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It’s time for a broader, braver dialogue around gender and caregiving. It’s time to start talking about the transformation in identity that occurs when one spouse adopts the role of the other. It’s time to recognize that caregiving is a role that requires the revision of gender norms and the acceptance of power transfers.
In August, we were presented with both high and low points. Our son, Taylor, was able to attempt to return back to work two days a week. Within fifteen days of returning to work, Taylor lost his brain injury service waiver. We had to hope nothing happened. And then…it did.
After the accident, we knew nothing would be the same, but we were not prepared for how strongly our emotions would swing during holidays and changes of seasons.
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.
The losses due to a brain injury are “moving targets” which continue to change over a long period of time: thus the losses are “mobile.” The injured individual and their family can't fully grieve lost abilities because there is no way to know which abilities are lost forever and which will eventually return.
Dr. Emilie Godwin talks about the difference it can make when a family realizes the changes they are going through after a brain injury are not unusual.
Dr. Jeffrey Kreutzer describes a tool his team uses to help families identify and talk about their feelings after a brain injury called The Brain Injury Family Intervention Feelings Checklist.
When it comes to brain injury, it's difficult to make predictions about a person's recovery. This uncertainty, unfortunately, creates a lot of anxiety for families.
Memory problems can be a source of distress not only for people with brain injuries but also for the people they live with. The problem is that many people don't understand memory problems.
When a service member is deployed the spouse is everything: head chef, accountant, mechanic, troubleshooter, problem solver, mother, father, good cop, and bad cop. Their job is moving from a dual parent role to a single parent role and back again, constantly. The challenge is that this takes some getting used to for both the spouse and the service member.
Brain injury has changed you. It has broken you, rebuilt you, strengthened you, and humbled you. Sometimes it does all of this in the span of one day. I don’t know that I have the words to make this journey easier for you, but I can offer this...
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.
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...
How do you love the man who can’t express emotions the way he did when you first fell in love with him? How long do you continue to gaze into eyes that don’t see your heart? How many times do you say, “I love you” to someone who doesn’t respond?
First word, first step…you remember! Our plan included helping our sons through their “normal” firsts: high school, college, career, marriage, and children. Nowhere on our “normal” firsts list was finding ourselves sitting by our son’s hospital bed praying that he would live.