The NFL has recently released new stricter concussion guidelines.

The new policy states, in part: “Once removed for the duration of a practice or game, the player should not be considered for return-to-football activities until he is fully asymptotic, both at rest and after exertion, has a normal neurological examination, normal neuropsychological testing, and has been cleared to return by both his team physician(s) and the independent neurological consultant.”

This could be a really good thing.

I hope.

Here’s my blatantly opportunistic exploitation of a public figure for the sake of blog hits. But seriously folks, the whole situation does give me pause for a lot of thought.

Depending which radio station you listen to or which news source you read, Tiger Woods’ domestic dispute either involved him getting clocked with a 9-iron by a furious wife… and/or being scratched up when she lit into him… and/or driving around semi-conscious… and/or him sustaining injuries from ramming a fire hydrant with his Escalade… and/or his numb and non-communicative wife bashing out his car windows to save him… and/or him lying on the pavement snoring, when the medics arrived.

I don’t think anyone but the folks directly involved will ever know exactly what happened, but I’m not sure that matters. Enough damage has been done, to permanently erase the once saintly persona we once knew as Tiger Woods. And if his wife really did hit him in the face with a 9-iron, and he was in and out of consciousness, I have to wonder if the head trauma won’t screw with his fine motor control… and possibly bring his golfing career to a sickeningly tragic end.

I’m being harsh, you say? I think not. For years, this guy has made millions, at least in part by projecting a squeaky-clean image, having kids intone “I am Tiger Woods” mantras on moving commercials, and by hawking his wholesome image throughout the media. He has made tons of dough and enjoyed vast amounts of prestige, thanks to his image.

And what does he do, but not only tramp it up with impunity, apparently on Ambien, no less… but also be dense enough to leave tons of incriminating evidence, not to mention get intimately involved with the kinds of women who brag about bedding him. What was he thinking?!

I know the man was in pain, not least of all from losing his father. I know he’s been under vast amounts of pressure, due to his position and reputation. I know he’s been working as hard as any aging athlete to keep his edge in a field full of fresh young players just aching to take his place in the lead. I know the man was human, and I know he behaved like so many other men do in his position. I know that, being human, his mojo quota had to be in some kind of decline, which must have made him absolutely crazy at times… it’s not easy to peak relatively early in life (men do so earlier than women — some of the world’s greatest mathematicians achieved their masterpieces when they were but young pups) and then see yourself decline — however invisibly to the rest of the world. I know the temptations of all those women must have been too much to take at times. Clearly, at least some of them were.

But here’s the thing — if you know all eyes are on you… if you know your fortune depends on your ability to maintain a clean-cut image… if you have a wife and two kids at home and endorsement contracts to honor, you don’t fuck around. And you certainly don’t sext your hottie du jour hundreds upon hundreds of times and leave voicemails on her phone with your name. Geezuz, Tiger — what were you thinking, man?!

In a way, I can understand how it would come to this. I think the guy was set up by a system that makes artificially optimistic, insanely unrealistic, and eventually overwhelming demands on gifted but relatively frail human beings. Frankly, I think the powers that wrote up his contracts probably never genuinely expected him to uphold every last piece in the morality clause(s).  They probably figured they would ride the Tiger Train for as long as it would pull them along, and that eventually something would go amiss, and they’d get at least some of their money back from him, having made millions from his endorsements in the meantime. But they probably never genuinely expected him to violate his own artificial image in such a public and plainly stupid way.

When all is said and done, what I feel most about all this, is a profound sense of loss. The magical golden child of golf has fallen — sure as the golden calf was struck from its pedestal by Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai. And now he’s being ground up and served to all the masses in tiny little bits, strewn through our food and drink. The invention that we had and believed in — that innocent, honest, hard-working, Horatio Alger of a golfer — has failed to hold up under the stress tests of real life, and now we all have to eat crow and cringe whenever we think of those “I am Tiger Woods” commercials.

Those of us who demand perfection from others are as much to blame for this debacle as the parties involved. We are all complicit in this crime against human optimism. We put him up on a pedestal, and then when he stumbles, we go on a feeding frenzy, attacking our object for not validating our fondest fantasies. We need to get real. And stop needing the Tigers of the world to be our role models and paragons. We each need to aspire to and achieve heights in our own ways, not put all of our vainglory into a persona we prop up through consumer devotion and starry-eyed water-cooler talk.

Of course, in the midst of it all, some might cry “racism” and say he was set up and handled too harshly in the media — but weren’t we all set up and then disabused by our own dashed illusions? Weren’t we all just a little too trusting of the image, a little too inundated by all the media blitz, a little too incredulous that someone who flew so high could fall so far? It’s lonely at the top, and it gets hot up there, as Icarus found out.  He plunged from the great heights, too, and did not survive the fall. But he got a whole sea named after him.

As for Tiger… well, there probably won’t be any large bodies of water named after him, but you might get a good deal on a set of his golf clubs on Craigslist right about now…

Please join me in a moment of silence for our dearly departed hero.

I’ll miss him.

What connects the words that make up the title you’ve just read? More than you might think. And they represent a dark-side to daily life in the USA and around the world.

Yet we tend not to think about them and it (that dark-side) very much. The main link among the three is that they involve varying degrees of destructive behavior; indeed, they all risk a needless acceleration of death; an increase in the chance of an early demise for those who participate in the activities in question: smoke cigarettes and you roll the dice on emphysema, heart disease, cancer, and more; fight a bull and you just might not leave the stadium still breathing; play in the NFL (National Football League) and you increase your risk of dementia and a shortened life expectancy. All while the promoters of these actions and events make money.

Football, smoking, bull fighting, and (one might add) boxing have another thing in common. They are activities performed (or at least begun) when one is young; when one is in full leaf and flower, like a tree on a mid-spring day. And just as the tree cannot imagine (having no consciousness) that it will turn brown and dormant before the year ends, young people have difficulty really believing that they are mortal, and imagining a time when they could be enfeebled or worse.

Tears and strains, bumps and bruises, broken bones, and bouncing brains; bodies busted and bent. That is what I am talking about. According to the NFL players association, the average professional career lasts 3.5 years. No wonder that some say the letters NFL actually mean “Not For Long.” Certainly, many players are cut from the team for under-performance in an enormously competitive environment, but many leave because of injury. The average life-span of an ex-NFL player is 55 overall and only 52 for linemen. No doubt, this is due partially to factors beyond the punishment done to their bodies by the violence of contact, particularly weight and diet related problems. But do not dismiss the direct effect of that punishment on producing life that is diminished and shortened. A recent University of Michigan study of 1063 retired NFL players found dementia-related conditions at a rate five times higher than the national average for men 50 or older; in ex-NFL players 30 to 49, the rate of dementia-type conditions is 19 times higher than for other men in the same age group.

