https://www.brainline.org/rss/allcontent.xml en https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/dear-friends Hope—love—tenacity—go for it—get mad, let yourself be sad—but don’t let the madness or sadness swallow you. These were repeated themes, said in a thousand ways for a thousand reasons. These are the messages we need to hear again and again. Monday, April 22, 2019 - 9:56am Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/dear-friends https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/book-review-love-you-hard-abby-maslin This book packs a lot of wisdom. You’ll learn about aphasia; you’ll understand ambiguous loss; you’ll follow Abby down dark hallways and into sunlit rooms and learn what it means to own a life built on raw truth. Monday, January 21, 2019 - 8:33am Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/book-review-love-you-hard-abby-maslin https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/unspoken-shame-anger-caregiving I didn’t even know who or what I was angry at. Fate? Bad luck? The person who hit my husband with her car? Monday, December 17, 2018 - 9:10am Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/unspoken-shame-anger-caregiving https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/love-what-marriage-transformed I wish I had found Alix Kates Shulman’s memoir "To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed" in the first month of my husband’s severe TBI, and yet I may not have absorbed it the way I did reading it fifteen years post-injury. Monday, August 20, 2018 - 2:46pm Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/love-what-marriage-transformed https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/never-stop-asking-what-if We imagine the what-ifs as a worst case scenario, our worst nightmare happening to us, our life falling apart. But here’s another way of looking at it. Monday, July 16, 2018 - 6:26am Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/never-stop-asking-what-if https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/loosening-caregivers-grip It happens slowly, like that metaphorical frog you’ve heard about. Possessiveness and controlling behavior in TBI caregivers is something that creeps up on you, and I suspect it is common — not because people are trying to be annoying, but because they care so much and want to see that their loved one is treated well in every respect. Monday, June 11, 2018 - 12:47pm Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/loosening-caregivers-grip https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/pity-and-friendship-after-tbi We’ve all see that face. The well-meaning face of pity: the downturned brows and lips, the misty eyes. After Hugh’s TBI, I seldom met a friend or acquaintance who did not flash this expression at me every time we met. My daughters felt it, too. The funny thing is, we did not want pity. We’d had our fill of it in the ICU. Monday, April 23, 2018 - 3:47pm Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/pity-and-friendship-after-tbi https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/caregiving-burden The truth is, all family members are both a source of joy and a burden at one time or another. That’s what family life is: the art of weaving webs of joy between strands of pain is what creates the intricate fabric of family love. It’s not the people in our care who burden us; it’s our anger over circumstances... Monday, March 26, 2018 - 10:10am Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/caregiving-burden https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/what-stephen-hawking-taught-us-about-living-disability Stephen Hawking, a world-renowned scientist who recently passed away, had a brilliant mind that was trapped inside a paralyzed body, and I could not stop thinking about how the opposite is often the case with traumatic brain injury. Monday, March 19, 2018 - 9:16am Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/what-stephen-hawking-taught-us-about-living-disability https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/surrender To be a caregiver at home for someone who is severely injured is to surrender. You surrender your time, put your ambitions on hold, and surrender many of the simple pleasures. You also surrender your peace of mind, your good night’s sleep, and routine. But there are ways to make life a little easier and more enjoyable... Monday, February 19, 2018 - 2:51pm Rosemary https://www.brainline.org/blog/learning-accident/surrender