Rolling with It

Janna Hockenjos blogs about growing up with her father's TBI

My name is Janna Hockenjos, and my father has a traumatic brain injury. Growing up with a parent who has a brain injury is not divorce or death or abuse. It’s no one’s fault and when you try to tack blame on a place or a person, it doesn’t work. Family dynamics flip, roles change, relationships dissolve — the confusion is paralyzing. At some point you realize you have a choice: roll with it and grow up into someone you didn’t know you’d be or isolate yourself and get the heck outta Dodge as soon as you can.

I chose to roll.

Now, I’m fresh into my thirties. I’ve suffered and survived my strange loss of innocence. I’ve discovered how to find acceptance and love. I’ve learned there are no guarantees and there is always change. I’m still here, and I invite you to roll with me. Learn more about Janna >

The Latest from Janna

What Do You Need?

What do you need? You, meaning you reading this blog. Because I promise that there is a way that a yoga practice can give you part of what you need—if not all of it. And I rarely make promises. Ask me. Test me. Try me.

Where Yoga Meets Brain Injury: A Practice to Calm Anxiety

An accident happens. A brain injury rocks your world, and not in a good way. Fear rises like a tide, and soon enough, a tidal wave of anxiety. Janna offers a simple yoga practice to calm the "what ifs."

Moving Past Anger

Without yoga, I would have let go of hope or a future. Without yoga, I would have stayed sad and angry forever. Of all the tools in your box of living with brain injury, I want yoga to be one of them. I want to ask what it is you need?

Self-Care

Make time for yourself, so you can make time for other people and other things. Put yourself last, and you will begin to fail miserably at the roles and responsibilities you aim to fulfill.

The Luckiest Unlucky Soul

Are we lucky or unlucky?

Invincible

I’m glad I can still remember when my dad was invincible. It’s all I kept thinking, over and over again. Is this as terrible as it sounds? Should I cry? What do we do? How did we get here?

The Chopper

Two decades ago cars sat at this same intersection, waiting at this same light, watching helicopters land on that same rooftop. One Tuesday in July my dad was the person in the chopper...

Possibility & Positivity

I thought if the class wasn’t going well, I could just lie on my yoga mat in the middle of the studio and, at least, be around people for an hour. Knowing how accepting yoga is, I unrolled my yoga mat for a try.

Perfect Sense

It was the first year of my dad’s brain injury. He was nasty. I was nasty. I don’t regret much, but I certainly regret telling my father that I hate him and that he can’t come to my wedding.

The Five Yamas

I’ll be the first to say that these suggestions, as we shall call them, are not always easy, but all you have to do is practice.

I have found me a path

Right before my weekly TBI yoga class, a man was telling me how he wanted to do yoga, to give it a try, but for such-and-such reasons he was afraid he couldn’t do it...

Three Ways Yoga Will Help You Feel Good

I've spent chunks of my life living in the past. Being really sad and angry about my dad's brain injury and all the changes it brought to my family and our lives, as we knew them. My mind was stuck in the way it was. Yoga brings you to the present.

Yoga as a Catalyst after Brain Injury

The more we try to look backward and wish for what was, the harder it becomes to move forward and away from the incident or accident that caused all the grief in the first place. Yoga is not a cure, but it’s a catalyst.

People in My Boat

I know there will always be days when I cry my face off because of what happened to my dad, but I have learned that the best remedy for the unfairness is meeting the daughters and sons and wives and brothers and friends of others who have been where I have been.

When My Dad Gets Bored, He Gets in Trouble

March is brain injury awareness month. It’s the dead of winter in these parts and about the time of year when my dad starts to get bored. And when my dad gets bored, he gets in trouble. I feel all the heat and sorrow of this brain injury pour over me yet again.