And what is the reaction of most of us to this? Perhaps we say, “that’s interesting, but its a free country and the smokers and the football players are free to take their chances.” And on Saturday or Sunday we cheer for the football teams and the young players, just as you might yell “ole’” at a bull-fight. No one does pep-rallies for smokers, of course, but we do not prevent their slow self-injury, even if we limit it to certain places and conditions.

Somehow, the bull fights seem a bit more honest to me. The injuries are plain to see. And, the bull will spill blood and die while we watch, unless it first injures the matador to the point of his own bloody and usually visible injury. By comparison, we won’t see, for the most part, the smokers wheezing, or lying gray in ICU, holding on, if they can, to dear life; or the ex-football line man (unless he is as famous as the boxer Muhammad Ali), rendered almost mute by the effects of repeated head injuries. We won’t be there for the knee and hip replacements; we won’t spell the over-taxed spouse who married the daring young athlete-hero in his prime, and now must change his diapers.

It’s only a short step from this to war, don’t you think? Again, it is the young who fight for us and who suffer for us, mostly out of our sight in a place far away.

Are we really so far removed from the days of gladiatorial combat in the Roman Coliseum? Dig not too far below the surface of civilization and you will find more than a little brutality. And, too often, if you look a bit more closely, there we are, the two of us, preparing a tail-gating party to witness the carnage, bundling up to sit in the stands, cheering it on.

Scary.

Being Any Thing hurts. It is easier just being. Being Anything hurts because it is like chasing an existence. Chasing an Existence is thinking Life today has more challenges than Any Time In History (ATIH). For example, it is more tough being honest today than ever before when Everybody Else has Everything Else.

For example, it is more tough being nice today than ever before when you are very sick and Everybody Else has Everything Else. Including imaginary good health insurance for imaginary good doctors. Unless you are nice you can not have Any Of It (AOI) at Any Time In History (ATIH). It is hard to be nice when you are very sick.

For example, it is more difficult to be a good person today than Any Time In History (AIT) because I am some one who has no imagination and likes to pretend. I have plenty of Rathers. I would Rather be Nobody and be Alive.

Rathers can lead to being like Everything Else when Being Anything Hurts. I would Rather Believe in Everything. Rivers Running Backwards (RRB) are a part of Everything. If Believing in Rivers Running Backwards (RRB) is what it takes then I am ready to go with the flow.

Therefore it will likely be Unnecessary Trouble. That is Believing in Everything and getting Everything Else too. Having Everything Else is not Much Good without Identity. Pick the one Thing in the picture with shiny outlines different than other Things. Those are identities.

Identities can be a lot of Unnecessary Trouble with misplaced Analysis. I forget if Induction is going forward and Deduction is going backward. You will never know without Emotional Intelligence. These are the old brains built to survive. Identity is Elemental. Behavior is Simple.

Identities fill up the Space that is not Space between Heaven and Earth. Filling up is not easy. This is difficulty. Difficulty does not have much Meaning with out Time. At Home in Real Life Situations Difficulty may endure in Time. This is not a problem. This is Meaning.

Meaning is not Much Good without Knowledge. Here’s the rub in the House That Jack Build. Without Identity Knowledge is not Knowledge that is not Knowledge. It is not confusing. Things that are not Things speak for themselves when Being Anything Hurts. Deep Listening Techniques require Being Alive.

It seems like Everybody Else without a Brain Injury has Identity Problems.

I have been giving a lot of thought to behavior issues that arise as a result of TBI. Discussing my “eventful” childhood with my parents, in light of the concussions I experienced, brought up a lot of old memories about the bad behavior I exhibited, time and time again.

At the same time, I’ve been meeting with my neuropsychologist, who has been trying to explain to me that relatively speaking, the neurological after-effects of my TBIs are not so terribly severe. For the most part, I have a lot going for me, and I score well in key areas. I do have a few significant areas of difficulty, but I’m really not in terrible shape, neurologically speaking.

I’m still trying to get my head around it. Maybe I’m being dense, but it’s hard for me to see how little is wrong with me.

Because I struggle. Oh, how I struggle. The fact that I’ve been up since 1:30 — wide awake from worry and pain — is evidence thereof. Now, part of it may be the fact that I’m a highly sensitive individual with a lot of life and curiosity and adventurousness in me… which tends to put me on a collision course with the less desirable parts of human experience. A lot of it may be due to that, in fact. But it certainly doesn’t help that my memory leaves a lot to be desired, my processing speed isn’t as fast as I’d like, and I tend to get overwhelmed and melt down.

I don’t want to make more of my situation than need be, and I certainly don’t want to hold myself back in life  by focusing on my limits, rather than my strengths. I just need to understand why it is that I have such a hard time with things that others seem to be fine with. What, in fact, is holding me back?

All things considered, I think most of my day-to-day issues are behavior-related, versus purely neurological. I have had a bunch of head injuries, it’s true, but my MRI and EEG both came back looking peachy, and that doesn’t seem to correlate with the difficulties I have. Indeed, the problems I’ve got with insomnia, anger management, becoming quickly fatigued, trouble getting started, trouble reading, getting turned around and overwhelmed, saying the wrong things and doing things differently than I’d like, seem more behavioral than cognitive.

Well, it’s 4:30 a.m. and I’ve been up for three hours. I’m bushed and I need to sleep. So, for now I’ll just share a number of links I’ve found interesting and useful in understanding tbi and behavior:

• Traumatic Brain Injury: TBI Inform – Managing Behavioral Problems
• Tutorial: Behavior And Behavior Problems After TBI
• Long-Term Behavior Problems Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain …
• Behavior Problems After TBI in Children and Adolescents (PDF)
• Behavior Problems Resulting from Brain Injury
• FCA: Traumatic Brain Injury

Thinking about my little enneagram test, I am actually glad that I’ve had to change in some ways. I am MUCH more organized than I was before I realized that if I’m not, I get into big trouble. I am a whole lot more present, in my daily life, and I’m a lot more cautious about things that I used to be very cavalier about.

