Healing and Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

"Ring the bells that still will ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything:
That's how the light gets in."

                                         ___Leonard Cohen


So, I'm cracked. No illusions of perfection! Not any more.

I used to aim for perfection:  in everything. Being the perfect mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend. The perfect student, then worker, writer, speaker. Playing every note perfectly on the piano, hitting every note perfectly on pitch as I sang -- even alone to myself in the car! Perfect form on the tennis court. I was the perfect neighbor, the perfect cubicle mate, the perfectly affable guest preacher, and for heaven's sake. I did, in fact, as they say in Boston, "use mah blinkeh."

It was exhausting, of course. And impossible. But, oh, I tried. Put a whale of a lot of energy into perfection. And I came close enough to it perfection to get lots of bennies from it -- benefits, perks, fast track, affirmation, attention, promotions, success. I was known. I enjoyed great respect. I knew, as an acquaintance put it once, while showing off, some very high caliber people. There are some private home telephone numbers in my old book that a good reporter would have killed for. It was a life of dignity. It was a great ride! And it lasted about twenty good years.

Like I said, it was exhausting. I was wearing down. Running down. And getting worn down by the antics of a new community I had joined, where deceit and betrayal were routine. I was tired, and I was losing -- or had already lost! --  my bearings in such a fog of lies and meanness. And then it happened. Out of the clear blue.

I don't recommend getting hit in the head, but it worked for me. 

I gave up perfection. I had to. No choice. Crack! And in the cracking open, light got in. Eventually. Got into my head, my brain, my spirit. Light I needed, new light. It has taken a long time.


[This is a more complete version of a shorter account of what happened to me. I feel that I am ready now and the story is ready to be told. There are still some details I cannot write of, maybe some day. A brief version appears in the book described at the end of this post.]


Twelve years ago, in 2002, on a lovely crisp October evening, two days after my birthday, an hour before dark, I drove over to work. I was too tired and distracted to remember the warnings: "Do not go over to the church alone. And don't be alone in the building. Watch your back."  The warnings were serious and warranted. And I tried to remember. But not this night, worn down by a stressful day, anticipating yet more to come. And so I went over to my office alone. I went early, to prepare for a big meeting. I wasn't thinking. I had, frankly, stopped thinking clearly months earlier: subject to a relentless barrage of harassment, sabotage, stalking, massive amounts of malicious gossip, relentless rudeness. Someone hacking into computer, the phone message system. Lots of lies, some so funny and outrageous we made them the subject of family humor. If you didn't laugh, at least a little, all you would do is cry. And I did cry. A lot. But on this night, my perspective warped like that of an abused, battered wife, I was done crying, and done with thinking. I just didn't think. And I went over to the office alone. Got out of my car. Stood, holding my folders for the meeting. And...

I was attacked by a crazed, angry man in a parking lot. My brain stopped working. And my life has forever changed.

A white ram truck flew around a corner and into the parking lot and screeched to a stop. Right next to my faithful old green minivan, virtually penning me in. A man jumped out, screaming words at me I did not understand. His face was red with a rage I could not comprehend. I couldn't see what he was carrying. His arms, I remember, seemed like tree trunks. Swinging. He surged at me.

I don't remember what happened after that.

I quit working. Not only as in, stopped being able to go to my job, but as in, I stopped functioning. The me that was me was gone. She didn't work. She broke.

Gone. When I did wake up, I had no idea where I was. I had no idea who I was. I had, in fact, no idea that I was an I, a being, a creature apart from other creatures, that I was what is called a person.  When I say "I had no idea" what I mean is precise, I had no idea. No ideas. None. I had no sense of anything making any sense at all. I drifted in and out for a long time. Confused isn't even the word for it. Lost. Without bearings. It is, for me now, inexplicable. It was a time out of time. Time out of mind. I was gone.

At some point I became aware of myself as a self, as a body that hurt. Something that was. And that about sums it up. No connection to memory, or identity. And I had no sense about the space around me, what it was, where it was. No associations at all. Not even a sensation of being in a bed.

As this continued, the scariest thing of all came after touching my arms, my stomach, clenching my fist, uncurling my fingers. They were connected, all these parts, and I watched with wonder as the skin held them all together and they moved. I was stunned to take some notice of the impulse I felt that seemed to have the power to will them to move.  But still, I was utterly baffled. What was all this? Some instinct whispered, "this is me." But what was a "me?" Having only this very foggy sense of my own identity was the most frightening of all, not quite understanding this concept of being a person, a being, a body, with skin and parts that moved and weirdest of all, thoughts that kept coming together and falling apart. Who was I?

Remembering back to those dimmest of memories are the very worst of this entire, long ordeal. Not knowing. Anything. Not even me.

