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Can Animals Help Us Heal?

It’s hard to feel safe and trust happiness after your father is nearly killed and radically changed. After your mother nearly perishes from grief. But Bianca changed the air in the room.

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...

The Wonders of Neuroplasticity!

Little did I ever give a thought to the fact that during all those years my brain was quietly remapping in stealth mode. No smoke pouring from my ears, no smell of wood burning, all my healing was happening quietly under the hood.

Growing Older with TBI

Planning for life as an aging adult should be a natural part of life. Is it any different to plan for later life as the partner of someone with a TBI?

Revising the Expectations

In the three years since TC’s attack, I have learned a great deal, and chiefly, I have learned what any good writer knows to be true: in life, and in writing, it is essential to revise.

The Slow Process of Acceptance

A couple of years ago, I was not sure if I would be able to keep the gears of life turning. Time has shown that while the gears occasionally grind, they are still in motion. I am profoundly grateful for that.

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.

Defying Expectations after Traumatic Brain Injury

Recovery from a traumatic brain injury is not a spectator sport. By better understanding where my deficiencies were, I would be better able to work on them.

A Mission to Move: Thriving, Not Just Surviving, Following TBI

You need a mission. So says Sergeant Bill "Big Sarge" Hansen, a former Marine and a current mentor with the Wounded Warrior Project®. Today Sgt. Hansen has a clear mission: to provide mentorship and support to young veterans carrying the physical and emotional scars of war.

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One Piece at a Time

Caregiving is a strange, beautiful, complex thing, but it's even more complicated when you're in the position of providing care for your partner or spouse.

What is Recovery After TBI?

What does the word recovery mean after a TBI? Does it indicate the full return of your abilities, talents, and skills? Or is it much more? Could recovery mean a return to life—a life that feels whole and full of possibility again?

Losing the Army Way of Life to PTSD and TBI

The Pearce family misses Army life. They not only lost the stability a healthy father would provide but also an entire way of living — the extended family that the Army creates. After years of struggle, they've found...

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Fractured Family Tales

Family life after brain injury? It’s complicated. People walk out of your life without explanation, without just cause, leaving you to wonder what the heck happened.

How Transparent is Too Transparent?

I feel like I have mastered the face-to-face challenges I used to confront when asked about my health. But it’s my written work that still often causes me angst. Like a human-sized pendulum, I swing back and forth about how much I should share. How transparent is too transparent?

Life Goes On

Gretchen Rubin, once wrote, “The days are long, but the years are short.” She was writing about parenting and not traumatic brain injury, but as I reflect on this poignant quote, I realize that as a caregiver, even those seemingly endless days have passed with such speed that I can hardly account for the last three years of my life.

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.

Compensatory Strategies for TBI Caregivers

It’s well documented that stress affects our ability to concentrate, remember, and sleep, and I don’t think there are many stresses equal to the days and weeks immediately following a severe traumatic brain injury...

How Abraham Maslow Can Help Us Understand Life After TBI

It’s easy for us to think people could do better after they look better, to want to say, “Please try harder!” But when we see all the needs that must be fulfilled before a person moves from one level to the next, the picture becomes clearer.

Building a "Survivor Family" After Traumatic Brain Injury

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I now see that my family was not fractured. It was slowly being rebuilt as a new kind of family — a survivor family.

The Kid(s) are All Right

Sometimes I wonder if I’m underestimating Jack’s awareness of the situation. Perhaps it’s not so much that he doesn’t notice, as he doesn’t let it bother him.

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.

Living an Unfiltered Life

Today I live an unfiltered life as my brain injury has essentially wiped away my emotional and verbal filters. No longer does anyone say, “So David, can you tell me how you really feel? These days, I am learning, often the hard way, to say less. ne times.

Who to Trust?

Of all the things I was warned about following TC’s brain injury diagnosis, no one suggested the idea of mistrust or suspicion. I didn’t anticipate waking up one day, twelve exhausting and painstaking months into his recovery, to find myself on trial, accused of harboring ulterior motives and secret plans...

Does Acceptance Mean Defeat?

Life changes in a million small ways that others cannot see when a loved one is suddenly brain injured. Few understand why caregiving spouses are grieving. After all, you should be grateful that your loved one is still with you. Right? Of course…and yet….

The New Normal

We’ve arrived. It’s taken two and half years to get here, but I now cautiously declare that our family has reached that elusive, indeterminate state of being otherwise known as the “new normal.” What I didn’t expect, however, is that it would take so long for the new normal to finally take hold. Or, like I wrote last month, that it would be so fragile.