In some ways, my personality changes have been in response to the TBIs and coping with them — versus them being due to the fall down the stairs… the car accidents… the sports concussions… and the attack. And that’s helped me, more than it’s hurt me.

I really shouldn’t boo-hoo over it. Change can be very good, and everybody encounters stuff they need to overcome. We change in response to the shifting demands of the world around us. And the world changes in response to us, as well.

It’s just interesting to see and consider the kinds of differences that emerge in my life over time. And to remember that deep down inside of me, there is a part that loves to pity itself and cry “poor me!” when better reason would tell me to buck up and just get on with it.

Heck, considering that I’ve been dealing with cognitive-behavioral issues practically my whole life, and I’ve done pretty well for myself, then if I start to decline cognitively in my advancing age, I already have coping skills in place that can serve me in good stead.

I know — I’ll consider myself ahead of the game, and call it a win.

I did an enneagram self-test last night, to see where I fall on that spectrum. I picked one out of the Google results and went to http://similarminds.com/test.html.

The enneagram has a bunch of different personality types:

1 THE REFORMER
2 THE HELPER
3 THE ACHIEVER
4 THE INDIVIDUALIST
5 THE INVESTIGATOR
6 THE LOYALIST
7 THE ENTHUSIAST
8 THE CHALLENGER
9 THE PEACEMAKER

And supposedly everyone fits somewhere. The results I got had all nine types represented in different percentages. By far, I am a 5 – The Investigator.

Now, I’ve taken this test before, and I’ve figured out that I’m a 5, before. But when I took the test (with my spouse looking over my shoulder), I was surprised at some of the answers I thought were true, but they disagreed with. And I got a close look at how TBI has actually changed my life in fundamental ways.

Once upon a time, I was cool and level-headed and I could hold my own in the midst of chaos. Once upon a time, I was far less organized than I am now.  Once upon a time, I used to be very spontaneous and could roll with changes. And I wasn’t overly cautious about things.

Those things about me have changed, and while they didn’t skew my results too terribly, the experience of making certain choices on the test, and having my spouse say, “That’s not true!” and give me lots of examples, was sobering. I am definitely not the same person I was, even 5 years ago. And I wonder if I was ever the person I thought I was, to begin with…

Personality changes in TBI are by far some of the most disorienting aspects of the injury… makes basic problem solving a bit more complicated than one would expect.

Well, I’ll have to ponder that some more. I hear there’s bad weather on the way, so I’d better do some outdoor chores while I can.

It appears that winter is finally here.

We mentioned that we volunteered at the United Way Family Fun Day in November; here are pictures from the event.

Family Fun Day!

Zel & Rachel working the prize table

Ross won the danceoff in the Boys division!

Thank you!!

Holiday Mail for Heroes cards

Beautiful cards

Diane and Isaiah

William

Amy in Parksley, VA

For the next several blog posts, we’ll be looking at anger and grief after a brain injury, using excerpts from After Brain Injury: Telling Your Story. While these excerpts are directed at people with brain injury, family caregivers can also benefit by reading them and applying them to their own situations. There are separate journaling prompts for caregivers, as usual.

NOTE: Please note that sometimes impulsive anger can be a direct result of a brain injury; the parts of the brain that would normally inhibit anger no longer function as they once did. These posts do not refer to this kind of anger, but instead to the normal anger that can be expected after a sudden, traumatic experience. (See an Anger Inventory.)

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A brain injury is a frightening, life-altering event. The ultimate outcome, dependent on so many circumstances and details, can never be predicted. Yet because an injury to the brain often rips away portions of an identity and alters the direction of a familiar life, survivors need to find a way to deal in a healthy manner with their grief and anger at these unexpected changes. Then eventually they may discover hope and rebuild their lives, sometimes along a wildly new path. It’s important to remember that even though such a life may be much different than before the injury, it can still be heartfelt, satisfying, and productive.

One important key to creating your new life is telling the story of your anger and grief. Write about them as often as necessary, with all the honesty and freedom available to you, and watch your progress over time. By communicating with your inner self in this way and giving it a voice on paper, you are choosing to move forward.

However, when you let anger overwhelm you so that you cannot rationally or calmly deal with a situation, it can be harmful. At the least, it prevents you from exploring other options to the problem; at the worst, it can push you into hurting yourself or someone else. Remember, it is always helpful  to work with a trusted person, such as a counselor or therapist, who can guide you through your dark times and emotions.

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Part 1: Telling the story of my anger

Anger is a common reaction to unexpected events that do harm and throw you off-course. It’s a way of coping emotionally with the situation until you can either make sense of it or make peace with it. After a brain injury, you could be angry at yourself—“Why did I ride my bike without a helmet, just that one time?” You could be angry at the person who caused the injury—“That idiot swung the bat and didn’t look to see if anyone was behind him!” Sometimes you might be angry at the circumstances even though there was nothing you could have done about them—“I was serving in the military in Iraq, and that damn roadside bomb exploded just as we were driving by. Why did I enlist?” Or, “Why did I get a brain tumor? I’ve always taken good care of my health. This shouldn’t have happened to me.”

Today’s journaling exercises:

If you’re ready to do some private writing in your journal, choose one or more of these prompts to get started. Try to write for at least five minutes.

For people with brain injury as well as family caregivers, if it’s difficult to give yourself permission to write about your anger, begin with the first prompt in each section.

If you’ve had a brain injury:

• If I could tell the story about what most angers me about my brain injury, I would say…

• Something that makes me mad about my brain injury… (Use this as many times and for as many items as necessary.)

• I get angry that no one seems to understand what I’m going through and…

• I have a right to feel angry about what’s happened to me…

• I don’t want to feel angry about my brain injury, but I do because…

• A healthy way I cope with my anger is…

If you’re a family caregiver:

• If I could tell the story about what most angers me about my loved one’s brain injury, I would say…

• I do my best not to get angry when (loved one with brain injury) does something that’s due to the injury and can’t be helped, but…

• When my anger flares about being the caregiver, I…

• A positive way I’ve found to deal with my anger about this brain-injury situation is…

A study using functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate brain function revealed that adults who were exposed to lead as children incur permanent brain injury.

The results were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091201084152.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: sciencedaily (ScienceDaily: Latest Science News)&utm_content=Google Reader

Call my Name and I may not come. To the recollection of my injured brain I have no outstanding Duty & Obligation to go Anywhere. This would exclude a summons to The Eternal. This is a Duty & Obligation in my House.