Later, when I tried to take in what was around me, I was unnerved once again. There was a vague familiar flash of memory to something. But to what? Where was I?

And then, my husband standing over the bed,said, "good morning." I had no idea. Who was he? Why was he here?  The voice sounded familiar. The face looked like one I had known, but I could not put the face together with a name, or a part in my life.

Of course, at some point I was administered a mental status exam. Several of them.  I did not know who the President was, what day it was (or what season for that matter), or how this day fit in among other days. Not only could I not count backward from one hundred, I could not begin to comprehend what a number even was. It would take months and months and months for that abstract concept, of numbers, to even begin to make the least bit of sense.

When our children came in to visit, I did not know who they were. That is the second most terrifying part of the whole experience:  not knowing. My. Own. Children. What are children? And these are mine? Who? What exactly does that mean?

I was apparently more upset by their noise, which is to say, quiet talking, than interested in them. I feel terrible about this. I kept telling them to be quiet. I'm so sorry.

In the weeks and months that followed, I was not 'working,' that is: I did not recognize faces, voices, places, words written on a board or in a book. I could not comprehend the words people spoke to me. My brain had come unwired, or was rewired. It was not the same one I had had at all.

The borons and protons and neutrinos and boninos -- as I called them because I couldn't remember what their scientific names were -- had been battered out of place, or broken, their wiring sent all haywire (hey! I figured out what that meant!) and things did not fit together as they once had, as I needed them to.

I had never heard the term, TBI. Traumatic brain injury. But it turns out I had had one as a child, too. A concussion from a serious car accident. My head was banged against, and bounced off the sharp curb of the street. I was three. I wasn't treated because my mother and others looked to be in far worse shape. I do remember the ambulance ride: it was cold, silver, just very very cold. With searing bright lights. And I remember being alone in a tiny examination room for what seemed like hours, as the main attention was focused where it had to be, keeping my mother alive. A nurse came in finally and spread stinging orange mercurochrome on a huge ugly gash in my chest. No stitches, no tender loving care. Just the gooey singe of orange and more absence.

For the record, that October night attack was my second concussion in two months, following at least two years of emotional torture and battering, harassment, and sabotage. I had kept on working right through all the misery because I was still bound and determined to be perfect, dammit, and if certain people --- a tight group of about thirty, plus some outside instigators who had their own diabolical agenda ---  couldn't see that, then, surely, if only I were even more perfect, eventually they would recognize and see the good I was trying so desperately hard to accomplish for them.

By the time I collapsed that night, the psychologists have determined that I was already deep in the depths of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,  the consequence of horrible behaviors I experienced during the time I served that congregation. It was a deeply troubled place, with ugly secrets that they feared I would disclose. I had no such intentions, but fear is a powerful motive and when it is fed, it hardens quickly into paranoia and hate. So I was in deep soup!  Nobody had ever hated me before. I was disbelieving. "If I just get this right," I thought. Time would be on my side. And God, of course. I worked all the harder.

 In fact, the treating psychologist and psychiatrists suspect I had completely dissociated months before the final attack, and had become a walking, high-functioning 'zombie.' I do remember feeling as though I was living in a haze of unreality, not altogether present all through those months.  I had lost the capacity to feel either joy or sorrow. I was a zombie. Even the night I was attacked. It was a zombie who drove over to the church on auto-pilot and just stood there as I got nailed.

For months and months after that night, I simply didn't 'work.' I did not function, did not possess a brain that processed information as a normal brain would. I did not recognize faces, voices, words on a page were indecipherable swiggles and jurls. I couldn't comprehend what people were saying to me. I was still a zombie, though now much more damaged physically, not only emotionally. Both injuries, the TBI and the PTSD damage the wiring, the physical 'stuff' inside the brain. I occasionally tried to imagine the wiring inside my brain and saw a jumble of twisted, broken off, and buzzing strands that went nowhere and regularly shorted-out, sending bursts o uncontrolled,f fiery electricity across the whole massive mess.

And there is another thing. The cortisol. Cortisol is a good thing in proper doses, it alerts us to danger. My regulation system, however, was totally shot. So I had massive surges of cortisol up and down my arms and legs all the time, buzzing through my brain, up my neck, down my back, upsetting my stomach  .ALL THE TIME.  It would not, did not stop for, yes, years. No matter what I tried to calm it. My amygdala was blown up, stuck in one mode: Nuclear Alert! It was awful. Awful. I woke up in a panic, with the unpleasant sense of electricity coursing through my whole body and it did not stop all day. For years.

Sound and light were intolerable. Too much stimulation for my already over-stimulated brain to manage. So I lived a long time in a silent, darkened cocoon. I -- who had always entered my own parents' home and begged to open their blinds, throw open the curtains, let in the light! -- now kept my own shades down and the lights off. This was not me! But it felt safe.

