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Surrender

To be a caregiver at home for someone who is severely injured is to surrender. You surrender your time, put your ambitions on hold, and surrender many of the simple pleasures. You also surrender your peace of mind, your good night’s sleep, and routine. But there are ways to make life a little easier and more enjoyable...

Making Tough Decisions Easier

My son’s brain injury has taught me over and over again that I often have little control over life’s circumstances. But that does not mean I throw caution to the wind. Here are a few things we've learned regarding legalities and Taylor's ongoing care and future.

Open up! Share! It’s Time!

David Figurski & Donna O’Donnell Figurski

The path of brain injury is a lonely one, not only for the survivor but also for the caregiver. Often family and friends, who gratefully were available during the initial event, return to their lives. It’s expected. return to their lives. It’s expected. But, their absence and support often leave the survivor and the caregiver with feelings of loneliness and abandonment.

Living Between Two Brain Injuries

In 2010, I found myself in the sandwich generation between two people I adored, my 70-year-old father and my 12-year-old daughter, both of whom suffered serious insults to the brain.

Spin Cycle

If I am busy with every little thing, then I don’t have time to be sad, angry, feel hopeless or miss our lives and the son I knew before. I can diminish the magnitude of Taylor’s injury. It just won’t hurt as much, until it hurts like hell and can’t be ignored. So here is what I learned in my own version of spin class.

Keep It Real

What do readers in the brain injury world want? I can only guess that like me; they want it all: practical solutions, resources & references, a place to vent, a place to grieve, a place to interact with people who "get it."

Should You Disconnect For a Happier Holiday?

Everything about the holidays screams HAPPY. And when you are feeling many things, but happy isn’t one of them, you can be drawn into despair.

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.

Silver Linings

During Steven’s many years of rehabilitation, when tanks ran empty, when exhaustion hit so hard that not even a double shot of espresso coupled with dark chocolate could revive me, silver linings showed up in the form of everyday people...

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."

Guilty as Charged

Here comes another caregiver confession: sometimes I feel guilty. No matter how hard my day has been, no matter how much my body hurts, or how overwhelmed my head feels, I know it will never compare to the challenges my husband faces in navigating this complicated world as a TBI survivor.

The Impact of the Flat Affect on Families After Brain Injury

The Impact of The Flat Effect on Families after TBI

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?

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?

Abby Maslin on Teaching Her Injured Husband Who He Was

When her husband was first home from the hospital, Abby Maslin realized she would have to teach him who he was before he was hurt -- from someone who liked to shower daily to reading the paper on Sunday mornings.

Waves of Grief

I cannot remember the first time I recognized grief for what it was following our son’s traumatic brain injury, but it has come to feel like a familiar acquaintance. These are some coping strategies that have helped me get through to the other side of my own grief.

You’re a Survivor Too

If I could make one sweeping statement about the many caregivers I’ve met, it would be this: we are too hard on ourselves.

Firsts

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.

The Lingering Effects of Brain Injury

I can’t believe that I’m coming up on seven years out. As time continues to pass, my perspectives change, and my insight deepens. Sometimes I forget that those close to me still hurt. In the reflection of their inner pain, I see my injury for what it really is.

Climbing Back: A Family’s Journey Through Brain Injury

Elise Rosenhaupt discovers that her life before her son Martin’s devastating traumatic brain injury has prepared her for helping him through his rehabilitation and recovery.

Drawing the Line

When to stay? When to go? When to get professional help? These are some of the hardest questions we will face in our post-TBI lives. These are gut-wrenching decisions to make. I know that not only from my own experience, but from the network of caregivers I communicate with everyday.

Find the Good and Praise it!

Like those of us who have been at this business of life after brain injury for a long time, I am aware of the stages that we go through. I know that I am experiencing "recurring grief." During these times it can be very hard to “find the good and praise it..."

BrainLine, WETA Public Television
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