I am not going Anywhere for awhile. Home for the Holidays, so to speak. I am Moved the Distance in Time and Space w/Duty & Obligation. I find the road travels more smoothly with Devotion. Some Times I travel with other Attitudes. I think I am dishing out Some Thing that is not a Thing with an Attitude but it usually takes more out of me than all that.

Juggling acts at the bank with Devotion Duty & Obligation are difficult. Especially when my account is over drawn for the second time in a year. Especially when for as long as Everybody Else can remember I leave the same amount and write the same three checks.

It’s tough to write checks when tellers misplace decimal points. Everybody Else who gets checks gets mad. Decimal points are important to Everybody Else when it comes to money. I think a decimal point is the shortest distance between two planes. I will not Go to another airport to confirm this.

Humble Duty & Obligation go down easier with a smile. Shy smiles retire without necessary medical care. Seizures are a Big Distraction. Everybody Else expects please and thank you. Me too. Smiles are extra. Teeth required. Aristocrats on my Island prefer an Absolutely Twisted closed lip smile. Breathless O and 1/2 nod. This works.

It’s Time to make camp some where inaccessible for Everybody Else. This is not The Usual on the Port Gamble – Talkeetna Trail. It is understandable. In Deep snow keep walking. Safety purposes. A new set of OHSA regs & standards. Like Duty & Obligations. Snow is fine on the mountain. Deep.

Crevasses hide in the Distance between a Good Line and a Line of Bull. This distance is Way short. It will appear shorter in your rear view mirror. Observing a doppleganger in the mirror is a Deep Snow mountaineering hazard. Keep your eyes on the Mountain at all times. Remember. Distances are shorter in Time than they appear.

Back from Thanksgiving for real, now… Back in the swing of things at work, where everything is going crazy for year-end. They had another round of layoffs at work, but I was magically spared.

I’m pluggin’ away at my new job, rallying back after what was a less than stellar review of my first cut at the project I’m working on. Must be smart about this. Will be smart about this. Will use fewer pronouns, so I think faster

But I’m tired. Tired and ready to just relax. After my 10 p.m. call tonight, when people overseas complete a job I asked them to do, and I check their work.

Still digesting Thanksgiving time. And trying to find space in my schedule to just take a break. One of my coworkers stopped by earlier today, saying they didn’t have enough work, and they were just occupying themselves with other things. I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d give anything to have less work — but this way I’m safe(r) from layoffs, I guess, which is good.

The main challenge I’m facing today, is accepting the fact that I had a normal Thanksgiving and I’m having a normal life. A normal life with average expectations. It’s to be expected that this new line of work will tire me out. And it’s to be expected that I can share time with my family and not melt down or lose it or freak out on them. It’s to be expected — today, anyway. In past years, not so much.

So, I’m tired, yes, but I’m still grateful. I’m grateful that I am having a normal life, with all its ups and downs. I’m grateful that I had a good time with my family. Most of all, I’m grateful that I am actually feeling normal. What a change this is, after 40-some years of NOT feeling normal.

I think I’ll celebrate Thanksgiving through the end of the year.

Whoops! Did you miss us? After our last post we had Veterans Day, a NorEaster, staff illness and Thanksgiving Break. We have, of course, been very busy in between!

We have been decorating pine cones to distribute to area nursing homes and assisted living centers for the holidays.

Beautiful pine cones!

Sweet potato pies!

Getting the board ready

Plants for sale!

A wreath on the door

Our new sign!

If you’re under stress or in a crisis, one creative way of coping is to write. Instead of fleeing, fighting, or freezing, you can intentionally use your writing for positive psychological change. As Sherry Reiter, PhD, writes in her book Writing Away the Demons, “…people who write for their own well-being frequently report experiencing the joy and relief of honest unbridled self-expression and catharsis. Writing offers an effective, safe, and creative coping mechanism.”

Think about a traumatic or stressful time in your life. How did  your thoughts act? Were they calm and deliberate, like a peacefully flowing stream? Or were they zooming uncontrollably like thousands of bats exploding out of their cave at dusk? If you’re like most people under great stress, you felt as though you had no control at all over your thoughts during this time. And that only adds to your feelings of overwhelm and helplessness created by the situation itself.

Fortunately, writing about stressful events or crises helps to contain them. Putting your thoughts—however wild or uncontrolled they seem—on the page can be the beginning of self-empowerment. Using your journal to name your fears can help you master those fears and move beyond them. When you write, eventually you will begin to corral all those zooming thoughts into a more manageable form. Then, if you keep writing over time, solutions and insights can emerge from the jumble and bring you some measure of peace.

After an event as stressful as a brain injury, both the survivor and family members can benefit from whatever positive control they can exert in the new and confusing situation. Journaling is one way to gain some feelings of control. While journaling won’t solve all your problems, it can became a kind of sanctuary, a safe, nonjudgmental place where you can find relief and release in communicating only with yourself.

When you write, as in your journal, says Dr. Reiter in her book, “…the pen becomes the funnel for all that you feel and permit yourself to express. The writing is your container, a ship bouncing on the waves of your emotions. And from these waters, re-birth takes place—sporadically, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes in pain, with the ultimate triumph of creation and transformation.”

Today’s journaling exercises:

If you’re ready to do some private writing in your journal, choose one or more of these prompts to get started. Try to write for at least five minutes.

If you’ve had a brain injury:

• In times of great stress, I…

• List five ways that you deal with stress, and then choose one to write about in more depth.

• In your journal, draw an imaginary container into which you can place all your stress to make it more manageable. Be as colorful and creative as you like. Then write for a few minutes about your stress container.

If you’re a family caregiver:

• When I’m under stress, I find it hard to journal because…

• When I’m under stress, I find it easy to journal because…

• In your journal, draw an imaginary container into which you can place all your stress to make it more manageable. Be as colorful and creative as you like. Then write for a few minutes about your stress container.

I just got back from the best Thanksgiving ever.

I had my plan, and I stuck with it. Each day, before I did anything else, I got up and went for my brisk walk. Then I went back to my parents’ house, had a drink of water or juice, and closed myself off in an extra bedroom to stretch and lift my weights (which I brought with me). I had my breakfast in the usual fashion, and I took my time.

Whenever I got overloaded (which happened a few times), I stepped away and took a nap. I had help, too. My spouse was there to help “cover” for me, when my family was wanting to talk and visit and spend time. And people didn’t seem to be pushing as much as they were in other years.