I stayed in bed, curled in the fetal position most of the time. I was stubborn. I was recovering at home. In my own safe space. With my gentle husband and quiet, kind children nearby. Should I have been institutionalized for a long period of rehab? Some would argue, of course. I refused. I wanted to be home. My sanctuary. My nest.

The aspen trees turned golden and fed my soul, even in its absence from my sentient thought, as much as the medicines fed my brain. It was my safe place. I wouldn't leave. Not even to eat. I still spend way too much time, I suppose, up here in this room where I know I am away from the bullies and beasts who hurt me.

I tried at some point to watch television. I couldn't concentrate Opie and Aunt Bea meant nothing to me. I couldn't sleep so I tried to fill my mind with numbing nostalgia, but even that didn't work.

It was almost impossible to interact with my children because I had no idea what they were telling me. Words were sounds were all gibberish. That made me terribly sad. I loved music, their music, their laughter, their stories, their words. And now they were unbearable. Can you imagine, how awful!


At the time of my 2002 attack, and for several months afterward, I did not hear the term PTSD, either. I had no words, no way to understand or put in any meaningful perspective what was happening to me. In fact, it was many many months before the clinical psychologist doing an exam for insurance purposes introduced me to the term, those four words that came along with my TBI, because I had been attacked. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is all too familiar to us now. It is a national disgrace, the suffering our wars have caused thousands of soldiers. And a further disgrace, our failure to provide them the treatment they need and certainly deserve. And that's another blog.

I had begun soon after the attack to work with a therapist who turned out to be clueless and useless. She was worried about the negative impact of her having me as a client, because it turned out ( I later learned) her son's job prospects were tied up with the man who was ultimately responsible for setting me up to be beat up. She didn't 'hear me into speech,' she didn't hear me at all. She was afraid to. She should have recused herself at once but didn't. She was cold and disconnected and didn't seem to understand that I had been terribly injured and was very seriously ill, I suppose because I didn't have huge holes in my head or elsewhere, for that matter. She made me feel as though I was faking it. And a waste of her time. After going for a few months, I finally bailed on her, the first useful decision I was able to make after the attack. One day I just told Dave, don't bother taking me, I'm not going back.

I was also sent for diagnosis to my disability insurance company's chosen clinical psychologist, who said I had "one of the most complex cases of PTSD" he had ever seen. He explained. I wasn't crazy: I was ill. Very very ill.

By the way, the nineteen dollars a month I had paid for that disability policy over the years turned out to be the best money I, or my employers, ever spent. Thank God for that. And I almost forgot all about it!

From that diagnosis, I was able to move on to another therapist, and then on again (it is not a perfect science: finding the right, the best, helpers for your recovery), before finally finding the team that helps to care for me now.I also am a big fan of the right medicines. "Better living through chemistry" is one of my mottos.

I had the benefit of  that good Disability Insurance policy that was up-to-date, an excellent health insurance company, and an advocate who went to bat for me with Social Security. In fact, when that Judge heard my case, he took not the usual month to six-weeks to determine my status. He was so incensed about what had happened to me, he issued a judgment fully in my favor within a week!

This is how it should work. What is happening with our veterans is a disgrace. It makes me furious. And again, another blog.

*     *     *

As I said, I don't recommend getting hit in the head, I really don't!  And I don't make light of it; please believe me. It was hell.

It was hell for months, for years. For years. And years. And more years. Some days it still is. Even today for a few hours, even today. Wow.Is there ever a day when it isn't a factor?

I despaired of ever getting better again, really better, better enough to be functional, to "work" again, by which I mean only to do the simple tasks that we all take for granted. Cutting up celery. Making coffee.

It was hell and it was hard: learning to be me again.  As I noted, that first morning after I woke, it was to a sense of not only not knowing who I was, but to not knowing even what it meant to be an "I" -- a self, a person. I was utterly confused about every single thing. Completely disoriented. Who was this kind man talking so gently to me? He looked familiar, but I didn't know he was my husband of over twenty-five years.

I didn't know where I was, what 'was' was, what it meant for something to 'be,' or especially, what things were, or how to even think about it all, this sense of not knowing, not 'working,' not functional with a brain that did what brains normally do.

Food. What do you do with that?  I had no clue.

I could not stand the sound of, well, sound. I kept telling people to stop talking, or at the very least, to talk very softly. I couldn't tolerate any noise. Machines, voices, all made me curl back into a fetal ball. It was the start of a long process of recovery that continues, in fits and starts.

Over more months...   Learning to speak, to think. Words, what were the words for things? I still stumble over them, I stammer and mumble and look dazed for a moment until my child lovingly, laughingly says, "Mom, use your words."  But which ones?

