In this personal monologue, Zaakirah Muhammad shares her life story as a bilateral retinoblastoma survivor from Florida. She recounts receiving a second opinion at six months, undergoing enucleation at nine months in 1993, and later experiencing mild hearing loss due to radiation treatment. Zaakirah describes how she turned her experience into a career in entrepreneurship, storytelling, and media, co‑authoring the memoir "Seeing Life Through a Different Lens" with her mother, launching a podcast that interviews other cancer survivors, and delivering a TEDx talk of the same name focused on advocacy and empathy. She highlights her commitment to accessibility—advocating for captions, sign language, and inclusive digital media—and emphasizes her identity as an African‑American woman of faith who wears a headwrap, seeking to connect with communities on the African continent. Throughout, she reflects on overcoming bullying, using humor, and encouraging others to understand diverse perspectives through her "different lens."
Chapters
My name is Zaakirah Muhammad, and I am a bilateral retinoblastoma survivor, mainly based out of Florida. That's where I received my enucleation. My second opinion of a diagnosis, back at Palmer Eye Institute, I was able to get it enucleated at the age of 9 months. I was 6 months old when my mother got a second opinion about the diagnosis because the first pediatrician overlooked it. By 9 months old, I was able to get the diagnosis. This was about '93. Later on down the road, I lost most of my hearing. I have a mild hearing loss, and I lost it due to the radiation treatment that I was able to receive. It's my left eye that I can see you in, and then my right eye and my right ear is more affected. I choose the world of entrepreneurship. I choose the world of storytelling. I choose the world of media. I've been blessed to travel the world. I've been blessed to be a journalist where I utilize my story Through a book that my mom and I wrote together called Seeing Life Through a Different Lens, a survivor's memoir on overcoming adversity with resilience. I was able to turn that into a podcast where not only am I interviewing other cancer survivors like Miss Dorothy, the secretary of What I Have to Hope, but I also just have conversations about overcoming adversity with resilience. I too grew up having dissimilar experiences. Being picked on and bullied for being four eyes, but I would also try to have a sense of humor and let people know that it's actually three eyes. Oh yeah! Once I was able to overcome that and understand that, but just because I'm different doesn't mean that I should be picked on. I utilize it as a way to advocate for myself, and I'll tell people, "Hey, I can't hear you. Please speak up." If you're willing to learn a second language, please use sign language. I'm in the world of digital media, so I'm often advocating. advocating for captions on online presentations as well. And then I was able to take that to a TEDx stage. Seeing Life from a Different Lens is the name of the TEDx talk, and on that I did talk about childhood eye cancer, but mainly talked about advocacy, how we can all be more empathetic towards one another. Just because I cannot see the way— I cannot hear the way you hear, and I experience the world through a different lens, that helps those who don't have retinoblastoma and don't have a child or a family member to truly understand what it's like to see in one lens. My choice of advocacy is also because I am an African American woman, and I am a woman of faith. I wear a head wrap or a headscarf on my head. I choose to have those conversations with those who look like me. I am interested— when I do travel, I try to find the communities of those who are within the African continent. And then I think that's pretty much it for now. Woo!