I managed to get through the holiday without melting down or insulting people or saying things that I hadn’t thought through. I was careful and deliberate, and I was very, very present with just about everyone I talked with.

I think people really saw a difference, too. By the end of the weekend, my mom was asking me about what exercises I do, and she had that look in her eye that said she was going to try them.

I also (finally) talked to my folks about the TBIs, and how they had played a role in the problems I had as a kid. I’ve been wanting to do this for some time, now, because my folks aren’t getting any younger, and I didn’t want them to spend their final years burdened by the same regret and remorse that they’ve carried around with them for as long as I can remember. My parents have spent a lot of time apologizing to me for being bad parents, and I never knew what to say.

This Thanksgiving, I figured out what to say:  “All the problems I had weren’t your fault. They were neurological, and they were because I got hit on the head a lot. It’s nobody’s fault, and all those people who gave you a hard time for being bad parents were wrong about you. And they were wrong about me.”

It really choked them up. My mom got scared, and my dad had to step out of the room to compose himself. My parents love me a lot, and they could never understand why I didn’t respond to them the same way my other siblings did. Now they have a very important piece of the puzzle, and maybe now we can start healing some of the old hurts that never made any sense, but hurt, all the same.

Yes, my strategy did work — If I take care of my body, my mind can take care of my brain.

I was very careful about what I ate (tho’ I did overdo it on Thanksgiving Day — but who doesn’t? At least  it was real — not junk — food!), I paced myself well. I took my time, and I did not rush the things I often rushed (like packing the car and moving around). I was very mindful of my surroundings, and I took time to breathe deeply and relax.

Now I’ve got a lot of body aches and pains — too little sleep and too much long driving and too many unfamiliar activities — but while I was with my family, I was in a good space, and I was in good form.

And for that, I am truly thankful.

Going the Distance demands some calculations. For example, you will need the Time. Going Distance will take some Space. However much Space you Go. It is give and take.

Agenda will be no problem if we stick with Everything Else you want. Questions of procedure and priority will resolve quickly if I have the carrots.

Being the Center of Everything Else is no place left to Go. The Way of the Warrior Ends. By a calculus of distance one never arrives Any Where.

Deep Listening Techniques are useless where Emotional Intelligence is full. Penetrating water requires a half empty mind. I am filled with letting you Go. The Way of the Warrior Continues.

Letting Go means turning mind Else Where. You are not Missing. I am still with you. I have many teachers and guides. You’re guide to the Elemental Deep.

Poor Minotaur in a labyrinth all day long. You teach me how to help Things that are not things wait for their destiny. This is the Way of the Great Warrior.

When I was around five or six years old in Germany,

my mother would take a rest on the couch and I picked out her white hairs. She showed me how to put my index finger in the “hizeda”–in the ashtray–where my father’s Camel cigarette ashes where and rub the ash on my finger to take the “slippery oil” away to pull out the hairs without my fingers slipping.

She felt around on top of her head for the white hair. I reach down into her long, black hair like a horses tail, find white hairs, and pull them out. While doing this, I asked for a story. “Which one?” she always asked. “The Cave Story, my favorite!” I’d say. I always asked for my favorite story….

‘We were in the cave nine days,
I already roll my mother up in a blanket – she not quite dead yet. She was hit in forehead, on side, big hole. Later on, I left her under a tree, we had to run, cannot carry her. After war I go back in jeep with GI potato canister for her bones.

I find tree, easy to recanize which ones her bones because hole in forehead and she only have two her own teeth left on top in front on each side, motioning to her eye teeth or canines. The rest all gold before but somebody take away. After war, people no have anything they take what they can to survive. I put her bones in canister, take them to the family’s cave.

I oldest one at home, eleven keeds. I middle one, seventeen years old. I take care of my younger brothers and sisters. At night I use bamboo poles, carry two buckets, I run get water, bring back. I run through shooting, bullets go through my legs. See, that’s how I get scars around my knees, and my side.

When bombs go off; I happy – blow up potatoes. I run go get food, bring back. My brothers and sisters so hungry. Everybody hungry. My hand shot up, hanging down like this: (and gestures where her right thumb and forefinger, half a hand used to be hanging down). I no feel – that time – we so scared – have no time pay tention to hurt.

Later, she used that hand as a beauty lesson: After war there were many hurt people, American doctors no have time, cut off quick. They say cut off to here (touching her right elbow). One hakujin (white) doctor like my face, he take time. He take time only take off hanging down part, only take “hambun te” (half hand). It’su important you take care you looks.’

“Then what happened?” I’d say, feeling successful pulling out white hairs. They were easy to see in all that shinny blackness. “Then on the ninth day, the noise came closer and closer, and one Japanese soldier came inside. He said “Americans are coming, we must suicide before they get us”.

We think Americans very bad. The Japanese soldier had a hand grenade. We lay down, make circle, he sits in middle. I hold one brother one sister hand, close eyes. I hear the grenade go off, open eye. First I think I’m dead now, then I hold head up, see my body. I think I am worse than dead because I thought I have only half body but it’s the soldiers trunk on top me.

What happen is grenade have a pin, he pull pin but his body bend over grenade, and he only one blow up. I thought I lost legs but his body on top me blow out his legs. The noise from grenade brought American soldiers. They come inside. They point many things, many weapons at us. Guns, machine guns, bayonets, even they take pictures.

We scared, very scared. We don’t know what to do. We never see hakujin before. They point us with bayonets and point us to put hand up, go outside. We go outside. We never see Americans before. They stand all around us, point at us with weapons, camera, they take picture. We thought they kill us because Japanese soldiers say they kill us.

They hand me canteen, they show me: drink. I tell my brothers and sisters, ‘This must be poison. If something happu to me, don’t drink. The mizu -the water- tastu good, clean. I no have misu like this long time. I wait for poison, nothing happu, I no die.

I give to my brothers and sisters, they thirsty. They happy to drink. Then soldier give me something very dark, very brown, they show me: eat. I say to brothers and sisters, ‘This must be the poison, if something happen to me, you no eat.’ I teach them how be strong. I put in mouth, I eat, tastu very sweet, very sticky sweet. Nothing happen, I give to keeds.”

When I grew older, I decided I didn’t want to hear these stories any more because I thought they really were all just endless made in Japan fairy tales for endless made in Japan children. I wanted to play farther away from my brothers and sisters. But one day, “Uncle Wally” (Walter Cronkite) told the same story.

