Reclaiming My Power: It is Time to Heal

This is the story I have wanted to share with you for about six months now, but I sat on it because I was scared. Let me start at the beginning…

Last August, I was talking to my dear friend, Cheri, about Sarah Polley’s book, ‘Run Into Danger.’ Like me and Cheri, Sarah Polley had also suffered a brain injury and featured her healing journey in the last section of her book.

Sarah’s symptoms had been a lot like ours - extreme visual light sensitivity that led us to wear darkened sunglasses a lot of the time, short-term memory issues, and the most debilitating symptom was the excruciating headaches caused by stimulation.

Stimulation could be in almost any situation where there are people talking and moving. It could also be when we were required to multitask - this could be even at the most fundamental level of walking while also talking to someone beside me while trying to filter out the moving cars passing us by on the street. Again, headaches, and I was back to bed in the darkened bedroom.

In 2012, I suffered a brain injury when I fainted and hit my head on the concrete floor while getting a standup x-ray at a medical centre to determine what was causing my neck/back pain. I spent the better part of the first 5 years since that accident in a darkened bedroom with improvements coming so slowly that I had to measure them year over year. It was the slowest thing I have ever experienced. For someone very Type A, it was excruciating, but it was also a life lesson. One of many that have revealed themselves to me throughout my life over the past dozen years.

After the 2-year post-injury mark, I had experts at the brain injury rehab programs I was enrolled in at hospitals and 11 neurologists tell me I would never heal beyond this point. This two-year mark is where they see the healing stop, and it now becomes about learning to live your new life because the old one is gone. Whatever physical symptoms I was experiencing were there to stay.

At the time, I said inside, “no way!” I didn’t know where my healing was going to go but I wouldn’t spend 90 percent of my day in a darkened bedroom eating all of my meals away from my family and seeing my kids 15 minutes a day. I was willing to accept I would never be the same, but I felt with everything in me that this wasn’t going to be my end destination.

When my amazing husband Jeff was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer in 2017 at the age of 44, I had to dig deep to push myself out of the bedroom despite what I had been told earlier in rehab to help me manage my symptoms. I had to be there to take Jeff to his appointments, be waiting for him during his 7-hour esophagectomy surgery that removed most of his stomach, esophagus, and 50 lymph nodes, and then be his in-home physical therapist and cheerleader for the massive recovery that was yet to come.

And then 6 months later, when we were told that the cancer had come back (or likely never left) and Jeff had months left to live, I had to go even deeper to help him through his palliative chemo, make big memories for our girls with him, and also research and talk to top doctors all around the world to search for that miracle cure that he was fighting so hard for. Jeff ended up living for one more year but died in my arms in 2019.

When I look back on that time, it makes me so sad, but yet we were together. I am so proud of Jeff and me, and our girls. We really were superheroes at that moment with everything we were going through and were so loving and open with each other. And, I still had the brain injury and a business to run.

Then the COVID pandemic came about on the heels of losing Jeff. I was homeschooling our 8 and 10-year-old daughters and trying to save my business that had taken a double hit. First I made being there for Jeff and our girls a top priority through his cancer journey so wasn’t able to be out pounding the pavement to drum up new business. Then when the COVID pandemic hit, a lot of companies got scared, and one of the first things many cut was their leadership development support around Executive Coaching. (I think many organizations are now starting to see that was a mistake as during a crisis is actually the time to double down on leaders and support them as they lead their people through a situation in which there was no playbook. But, I digress.) I was pretty much in a place of survival mode. My headaches continued every day from my brain injury and likely were compounded by all of the stress I was under.

I got caught in this place of waking up each morning, doing the best I could going through the motions, and then heading to bed at night exhausted yet never feeling fully rested upon waking the next day.

Then fast forward to my conversation with my friend in August about Sarah Polley’s book. I told her I had read it before, but I didn’t remember much about this section on brain injuries. I had read it during the COVID lockdown so everything felt like a blur.

But, I picked up my copy again after the conversation with Cheri. When I came upon this last section about concussions (I use the terms concussion, brain injury, traumatic brain injury, and acquired brain injury interchangeably as medically they all refer to the same condition), it was like I was reading it for the first time.

Sarah had symptoms just like mine. She had been told by doctors the same thing I had been in terms of how to manage symptoms (dark room, dark glasses, and trying to operate until just before you hit symptoms and then rest).

Then she went to see Dr.Michael “Micky Collins out of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program in Pittsburg and he got her to run into danger with her symptoms. Even though initially she got the crap kicked out of her in terms of symptoms, low and behold, she began to heal.

I knew my situation was a bit different than Sarah’s as I am the sole parent of our busy two daughters. Since Jeff died, my main life goal has been to raise our girls in a way where they would still have a full life and the same level of experiences that they would have if Jeff were still alive. This may be an overly ambitious goal and it has led to me making some hard choices about what I say no to so I can say yes to my girls. But, it is my choice.

And if I run into danger in everything, the cost of my burnout and what that could mean to both me and the girls is too high. So I had to create my own plan. My own rules. And hold myself accountable for doing things that scare the crap out of me while still balancing my energy.

I have been wired through years in rehab and from pain, to retreat away from situations that were loud and aggravated symptoms. I wanted to protect myself. I didn’t want to feel pain. So I avoided these situations at all costs and I knew that when I stepped into them, I would pay with days of headaches. And no doubt the stress of that made symptoms only worse.

Now, there are times that I choose to Run into Danger. I have gone to a few nights of live music at a local brewery.

Yes, I feel a kickback for a few days after. I plan my schedule accordingly with reduced childcare activities and then a day or two off work. So the price is high for running into danger, particularly as a sole parent who is also the financial provider in the family. But I carefully choose when and how to do these things, knowing that I have to say no to a lot of other things to preserve my energy. I am highly focused on my girls living their best lives as the goal, so anything that detracts from them is not worth it. But I also have to find a way to heal and live my best life for myself (and this will contribute to their best lives).

Sarah Polley has opened the door for me to see what could be possible. I had pretty much accepted that I would never heal fully again despite surpassing the experts’ opinions of how far my healing would go, but the little voice inside of me still was saying, just keep going.

Acceptance is wonderful, except when it isn’t. Over time, I had just accepted that full healing wasn’t possible for me and it was a miracle I was still getting any continued healing at all.

But now, it is time to kick that door down. To shatter that belief in my mind that full healing isn’t possible for me. Anything is possible for me. And, anything is possible for you. Whether it is a brain injury, a different health issue, or an innovative dream you have for a business or your career. I have learned through this process, that you set the limits a lot more than I ever thought possible before.

So, I am now on a journey to do what I have been told many times before was impossible, I am going to heal from this brain injury.

I am doing this for me. For my girls. For anyone out there who is at home suffering in silence, feeling like a recluse who will never get their life back again, and for all the people who love you.

Proclaiming this could feel like a lot of pressure. What if I fail? It is not only me I am failing but now since I have shared this so publicly and there is no guarantee, what if it doesn’t work?

Then I calm that voice of fear that I know so well and understand is just trying to protect me. There has been a lot of protection over the past 12 years. And it has been helpful, but now I am putting on my warrior’s mindset and saying, “You got this. Keep going. Be brave. Share your journey to help others. And don’t be afraid to help yourself.”

So, for the first time since my brain injury 12 years ago, I am saying I am going to heal 100 percent. And for all of those people who told me it wasn’t possible, just watch me!

To follow along on my journey, I invite you to connect in with me on Instagram, too!