We did learn to laugh. We had to. It was otherwise too grim. I laughed at myself, my inept and dismal failures to remember what ingredients went into a grilled cheese sandwich. Laughed at my inability to add two plus two, to even know what a "two" meant. We laughed at my complete and utter imperfection. The superwoman had become a parody of her old self.

Was that a good idea? To laugh at me so much?  It seemed so at the time, just as a means of coping. But I have to admit, over time it took a toll on my already bottomed-out self-esteem. We don't laugh at me so much anymore. But it is tempting. Oh the things I can't do!

"What did you just say?"  I heard you but my brain didn't download and compute the information. This happened in a conversation today. I sometimes still have to ask my husband to take the message from the doctor's office because it is just to much for me to take in and process. And phone numbers, oy vey, expect to repeat it nine or ten times. I can get about two numbers at once. And that's an improvement!

At the beginning, it was all new again. Living. Learning to concentrate, to listen, to take in basic information from other people. In fact, for months, it was impossible to tolerate anything but the softest sound, the whispers of my children. No loud talking, no noises. Not even my beloved music. And television was still a cacophony of confusion.

Learning to imagine what a simple thing like a number could mean. Numbers are still impossible, they are entirely -- what do you call it -- conceptual, subjective. (I just asked Dave:  the word I was looking here and earlier, is "abstract."  Numbers are too abstract a concept for my brain as it's rewired.)  You might not think so, numbers look so solid. Everybody knows what a "2" is. Not me. They are merely symbols to me, revealing: nothing. I can't go out without a calculator or the server will get a generous fifty percent tip.

I had to learn again to read. It is still impossible for me to 'get' a double negative; what does that mean? I puzzle over it for minutes until finally giving up. Complex material that used to be easy for me to navigate became gibberish. And some of it still is. I won't be reading Kant or Hegel again anytime soon. Plotinus is off the list, too.  I wrote two books, long ago. It was years before I could read them again.

I had once directed a doctoral program. Taught graduate-level courses, taught Religion to restless and squirrely football players from Marquette, who used summer school to get graduation requirements out of the way. I loved it, loved their energy, joking around, and also loved being able to get them to buckle down and be serious. I had thrived. In another setting, in a former job, I had once asked a room full of Army officers, in a workshop, "What do you need?  What do you really need?"  Let me tell you, that took nerve. Who ever does that?  I told bishops what to do, and they listened. I stared down a Soviet security officer. And won.

Now I was mush. It was humiliating. I hid out. Rarely going out. A trip to Dairy Queen maybe.But I stayed in the car.Taking solace only in my family. Required outings were torture. I couldn't even make small talk. I had been a nice balance before between introvert and extrovert. Guess which one rules the day now.

Going out, and being with other people was physically exhausting at first, and for a very very long time. It still is.I had to physically hold on. For security, for safety, for stamina. A trip to church wipes me out for the rest of the day. I hate to act so stand-off-ish but the truth is, talking to people is just overwhelming. Still.

The stimulation of a trip to the grocery store is more than I can manage. Too much information. Too many stimulii to handle. I left many times in tears, to wait in the car while my husband shopped.
I still don't go grocery shopping. It is simply overwhelming.

Learning again to feel comfortable around people, to talk to them about even the most simple subjects: what might that be?  What to ask?   How to answer?  Even now, groups of people are hard to deal with unless there is someone, something to focus on. Put me in at cocktail party, a graduation party? A potluck? A picnic?   I'll be the one in the corner, scrolling through my email -- and not focusing on that either. And that's rude, so I usually just don't go.

Finding a way to relax, even alone, was difficult. Between my brain injury which made it hard to think, and the attack which made me anxious, I seemed to need to spend hours simply doing nothing. Except be nervous.

After my cuticles had been torn to shreds, I discovered socks. Clean white socks. I unraveled socks for two years. Carefully pulling them apart, from top to bottom, drawing out the threads and meticulously making sure to not tear the string as it came undone. This ended up as a pile of sock thread next to my bed, a full two feet long and as high as the mattress. And eventually, when I felt better, and stopped with the sock thing, we found some beautiful African pillow covers which are filled now with unraveled socks.

A recent major setback just this Spring of 2014, a re-triggering of the PTSD, in full bloom, sent me back to the socks. For two full months I unraveled socks again. I had a sock in my pocket at the therapists' office, to work on, take apart, as we talked. I took clean socks with me to church, on two airplanes, even into a restaurant. And always, always,  had socks in the car. Now I'm back to just shredding my cuticles again.


It is not a line one can draw, an arrow, always leading forward: this recovery business. My brain catches on a branch, so to speak, and acts up. The PTSD gets set off and back I go back down into the depths of despair. The TBI still sends up flares of missed connection.    