In 1964 when we returned from Japan, and stayed for two weeks in Menlo Park California, we were outside playing a game of seven-up, bouncing a ball against the house when we heard our mother scream. We ran inside. She was watching Walter Cronkite’s 2Oth Century, a Sunday TV program.

She had watched herself come out of the cave…drink the water … eat the dark sticky sweet stuff… Turning to my mother, I asked, “Gee Ma, did they really make Hershey bars back then?”

Sunday, April 3,1999: At 6:30 am, I started watching the History Channel and an announcement was made that the upcoming program was about WWII, Japan. Five minutes into the episode, I decided to record, and toward the end of the film, was a description of the war on Okinawa.

I saw a woman tell a story that reminded me of my favorite story (The Cave Story) my mother told me as a child in Germany. In between the woman’s story, was a film of people coming out of a shelter. One figure coming from the left foreground moving to the right, was clearly a focus of the camera.

That one person looked like my mother, had several children with her, and had an injured right hand. I showed the tape to Lee, my husband. He played it in slow motion, then in pause mode so we could get a good look at the hand because in regular motion, the hand spun around like a pinwheel in a blur.

I considered calling my mother who is visiting my sister Linda in Finley, Ohio but I didn’t want to risk upsetting her.

This story reminds me that we all come from different experiences with different stories and centers of reference. On the Multicentric Journey, we’re going to move to a sensory based model of identity for processing perceptual layers, social context and the changing human identities of today. You will encounter reality from a new perspective. You will receive perceptual exercises by going through the layers and building a human database of information. This perceptual practice becomes a steady state for going into a realm where you’re not overlooking any information and you see the interdependence that was hidden, because you are seeing ecologically. These stories are to take you, us, everyone out of the box, to where we see ecologically/interdependently.
done

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and today I’m traveling to my extended family, several states away. I expect the traffic to be heavy, and I expect the trip to be long. I’ve spent the past week preparing myself for this mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I’ve consulted with my neuropsych, I’ve checked in with friends, I’ve been eating right and I’ve been working out and stretching regularly. Last night I actually got eight hours of sleep.

This year is very different from past years, in that I’m not pushing myself up to the very last minute when my spouse and I hit the road. I’ve been taking it easy, taking the different tasks in manageable pieces, not biting off more than I can chew, but keeping on task and on point. And I’ve been using my timer, to make sure I stay on schedule.

This year is also different, in that I called my parents ahead of time to find out what the plan was going to be for the next few days. I checked the weather, too, so I could be prepared to offer suggestions. I’ve requested that we just take Friday “off” and relax and do some light activity outside — the weather is going to be beautiful, and I would really like to spend time with my folks, just hanging out and talking.

I am also planning to share with them the findings of my neuropsych evaluations and work. I’ve made tremendous progress, over the past year, and I want to share the info with my parents in a positive and constructive way. I haven’t been able to do that, till lately, as I’ve had a lot of reservations about my progress (not helped by my psychotherapist, who has been trying to talk me into “accepting” (i.e., giving up on) my limitations and settling for less of an amazing life than I believe I can have.

I’m not sure how they got to be that cynical, but I’m not on the same page with them, and I am certainly not going to settle for less, just ’cause I’ve had some misfortunes along the way.

Anyway, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how much progress I’ve made over the past year or so. My neuropsych says they are encouraged and inspired by my progress, which is great. I’m really happy I can return the favor of their assistance. I really have come a long way. A year ago, I was pretty turned around, I didn’t have much direction, and I was very muddled and confused by the ramifications of my issues. I had a long way to go, to figure things out.

My previous therapist wasn’t helping matters, by constantly focusing on what my mother did, as a source of my woes. I invested a lot of time with them, essentially being led down the wrong path — it wasn’t necessarily my mother (or my father) that was the root of my issues. It was more the neurological context in which I was living in my childhood — all those unidentified, misunderstood, pesky issues that complicated and intensified every experience I had, and had me “pegging” emotionally and behaviorally all over the map.

Now, I have to say, my current psychotherapist has helped me regain my balance from before. I think my previous therapist was trying to regress me, to find some deep, dark secret hidden in the innermost recesses of my psyche, so they could exorcise my demons or something like that. And my current therapist helped me regain my balance by helping me focus on the logistics of my day-to-day life, rather than floating around in the distant past. And I am very grateful for their help (tho’ I have to move on now).

Indeed, I think the thing that has helped me the most, over the past couple of years, has been the help I’ve gotten in dealing with my everyday life — keeping my issues in mind, understanding them and how they impact me, and getting to the bottom of the problems I can expect to have, given different situations. Being aware of patterns, like:

I get tired after a full day of intense activity, and when I get tired, I have a tendency to get turned around and agitated, which adds to my internal confusion and throws gasoline on the fire of my temper… and really contributes to me melting down over every little thing

helps me immensely, and it also helps the people around me to help manage and anticipate my issues before they get completely out of control.

And one of the big things that helps me identify my patterns is examining my life on a regular basis. I take a lot of notes, and I record a lot of my experiences. I look back on my days and weeks, and I watch for issues and patterns that emerge over time. I write down the times when I am having a really hard time of things, and I identify the contributing factors. And I draw pictures of my problems and the “flow” I use to deal with them. I work with my life — the failures and the successes — as my own individual recovery plan and practice. And I see results.

Real results. Like promotions at work. Like improved relationships with others. Like a more creative approach to my life, overall. If I can get past the old bad habit of being so hard on myself, and I can treat my difficulties as challenges (from the outside — from my faulty wiring — rather than from my inside character or personal worth) to be tackled creatively … challenges just waiting to be overcome… well, then, the ultimate results of my examined life are tangible improvements, the likes of which I never thought I’d see happen.

Truly, this is remarkable. I always thought — before I knew why things were always getting so screwed up with me — that I was flat-out doomed to failure. I had precious little expectation that things would ever turn around for me permanently… I figured it was always just a matter of time, till things got mucked up for no reason I could identify, and everything I’d worked so hard for just went away, swallowed up in the sinkhole of my life.

But now that I’m paying attention to the basics, and I’m following up to deliberately study the results of my actions and see how they can be improved… Now that I’m treating my life like the miracle that it is, and I’m studying my daily “playbook” with focus and intention, and I’m refining my approaches, based on what I know about my limitations, I no longer believe that I am stuck in endless cycles of attempt-failure-attempt-failure-attempt-failure.

My life is different now. Because I’m living it differently now.

And it’s good.

