to the darkness.”

It began with chronic pain and prescriptions for Percocet and Oxycontin that offered relief and a false sense of well-being. Domestic abuse led to living in a shelter with her children. Orly finally realized she needed to get off the pills, but she could not.

“It was the beginning of torture for several years. That’s why we have an epidemic with opiates. It takes a lot of strength and support, and I tried three times over a four-year period. It takes everything out of you to get to the other end and never look back.”

Childhood memories of simmering aromas of lemons, parsley, cilantro, peppers, tomatoes and all the spices helped get her to the other side.

She tweaked her mother’s recipe during one of her mom’s visits from Montreal to Orly’s home in Toronto. When her don’t-you-dare-mess-with-ingredients mom left the kitchen, she took the opportunity, with guilt-laced excitement, to add a few more to the pot. 

“Voila, my specialty Moroccan Salmon, the champion of my life was born! At dinner my mom raved about her wonderful fish, and all I did was smile while my soul did a happy dance.”

Years later her addiction took its toll with memory loss and less ability to perform skills. She realized that improving her cognition could be accomplished several ways, including by eating healthy food, especially fish like salmon with lots of omega-3s.

It’s fatty, versatile and widely available, which is why Orly says her dish is champion food for anyone on any recovery journey, whether from illness, addiction or the blues.

“Without knowing it, this spiritually comforting food became physical healing food.”

Blind Ambition

Orly is a gifted chef, a title-holding athlete (Italian and Canadian dragon-boat racing!), a financial analyst fluent in French and a motivational speaker. She has two sons and a transgender daughter, all in their 20s living in Canada. Orly, her husband of 12 years, Amit, and her guide dog, a 6-year-old Black Lab named Regan, live in Hollywood, Fla.

She just graduated from a Florida culinary school with her sights set on developing a YouTube cooking series and a recipe app.

To help finance her project, she applied in January for the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition by making a 90-second video about her project of combining culinary and cooking expertise with her inspirational recovery story.

“Do you know blind people are 40 percent more likely to develop addictions?” she tells viewers in her video. “And did you know proper nutrition is key to recovery? … Although I’ve been legally blind my whole life, I lost my soul’s true vision through opioid addiction and poor health.”

Orly is turning her recovery story into a series of videos demonstrating healthy, delicious culinary delights, an accessible-to-all recipe app, and input from guest experts to help heal through the art of cooking.

She fashioned her simple and nutritious recovery recipes by using pronounceable ingredients, healthy fats, nuts and seeds and the like.

“It gives us more mental and physical strength because we start to feel better. We’re not as sluggish.”

Orly learned in March that she is one of 39 semi-finalists for the Holman Prize, selected from 109 applicants worldwide. Three winners will be selected in May.

The Holman Prize for Blind Ambition is annually awarded to three blind individuals to carry out a dream project to push limits and change perceptions about blindness around the world. The prize honors James Holman, a Victorian-era adventurer and author who became the first blind person to circumnavigate the globe; he also holds the distinction of being the most prolific traveler in history, sighted or not, prior to the invention of modern transportation.

Each Holman Prize winner receives up to $25,000 to fund a project or an adventure that will make an impact. The contest is sponsored by LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco. The organization launched the prize concept to support the emerging adventurousness and can-do spirit of blind and low-vision people worldwide.

LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin said the Holman Prize is not meant to save the world nor to congratulate someone for leaving the house. It is meant to change perceptions about what blind people can do.

“This prize will spark unanticipated accomplishments in the blindness community. You will see blind people doing things that surprise and perhaps even confuse you.” 

Previous winning projects include teaching blind people to become beekeepers in Uganda, hosting the first conference in Mexico for blind children and their families led by blind professionals, and recording a documentary series called “Planes, Trains & Canes” about navigating and accessing transportation systems in five cities around the world.

For the next step in the contest, Orly is creating an in-depth proposal due by the end of April. 

“My talent for cooking, my experiences all over the world tasting a plethora of inspiring favors, and my own story of failure, addiction and abuse woven in with courage, resilience and recovery – it was all for this.”