Better, I think, to conceive of this recovering process as a kind of spiral, and sometimes we spiral back into the junk we've been in before. The good news in this: the bad periods do seem to last not as long as they once did. Or come as often. And I have skills now to help me cope.

Breathing. Deep breathing. Bilateral sound stimulation: using headphones to alternate the sound, say, of waves or a stream, from left side to right. I listen to Chopin a lot. And the patterns of Bach's Goldberg Variations are very soothing to me.

This is what it like to have PTSD and a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Our returning veterans are all suffering as much and more than me. I pray we learn from stories like mine to be sensitive and gentle with their, also, invisible wounds.


At the start, as I said, I mostly stayed in the fetal position, and cried. Or felt numb. Completely numb. And detached. Disconnected from everything around me. Dissociated, I learned it was. My brain's way of protecting me from the feelings of profound danger and distress.

Who would imagine: it was hard to learn to stand up straight and not hunch into myself, for fear. Learning to not be afraid. I crossed the street one evening, holding onto my husband's hand for security, when a big truck honked its horn (not at us, but that didn't matter to me). It triggered an attack that kept me in bed for the weekend. I curled back up into the fetal position and stayed there a long time.

And I wondered. What would my future be? Would I ever be independent? Drive myself to doctor appointments? Much less anywhere else.

My father died in the first year after the attack and injury. I felt nothing. I was still numb.

The recovering was very slow, frustrating. But I noticed that, hmmm, something was happening. Something would be a little easier, I'd catch myself humming. I'd initiate a chat with the server in a restaurant. Me!

And then eventually came this challenge, learning again to drive. I could not make left-hand turns for several years, for fear of turning in front of traffic, because I couldn't remember after I'd looked right, and then left, if there was a car coming from the right. So I'd have to look again. And again. And again. It was ridiculous.

As I became more conscious of the world around me, the world I lived in, and my relationship to it, I felt only one thing. A failure.

Failing at everything that mattered to me most,  especially, I confess, at being a mom: being there, being present, attentive and giving to my two children. Having to depend way too much on my husband, asking too much of him.

Not only can I not multi-task, I frequently can't even task! It drives me crazy when people try to make me feel better by blaming my mis-functions on "we're all aging, you know. I forget things too."  This is different. Aging or not, this is something else again. I can't do processes that require me to move along from step one to step two, and so on. I get all bolloxed up. I just do. And reading directions: Forget about that!  Not even a chance!

The other thing about all this that really sucked was how angry I got. Angry at the man who came after me,  angry at the people who set him up to hurt me, angry at all of the events and the people involved in them, that led up to the attack. Angry at people I had trusted who dropped me down a chute, on my head -- so to speak. Betrayal, on a massive scale. Cover-up. Deceit like you wouldn't believe, Especially coming from whom it was coming from. Petty, rude, mean behavior. Big, big mean behavior. There was an awful lot of truly diabolical behavior to be very very angry about. And I was.

I fantasized the most bizarre and ruinous pranks. A truck load of manure dumped in a driveway. Posting "for hire" signs for maid service at the market, with 'her' phone number. Calling the "We Buy Ugly Houses" and leaving 'his' phone number. And my favorite: an ad in the newspaper for the Humane Society Garage Sale at 'her' house, encouraging everyone to drop off items to donate for sale. I had visions of an old boat left in 'her' driveway and rows of ugly porcelain statues on a broken down bookshelf. But I did none of those things, or any thing.

It was important to me to keep my integrity, to not collapse into that anger, not sink to their level. To look myself in the mirror every morning and know I was doing my best, to know I was being a person who had kept at least her honor.

Being angry at God was a serious problem. Faith had always been an essential part of my life. I got through a challenging childhood by internalizing the sense of God's unconditional grace and mercy, of comfort and strength in times of trial. And I had always remembered Jesus' promise, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly." (John 10;10)  That abundance was not about material stuff or even success, but having an internal sense of joy, peace, purpose, knowing it is all about grace, life.

That abundant life was stolen from me, along with everything else. Precious, unreplaceable times with my kids were stolen. Daily life moments were stolen. Times were stolen that we'll never get back. My delightful relationship with my husband was stolen. I quit going out with him to dinner, to concerts, to fun events. It had all become a chore to get through, my life. My work life was stolen. My love of life, gone.

 I never expected God to protect me even from assholes like I encountered, but still, I felt profoundly let down. How could God let this happen to me, especially when I was doing what God had called me to do? I was haunted by nightmares, by fear my attacker would return.  I was haunted by my failure to have confidence in God's love. This all went on for a very long, long time. A very, very long time.


My life today is a 180% turn around from those perfect old days of airports, public speaking engagements, complex professional relationships, and energetic self-confidence.