In case you’re wondering how I go about doing this, here’s the basic flow of my practical-life-recovery-plan:

1. I figure out what I want to do. I understand why I want to do it, and how it fits in the overall picture of my life. For example, I figure out that I need to exercise first thing in the morning, and I need to really work up a sweat, because I have been feeling a little sluggish lately and I need to “pump up” my system a little more.
2. I do it. And I track what I do. For example, I do my morning workout, but I don’t manage to work up much of a sweat.
3. I figure out if I accomplished what I set out to do, and if I succeeded, I celebrate in some way. If not, I ask myself why that is. For example, I make note that I worked out — and I congratulate myself for doing that — but I didn’t work up a sweat, and I wonder why.
4. I figure out why I didn’t accomplish exactly what I set out to do, and I ask myself what I can do differently to change that the next time. For example, while I’m having my breakfast, I look at how I’m doing, and I realize that I’m tired and distracted. I figure out that I didn’t get to bed at a decent hour the night before, and I also see that I let to many errands wait till later in the day, which pushed my schedule back farther into the evening, so I couldn’t relax and get to sleep at a decent hour.
5. I think of alternative strategies I can follow to make changes in my daily life, that will help me accomplish what I set out to do better today. For example, I spend a little more time planning my day in a way that will let me get my busy-work done first thing, and give me more time in the afternoon to take it easy and wind down.
6. I go about my day and check in with myself periodically, to see how I’m doing. I make a point of remembering the goals I did not accomplish, which I really, really wanted to accomplish, and I work a little harder to keep myself in line. For example, I check my daily work list periodically to make sure I’m staying on schedule and make sure I’m not overloading myself with extra stuff in the evening.
7. Last but not least, I follow up. I do a check-in later to see how I’m doing, and if I’ve accomplished the goals I set for myself, I celebrate and reward myself. For example, if I get to the end of the day without wiping myself out, I treat myself to a little bit of television, watching a show on cable that I really like. Or better yet, I make an early night of it and I get in bed at a decent hour, which lets me sleep and sleep and sleep till I’m actually rested.
8. And then I do it all again the next day.

To some, it might sound arduous and like a lot of work, and it is. But it’s good work, and it’s really more of an orientation to my life, a kind of spiritual practice, if you will. In the Give Back Orlando material, they talk about how TBI survivors need to be more mindful of their lives, and I have found that to be very true. But even more importantly, I’ve found that I want to be more mindful of my life. Yes, it’s work, but I don’t mind the work. Yes, it’s different from how most people live. But I’ve never been like other people, so why start now — and why feel badly that I can’t be like them? I’m just fine, the way I am.

In the end, yes, it does take more work to live this way. In the end, yes, it is more time-consuming to do things that a lot of people do quickly and easily without a second thought. In the end, no, I don’t have as much time to fritter away on non-essential activities.

But in the end, the payoff is huge. I get to have a life.

Better yet, I get to have the life that I want to live.

Hi ya’ll!

I’m still in the hospital but my daughter brought me a laptop so I can talk to you. I can’t talk for long because the longer I talk, the better your chances are of noticing that I’m quite confused. I wouldn’t like that at all. They keep asking me stuff like “What day is it?”, “Who’s the president?” and “Where are we now?” I keep crib notes written in the palm of my hand but that only works for 24 hours before I have to get new notes.

I read the shirts of the people asking me those questions and it would seem as though I’m in Los Angeles and it’s November. Imagine my surprise! I thought I was in Atlanta and it was June. Oh well, it could be worse, I could have forgotten that I was divorced and that would suck. Instead, I seem to have a boyfriend and I didn’t even know it!

He’s a very nice man, he comes to see me every single day and I’m impressed with my taste in men. He’s rather good looking and he’s quite tall. He weighs twice as much as I do and I like that in a man. I’m afraid to ask him if we’ve had sex yet but I figure that as long as I’m in the hospital, it isn’t really an issue.

It appears as though I’ve had a stroke but other than a headache, I feel pretty good. My nurse just came in to give me pain medicine so I’m gonna let her. I’m glad that I wrote stuff everyday because at some point, I need to figure out what’s happened to me since June.

See ya soon!

I happened upon this film (broken up in to segments) about a brain-injured woman from Australia.

Seven years earlier, an 18 year old woman, ALICIA was seriously injured in a car accident. It was her brain rather than her body which suffered.

This documentary tells the story of her long journey of recovery. Not content with just regaining a ‘normal life’, Alicia pursues her original dreams of becoming an actress. Through Beth, the main character from Sam Shepard’s play ‘A Lie of the Mind’, Alicia is able to express the common experiences of brain injury, her alienation from society for being different and her lack of inhibitions.

Flashbacks, dreams, Alicia’s video diary, interviews told with heart and extraordinary honesty by her family, friends, medical practitioners, healers and theatre colleagues; all contribute to unmask and reveal the many faces of Alicia and explores the issues confronting everyone involved with acquired brain injury. ( http://www.stellamotion.com.au)

Watch and learn

I’ve been thinking a lot about my reaction to the post about the BIA booting a blogger from their conference. And I’m wondering if I should regret my hot-headed reaction.

On the one hand, I have received tremendous help from the BIA in some respect. On the other, I have heard stories like this — and other accounts, where people were actively discouraged by the BIA from saying that you can recover from traumatic brain injury.

It’s a mixed bag. As most things with people are.

The thing is, though, the Brain Injury Association is more than a person. It’s a collection of persons which professes to assist other persons. And as such, if it’s going to truly assist, I would think they would welcome the presence not only of a member of the press but also someone who has been impacted by brain injury.

Or maybe they’re wary of brain-injured folks in general, knowing what they do about “us”…?

Who can say? One of the things I’m taking away from this is yet another reminder of how hot I can get on short notice. And it warns me to check myself periodically, to make sure I don’t go off the deep end. It reminds me I’ve had multiple concussions, multiple mild traumatic brain injures… and as such, I owe it to myself and to others to measure my responses carefully, and weigh the possible effects/consequences, before I let fly.

I had considered taking down the post from before, but it’s a valuable learning/teaching lesson. So, I’ll leave it up there, warts and all.

