As a two sport goalkeeper, ice hockey wing, trained Physician's Assistant, narrator for the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library and mother of an amazing teenager, life as I knew it was destroyed at 9:30am 31Dec2009. It has been 14 years of a hell that Dante never knew existed, invisible disability in US, single Mum, post-concussion syndrome, The Cliff Effect, private to public health insurance, insecure housing, too many medical appointments to count. AND now I am finally to where I want to be, it is a freaking miracle and not a miracle because I have been working my ass harder than I ever did as a competitive amateur athlete, high achieving student, employee, mum, citizen, volunteer. I suffered a sports concussions on 31 Oct 2009 and then was disabled instantly on 31dec2009 when a truck rear ended my stopped Beetle convertible at high speed. Using therapeutic narrative letter writing between the Devastated Me, Current Me and Future Me, I restory myself as a TBI survivor. This is a sequel to Tell Me This: Encouragement & Hope After Brain Injury, published in 2013. Thanks to over a year of EMDR and getting off numerous medications, my brain is at least on now. I have finally reached a place where I can live independently with meaning as a self publishing writer, environmental & TBI advocate, with joy & gratitude radiating from my whole being. If I had only known that one day, even 14 years later I would have gotten here, I would not have suffered so much. I offer this restorying of myself in the hopes that it helps one person keep going for even one more hour.