Do I always get out of bed?  Dressed?  Can I always count on being able to drive?   No.

I don't have a Frequent Flyers card. I don't run off a few times a month to speak in front of large crowds (though I'm beginning to think I could, now, about this topic, so invite me!), and I don't navigate a two hour commute on three freeways to a lovely modern office with big picture windows overlooking the city. Nobody calls me for advice. I gave up that entire career: (or it gave up on me!)  technical writing, consulting, teaching, speaking, telling people what to do.

I don't own a pair of stockings. I wear make-up only rarely. Do I even have a dress to wear to the wedding tomorrow evening? And shoes?

I gave up being trying to be perfect because it was hard enough to just try my best every day to be.

I try. I try harder. I do healthy, healing things. I see a therapist, and a psychiatrist, and a spiritual director, and two medical doctors -- one for the Parkinson's Disease that may or may not have developed because of my brain trauma. I take a whole lot of pills. Some folks don't want to. My motto is, okay, I gotta be honest:  "better living through chemistry."  I have an unofficial therapy dog. I eat chocolate. In moderation.

I am humbled that I was able to work through the worst of my illness without ever turning to alcohol or drugs (except the ones as prescribed by my doctors, and I never abused them). I did consider suicide on several occasions, which I'm not proud of. We had to hide the knives. And my husband still has sole possession of all my medicines. And I don't know where they are. I am humiliated by this but I owe you the truth. This is what it is.

I gave up some of my hobbies and found new, more simple ones. I never really liked gardening so that's a goner. I gave up being a perfectionist about the house. We keep it neat enough, and clean, enough.

Dusting the house is optional, the option being if company with the rank of aunt is coming. One can bear only so much embarrassment. The silver tea service is in desperate need of polish. I don't clean the baseboards behind the tables in the dining room unless two aunts are visiting. And there is a collection of sweaters on the end of the sofa in the living room that will keep me through the Fall.

The downstairs bathroom is still what I refer to as "an art project." I wince when guests come; it is a redecorating work in progress. I have given up on making my bed every day because the odds are good that, at some point, I'll be back in it, at least for a nap. And besides, the dog loves to burrow into the covers like a crazy goofball.

I have had to give up worrying about getting it all right, whatever "it" -- even this blog post -- is. Much less could I handle the press of outside, professional responsibilities, regular preparation, an actual job with regular expectations, accountability. I do some volunteer work but it's understood that I'm as reliable as the weather forecasts in mountain valleys.

I love my family and give them the first fruits of my energy, my intelligence, my dry wit. And after that, well, who knows

It  -- living -- is still hard. It will never be what it was. But, the best thing is: I started trusting again. First, myself. I began to trust myself. To take care of myself. Trust my instincts. They were working when everything went to hell; but I wasn't listening. I pay attention now. I am learning to trust some other people. Not all of them, and sometimes when I'm not paying attention, I still get burned. But I'm learning to live with that too and move on.

Many survivors / recovering folks with PTSD and TBI's find this a difficult problem, and a sad one. 

It was devastating to discover that some friends didn't want a friend who was 'disabled,' imperfect, even needy at times. I tried out some new friendships, and they didn't go so well. People seem to only want friends who have fully functional brains. I experimented with trusting new folks and that didn't always go very well either. I am also too sensitive, too hyper-vigilant,

Then again, I have ventured out again just recently, with old and some new friends and they are wonderfully fun and stimulating and they accept me as I am. I am filled with gratitude to them.

My good old friends have been unfailing in their grace, their kindness, their hospitality, and their concern. They have allowed me to be me, however I happen to be at the time. It is a legion of faithfulness that gives me hope for the human race.

I found a rather odd new vocation. People need friends. I can do that. Just be a friend.

And about my family -- well, they are darn near perfect themselves. They accept and love and care for me and accept my love and care for them. We're good!  They are fantastic!


I still cry a lot. When I began going out again, somebody in the family always made sure to have tissues along for the inevitable. Over, usually, nothing. Lately, however, I have noticed that I cry more often about things that are moving, deeply true, that catch me at a foundational place in my soul.


I am finding passion again. I came out of the womb with a passion for justice. That is coming back and I feel like doing something about it. And thanks to some healing, I am doing little things. I call it "throwing darts at a board and hoping some stick."

Or I describe myself as a butterfly, per the "Butterfly Effect," flying north, hoping to flap my wings a little and stir things up, that stirs other things up, that creates breezes, and currents, and waves of movement and eventually something good might happen.

I truly do want to be like that butterfly in the story I don't quite remember (so Google, "The Butterfly Effect"), the butterfly who flutters her wings a little and disturbs the air patterns and other air patterns are affected (or is it effected?) and the wind picks up a little and the currents move and circulate and, well, eventually, something interesting and maybe even significant happens.