Difference between Mind and Matter is one of degree ,not of kind.While mind vibrates at a higher rate, matter vibrates at a lower frequency.
Lower frequencies are associated with past experiences, higher frequencies are linked to present and Ultra high frequencies with the future.
Consciousness is a stream that is Universal.Individual variations are due to limitations of Space and Time.Mind can relate to and transcend Time and Space with proper discipline.
The exposition of this thought will take too much space;separate blog follows.
What the current studies attempt to prove and proved partially have already been practiced in Hinduism.
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2009) — The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night’s delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you “tune in” to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered a mechanism that the brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information. Their results are reported in 19 November issue of Nature.
Think of your brain like a radio: You’re turning the knob to find your favourite station, but the knob jams, and you’re stuck listening to something that’s in between stations. It’s a frustrating combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on the right frequency is the only way to really hear what you’re after. In much the same way, the brain’s nerve cells are able to “tune in” to the right station to get exactly the information they need, says researcher Laura Colgin, who was the paper’s first author. “Just like radio stations play songs and news on different frequencies, the brain uses different frequencies of waves to send different kinds of information,” she says.
Gamma waves as information carriers
Colgin and her colleagues measured brain waves in rats, in three different parts of the hippocampus, which is a key memory center in the brain. While listening in on the rat brain wave transmissions, the researchers started to realize that there might be something more to a specific sub-set of brain waves, called gamma waves. Researchers have thought these waves are linked to the formation of consciousness, but no one really knew why their frequency differed so much from one region to another and from one moment to the next.
Information is carried on top of gamma waves, just like songs are carried by radio waves. These “carrier waves” transmit information from one brain region to another. “We found that there are slow gamma waves and fast gamma waves coming from different brain areas, just like radio stations transmit on different frequencies,” she says.
You really can “be on the same wavelength”
“You know how when you feel like you really connect with someone, you say you are on the same wavelength? When brain cells want to connect with each other, they synchronize their activity,” Colgin explains. “The cells literally tune into each other’s wavelength. We investigated how gamma waves in particular were involved in communication across cell groups in the hippocampus. What we found could be described as a radio-like system inside the brain. The lower frequencies are used to transmit memories of past experiences, and the higher frequencies are used to convey what is happening where you are right now.”
If you think of the example of the jammed radio, the way to hear what you want out of the messy signals would be to listen really hard for the latest news while trying to filter out the unwanted music. The hippocampus does this more efficiently. It simply tunes in to the right frequency to get the station it wants. As the cells tune into the station they’re after, they are actually able to filter out the other station at the same time, because its signal is being transmitted on a different frequency.
The switch
“The cells can rapidly switch their activity to tune in to the slow waves or the fast waves,” Colgin says, “but it seems as though they cannot listen to both at the exact same time. This is like when you are listening to your radio and you tune in to a frequency that is midway between two stations- you can’t understand anything- it’s just noise.” In this way, the brain cells can distinguish between an internal world of memories and a person’s current experiences. If the messages were carried on the same frequency, our perceptions of the world might be completely confused. “Your current perceptions of a place would get mixed up with your memories of how the place used to be,” Colgin says.
The cells that tune into different wavelengths work like a switch, or rather, like zapping between radio stations that are already programmed into your radio. The cells can switch back and forth between different channels several times per second. The switch allows the cells to attend to one piece at a time, sorting out what’s on your mind from what’s happening and where you are at any point in time. The researchers believe this is an underlying principle for how information is handled throughout the brain.
“This switch mechanism points to superfast routing as a general mode of information handling in the brain,” says Edvard Moser, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience director. “The classical view has been that signaling inside the brain is hardwired, subject to changes caused by modification of connections between neurons. Our results suggest that the brain is a lot more flexible. Among the thousands of inputs to a given brain cell, the cell can choose to listen to some and ignore the rest and the selection of inputs is changing all the time. We believe that the gamma switch is a general principle of the brain, employed throughout the brain to enhance interregional communication.”
Can a switch malfunction explain schizophrenia?
People who are schizophrenic have problems keeping these brain signals straight. They cannot tell, for example, if they are listening to voices from people who are present or if the voices are from the memory of a movie they have seen. “We cannot tell for sure if it is this switch that is malfunctioning, but we do know that gamma waves are abnormal in schizophrenic patients,” Colgin says. “Schizophrenics’ perceptions of the world around them are mixed up, like a radio stuck between stations.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091120000140.htm

A few years ago, a magazine editor in Italy emailed me out of the blue for permission to reprint one of my articles in his magazine. It was obvious that English was not his first language, but that made his emails all the more charming. I was going through a time of doubting my writing at the time, so his request cheered me up. I told him that and gave my permission for the reprint. He replied that what I was feeling was “the vibe of joy.” I wrote those words on a small piece of paper and taped it to my computer, where I see it every day. They still make me smile.

What gives you the vibe of joy? Being that it’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S., this is a good time to examine what brings us joy and what we can be thankful for.

Journaling about your joys and thank-yous is an excellent idea for several reasons. First, you have a record in your own handwriting of the positive elements of your life. That way, when times are tough, you know it’s not true when you say, “Good things never happen to me.” Second, by doing this kind of writing, you give yourself a gift: the time to sit quietly for a few minutes and appreciate those things you probably take for granted. Third, research shows that people who journal about the positive things in their lives, at least part of the time, fare better than people who concentrate on the negative.

I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna. Life after brain injury can be unbelievably difficult, with challenges survivors and family caregivers never dreamed they would have to face. As TBI survivor Kara Swanson wrote in her blog, “Brain injury is no gig for sissies.” She also wrote, “…NOBODY gets through life unscathed. Nobody. Everyone has or will have that condition, disease, accident, injury or event in their lives that knocks them sideways and turns their life upside down. It’s one of the prices we pay for the gift of living.”

One of the men in my journaling group for people with brain injury was distressed that he could not return to work and support his family. Yet in one of his journal entries, he wrote, “Even though I can’t work now, I’m home when my son comes home from school. He likes that. So do I.” He found this gift, and others, in the life he was now living.

What are some of the joys in your life, right now? What are you thankful for?

Today’s journaling exercises:

If you’re ready to do some private writing in your journal, choose one or more of these prompts to get started. Try to write for at least five minutes.

If you’ve had a brain injury:

• Make a list of 5 to 10 things in your life that bring you joy.

• Make a list of 5 to 10 things you are thankful for, that are not on your joy list.

• Now, choose one thing from either of these lists and write a few sentences or paragraphs about it.

If you’re a family caregiver:

• Make a list of 5 to 10 things in your life that bring you joy.

• Make a list of 5 to 10 things you are thankful for, that are not on your joy list.

• Now, choose one thing from either of these lists and write a few paragraphs about it.