JO'S STORY

From a stroke to a shooting line

In September 2025, Jo Boardman had a stroke. She survived but the damage was in her visual cortex, and she came out the other side with cortical blindness. Her eyes work. Her brain can't read what they send it.

She was 48. She runs a successful Wellness business in Auckland. She was the person other people leaned on.

Recovery from cortical blindness isn't the kind where you wake up one morning and things are back to normal. You rebuild a life around a different set of inputs. You learn to trust touch and sound and spatial memory in ways that sighted people never have to think about.

Blind Low Vision NZ introduced Jo to archery a few months into her recovery. It's a sport with a formal pathway for blind athletes tactile sighting, a spotter to call the arrow, a foot marker to square the stance. The target doesn't move. The process is repeatable. It turned out she was good at it.

Now she's training to represent New Zealand at Para-athlete level. The goal is gold in all events.