That is part of what being a friend involves.

Most importantly,perhaps, through these years of healing, I came to see that what happened to me was not my fault --- it is so common for victims of attacks to blame themselves. I gave that up. My logical brain told me that truth the whole time but it takes time to let it into your spirit. I know that there are some deeply wounded people out there. And they are capable of doing tremendous damage, of savagely wounding others, including me. Their behavior is sometimes even deserving of the term, "evil."

It happens. And it isn't God's fault either. I trust Her again too. It was always in me, to trust God. I just had to get out of my own way.


We have celebrated a few Easters over the past several years. Life trumps death. I wasn't sure about that for a while, not for a good long time. But I've been there, to that place, where death is dust and life is abundant again. I know the One who was where death reigns and got up and left. And I saw that happen in others, deeply wounded souls, and finally, I sensed it was happening within me.

And light gets in. through the cracks.

Light gets in. Makes an impact.

It has become possible for me to care again about the wide wide world, to get all energized about the concerns for justice and peace, for reconciliation and dignity  that made me feel passion and determination and that stirred me long ago, and had stirred me for all of my adult life. Until.

I can tell you the date. Of course. Everyone with a TBI can tell you the date.

It is now possible for me to move around some. To engage. To be almost reliable some of the time. But. Then again.

I still stay home, a lot. I am still cracked, still broken. There are streets and entire sections of my town I am afraid to go near. There are days when I am too distracted to drive a car. I fog over. I still dissociate (just sort of 'go away.')  I have irrational fears, nightmares. I don't "do" numbers. I have anxiety attacks. My brain still doesn't 'get' all of the complex ideas and notions I relied on for insight, understanding, and basic function. I get exhausted easily. I can only do so much. It is impossible, true statement, for me to organize anything. That part of my brain is still fried.

So it's safe here. I like this space, this room.The sun comes in early, and now again I let it in.

A Facebook post from the local news station asked this morning, "What was your commute like today?"

My 'commute' involves walking downstairs from my bedroom to the kitchen, getting breakfast, then walking back up the stairs to my bedroom where I sit up in bed and write, using the computer.

And true confession: sometimes breakfast and coffee come upstairs, here, to me.

On really good days I drive two miles on city streets and write at a local cafe. The baristas there are the closest I'll probably ever come to having colleagues again; I'm the medium cappuccino in a mug 'for here,' with lots of foam. They know me there, though not by name. It is a small world I inhabit.

Except for the internet. It takes me everywhere.

Even to you.

And there you have it.

That's what I do. Which is to say, on a good day, I can sit up and reflect, read, meditate, and, if it is a really good day, write something.

There are no more fancy lunches with cloth napkins, wine, and clients, no conference calls, no board meetings, and retreats,  and -- who wouldn't want to give this up anyway! -- there are no more meetings to plan meetings to plan other meetings.

I walk up and down the stairs, and maybe, around the block with the dog. Somedays I go for a walk along the canal, just because I can. And I try to go to the gym and ride the recumbent bike (the only one I can ride and not fall off). I'm proud to say they know me there, at the gym, too.

My husband has to beg me to go out, even to fun things. Like a concert tonight. I'd really rather just stay home. I'm safe here. Because I was attacked, out of the clear blue, I am afraid. And even though my therapist is VERY good and I have skills to help me cope with anxiety and panic and outright fear, even so, I am afraid.

 "Do we have to go?"  Of course we do. It's healthy, it's good. And sometimes I even have fun. There are some really good people in the world and I am learning to really enjoy them. And my old friends. I love and enjoy them a lot.

I can do one other thing, still. I can write. I function well enough on my good days, for part of the day, to write stories, reflections, observations, opinions. I write words that share the light that's got in:  some wisdom, encouragement, inspiration. Empathy. Compassion. Challenge, too. And it seems to help sometimes. People like it. It's useful. It has an impact.

I hope. Even a little one.

That's what I hope to do, to be, just a butterfly from the Equator, making a bit of a wave that makes a bigger wave and creates a disturbance in the air currents. And something changes. For the better, is my goal!

So, that's me. For now. For quite awhile now. And it's enough.

*     *     *     *     *     



And then there is this! A new book! I'm happy to be part of it. I believe it will be helpful to many people, even you.

 "Recovering from Traumatic Brain Injuries:  101 Stories of Hope, Healing, and Hardwork"      

It was published on June 24, 2014, from Simon & Schuster, for the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise,  chickensoup.com   400 pages.  I think it costs about $15. Please buy it from your local independent bookstore.

Mine is one of the stories, "I Work."  Don't take that quite literally. I mean simply, I can function at a basic level. Like if you turn on a radio, it will make a sound. How good that sound is, well, that would be another level. I'm not there.

