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My relationship with clinical depression goes back almost three decades. For reasons that even those intimately familiar with brain injury would be at a loss to explain, my depression virtually disappeared after my injury.

Immediately following a brain injury, outsiders often reiterate to survivors how grateful they are for that person’s survival and how accepting they plan to b. But when put to the test in everyday life, we quickly discover it’s tough to respond with unwavering compassion.

As a caregiver who often feels lonely and overwhelmed, I’d like to offer some practical solutions that have been helpful to me.

Whether you choose to share your brain injury story publicly or document it privately for yourself, it can be surprisingly therapeutic to seize the narrative of your life. If I had kept my struggle inside, hidden from the world, I don’t know how I ever would have healed and moved on.

There seems to be no shortage of helpful tips and tricks about how to get through the holiday season as a brain injury survivor. But what about recovering after the holidays?

Four years into the world of brain injury, caregiving, educating, processing my own grief and the extensive list that goes with a situation like ours, I have learned a lot about love and it's often quiet, unseen force.

We often hear how differently survivors emerge from their experience, but one of the most unexpected outcomes in our post-TBI life is how vastly I have changed too. Why is it that caregivers, like survivors, also feel like new people?