After we experience a brain injury we want answers to some important questions: when will I be my old self again, and how do I get myself back? Unfortunately, there are no answers. We learn quickly that, much to our dismay, there is no roadmap for life after brain injury. There is no schedule. There is no "approved method" for living. The best we can do is listen to doctors and therapists, as well as other survivors who have already travelled this road, hoping we can find ways to improve ... Read On
The Truth About Football, CTE and Us
The last several years we have learned about the repercussions of repetitive hits to the heads of our football heroes. Do we really understand though? We see stories about them on the news or read about them in newspaper articles, focused, not on past glories or achievements, but on present day despair. On regrets. On wishing they had lived ... Read On
How I Dealt with Abuse Following A Chronic Injury/Illness
Those of us who have experienced a chronic injury or who have a chronic illness are used to being treated poorly by others. You would think people would be more understanding, but apparently, that's not the way it works. Our Reality We all have war stories. We can all testify to the number of times we have been insulted, demeaned, ... Read On
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Living Large and Howling at Our TBI Demons
Everyone has their demons; ghosts that haunt us because of something that has or hasn't happened in our past. For those of us with brain injuries, our collection of demons is varied and extremely powerful. We feel overwhelmed when we face those things that haunt us: peoples' comments, the can't do's, the used to be able to's, the relationship issues, the work issues. They are popping up all the time. Many of us feel as though our demons are not like anyone else's and we put them on ... Read On
Don’t Walk…Run!
When you have a brain injury many things change. Life is different in a way you can't explain and other people don't understand. Those other people who don't understand, in an attempt to help us, are always suggesting ways we should approach our injury or live our lives. The trouble is, what they are suggesting is based on their reality, which is the same reality we used to know and live by. The question is, why should we try to do things the same old way, following the same old rules? ... Read On
Facing & Winning the Daily Brain Injury Struggle
Being TBI survivors, we all live the struggle; it's in our face every day. The battle we are in can be physical, mental, emotional or a combination of all three, but it's always there; and it takes strength and perseverance. Every day we wake up to face the same struggle. The same #{%^ struggle. The individual challenges and the details we face each day may be different, but we all have that brain injury struggle in common, and all we want is to be able to live a normal, fulfilled life. The ... Read On
“So That’s Why I Do That!!”
How many of us, TBI survivors, do things or say things only to wonder, minutes later, "Why did I do that?" We go through our day-to-day lives, doing the best we can as we try to "normalize", and we often find ourselves doing these things we think are normal when they aren't at all. It becomes routine to do things without understanding why or thinking anything about them; including how others might think about what we have just done. Even though we have had a brain injury, we don't always ... Read On