I deeply believe in the mission of this book: to be helpful in both practical and inspirational ways to anyone --- and my heart is especially with Veterans and 'Wounded Warriors' ---  who has suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, or TBI.

It is also especially useful, I believe, for the family members and caregivers and friends of TBI and PTSD survivors. Those folks who look at us and live with us and wonder, "what the hell is going on?" "Why is she doing that?"  "Is that normal? It doesn't seem normal?"   (No, it probably isn't normal, except it IS very normal for someone who has had a traumatic brain injury. It is normal for us to look in the mirror and wonder, 'who is that?')

While every one of us who suffers a TBI suffers it and experiences it in our own unique way, with some extremely devastating, others not so much, but all with our own variations of symptoms and quirks, I found reading the book to be a catharsis. There are some things fairly common to us all. And in that way, I felt 'normal,' given that I'm not normal, if you know what I mean. I think my kids would read the book and go, "Oh, that guy is like mom." So I'm just a normal not normal, in the old way, person. That feels good.

Whether you have suffered a traumatic brain injury yourself, or are a caregiver for someone who has, you will find help and encouragement in this new book.

It is not as much about war and veterans as I expected. And, that, I realized, is for a reason. The complexity of those wounds are unique and, I believe, require their own book. And their own communities of survivors who are active in online chat rooms. That's as it needs to be.

However, veterans and their families will see themselves in this book too. So I'm still giving out free copies to the family members of my friends who are Vets.

AND, this is way cool: the Foreward is a very moving story by Lee Woodruff, the wife of Bob Woodruff, the news anchor who was almost killed by an IED in the early days of the Iraq war. His TBI was terrible. She writes about it with great skill and empathy for others who have been in war and experienced similar devastation, and for their families. I highly recommend the Foreward!

PLUS, proceeds from the sales of this book go to the bobwoodrufffoundation.org, a wonderful organization that has already given over twenty million dollars in care for wounded veterans, to make sure they have care for as long as they need it. I'm totally in favor of supporting that!  Buy a book!

If your friendly local retail bookstore doesn't have a copy, you can get them to order one for you and, if you pick it up, you won't have to pay for shipping. And you will have kept someone, maybe a veteran or their spouse, or a recovering survivor of a TBI, in a job in your local economy. Something to think about.

You can even call and order a copy from my very friendly and helpful local bookstore, The Tattered Cover, at
303-470-7050      They can deliver and everything! Perfect! You might have to pay for shipping but it won't cost more than, well, you know. (The book will cost a few dollars more but it's all worth it.)


You will find courage, tenacity, tenderness, deep and abiding love and patience, and great bravery in these stories. I can't wait to read them all!

One of my personal goals is to get this book into the hands of as many veterans who have TBI's as possible.  To that end, I am connecting with local organizations, clinics, and rehab centers. I am able to afford to give some copies of the book away. If you would like to help out in that effort, too, leave a message and let me know.

If you live in the Denver or Front Range area of Colorado, please plan to join us on August 17 for an author event/book-signing at 2:00, at The Tattered Cover bookstore in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. It is easily accessible from C-470, exit at either Lucent or Broadway.

I'll post more about that in an upcoming blog. There will be three of us who contributed our stories to the book at that event and we'd love to meet you.

This blog is going to continue, as "Anneli's" blog and it will cover topics related to TBI and PTSD and similar issues.  I also have been diagnosed recently with Parkinson's Disease, so expect to hear about that.

It will also range into the wild blue yonder. But mostly, I want to write about life, about light, about letting it in, living it fully, freely, with hope and energy and power.  Don't be surprised, either, if we go on a few international 'trips.'  It will be me, my style, my quirks.

So, you can find me here, at:

http://www.annelinorrland.blogspot.com       This blog title is  Light Gets In

The most direct way to reach me is at this email:   epfam@aol.com

There is a Google Plus page for Anneli Norrland.   These pages both will link to Google Plus circles and vast amounts of information about TBI, PTSD and related topics. Please join my circles if you use Google Plus, and invite me to join yours.

This is the Google Plus URL:


https://+.google.com/118178100852550516875/post    (Anneli Norrland)

                {you can also get to the Anneli Norrland Google Plus page easily by clicking
                   the hyperlink on the Anneli Norrland blog, on her name, above the sidebar, next to
                   the red G+ logo; that's a lot easier!}


*       *        *         *        *

It's a good thing: life. I have had three TBI's -- the first at age three in a car accident -- so I feel like I'm super lucky to be around to enjoy this world, it's abundance and beauty, and to live in a spirit of generosity and grace. It's all about grace!

I look forward to sharing this journey with you! Be in touch!

 __Anneli