Power Over Fear

It’s good to face painful memories head on. In the end, it gives you power over them. And what a good feeling that is.

Power over fear. I’ll take it every time.

As you may know by now, Veronica has a severe traumatic brain injury and I have a moderate tbi. We are 15 yrs post injuries. For many years I felt like I was not successful because I couldn’t work. But the time came when I saw a counselor that was finally able to convince me that I was not stupid due to my many deficits, I was injured. I am injured and I will always be injured. There are some deficits I will always have, and I have come to accept all of them as a part of the new me. I have managed to succeed in my own eyes. What amazes me is I have found my place in the world again. Injured or not, so many people have not. And I have found it without working a job outside my home that I get paid for. God does not and will never care how much money you make in your life. I have found my worth in being the best person I can be and in loving others to the best of my ability. I am a wife, mother to two beautiful daughters that I am close to. I am Veronica’s caregiver; I am a daughter and a friend. Those are the things that make me fulfilled in my life, that fill my heart with love and joy.

I have support that I am so grateful for, but I think my drive would be here regardless, because I have always been this way, except for the beginning years after my brain injury. I am a pretty motivated person when I have the energy to be. Some days because of my brain injury I cannot use my motivation because I must sit still on my couch, for days even, sometimes weeks. I do get tired, overwhelmed, overstimulated. I take so many down days, sometimes due to depression and sometimes because I am out of energy.

I wrote a book! I am still surprised! Writing my book was the second most painful thing I have ever been through. For literally hundreds of days, while writing my book, I needed Veronica’s daily support. In the beginning I would write a paragraph and run down the stairs to Veronica’s room while she was sleeping and climb into her bed, wrap my arms around her and sob, and sob, and sob. I sobbed from the pain of what she had gone through and what we, her family endured by being by her side.  She would roll over and tell me, “It’s ok mom, I lived.” And she would hold me while I cried some more. Writing was me living through the excruciating pain all over again. Oh, how it stabbed me in the heart, day after day. Sometimes I would need my husband to hold me, and he would, and I would cry over what I was writing about. He held me even though we couldn’t talk about why I was crying. The pain 15 years later is too fresh, and he still cannot talk about what happened to us. People say to him, “I saw your wife wrote a book.” Greg will say, “I hear it’s a good one.” But he will never read it and that’s ok. As hard as it was, I had a compulsion to continue to write our story, day after day. I know so many, too many, have gone through what we did. Many of us sustain our injuries in different ways, but the journey after is often similar. I had to write about every detail I could remember. We have been through the loneliness of losing all our friends because our personalities have changed. I want the world to know that although brain injury life can be so lonely, none of us is alone in our experience.

Soon I was thinking about what I wanted to write, for hours of the day. I would wake up from a sound sleep to take notes about things I wanted to share in my book. I slept, ate, drank, talked about, and lived the details I wanted to include. I would cry not only to Veronica and Greg, but to a dear friend of mine that let me pour my aching heart out to her. I felt so raw. As I wrote further and spoke about our lives after the initial trauma, I would call my mom daily to read her sections I had written. All these people helped me feel validated and proud of what I was doing. My mom never completely understood what I was feeling, but she was always, always there to hold me up from afar and let me know how completely loved I am. Soon I was writing 7 hours a day. This was almost unbelievable because to this day I don’t have that long of an attention span. I would dream about what I was writing, and I would wake early around 5 or 6 a.m. and write until noon or 1p.m. I only got up to go the bathroom. I knew I was done for the day when I would reach over and drink my last sip of cold coffee. I would reread what I had written day after day, not knowing where this information was coming from. I was always surprised, because due to my memory loss, I never knew where the answers to my own questions were. It was GOD. He wrote my book. He wrote through me, a very sad, beautiful story, 12 years after our near fatal car accident. Our lives had struggles and sometimes there would be failures, succeeded through years of effort and education about brain injuries. Once I completed writing my book, I experienced PTSD. I suffered horrible nightmares. It took months, but they passed. I went to a therapist familiar with brain injuries to work through my feelings. I’m better now. My goal was always to help even 1 person through this difficult life. I now have 3 people that have read my book more than once, calling it their brain injury bible. I feel like it can’t get better than that, my feeling of fulfillment from helping others. But now I can’t stop. I want to help more and more people. It feels so good to know others don’t feel alone anymore on this lonely road. These people with brain injuries don’t feel isolated and alone anymore. Because of me!

Why would I write a book if it was so painful? People ask me. I answer, “I don’t want this horrific experience to have happened to us for nothing. I want to turn something traumatic into positive and good. I want to help the hopeless, hope. There’s always hope. We may need to really look hard for our blessings sometimes, but they are there if we choose to see them. Every day.

Now that my book is published, Veronica and I are constantly looking for new ways to educate others. I have successfully found many ways, but the most recent way was found by Veronica. She really wants to be on the news. She reached out by sending an e-mail to the local news station. In 2 weeks, a reporter is coming to our home with a camera crew, and we will be live, telling our story. I will need to rest before then. I get tired easily, very easily. But I’m excited for this new adventure.

I hope you will continue to come read my blogs that I post every Friday morning. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The honest and raw. Truth is what I write.

I hope to give you hope!

If would like to know about how we have come to this point, please read my book titled,

A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

It is available almost any place books can be purchased online. You can purchase it from Amazon from here on my website, as well.

Go to menu, press blog, scroll down and you can buy it as a paperback, or on kindle.

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Thank you for reading.

Have a beautiful week and look for your blessings. Even when things seem rough, blessings can be seen if you look for them.