The New Year, Kale, Tin Cup and the Magic Bullet

Do you remember in the movie Tin Cup when Kevin Costner’s character is so frustrated with his golf swing that he enlists the help of all sorts of ridiculous devices to fix it?  I’m laughing at the scene when his therapist finds him in his trailer all tangled in gadgets meant to cure his wayward drive.

He’s no different from most of us.

And neither am I.

I’ve long battled my weight.  When I was an athlete and then when I worked eighty to a hundred hours a week, I was strong and active and I kept the weight at bay.   When I suffered my TBI and everything in my life came to a screeching halt, however, the weight piled on.  Sudden, complete and utter inactivity.   Loss of balance and the control of my legs.   Medications.   Comfort eating.   Not having to zip up skirts every day.   Laying on my couch waiting for my injury to heal and for my life to return….

The numbers soared.

Lord knows I’ve tried to get it off.  I’ve jumped on more bandwagons than I could ever count.   There was the no carb diet and the sauerkraut diet.   The Cabbage Soup and the Fit For Life.   There was the fruit and oatmeal and the no eating after 7pm.   There was the chicken and broccoli and the no sweets.

I’ve counted this and eliminated that.   Someone would call and I’d be putting drops of this under my tongue.   Another friend would email and I’d be ordering up this type of vitamin.    Lemon water  and digestive enzymes and self-hypnotizing…

There’s been researching body types and blood types and family history and food color.  Endless Internet searches and retold accounts of how the neighbor of a friend’s sister’s boyfriend lost sixty-two pounds eating only apples and rice….

There have been treadmills and Pilates.   Yoga and the elliptical.   Weight lifting.  Karate.   Dancing.  Zumba for beginners.

Currently it’s kale and coconut oil.   The battle wages on.  The search for the magic bullet continues.

It’s more fun than the truth.

The truth is that, when I have eaten sensibly, cut out the white sugars and starches, consumed some water, worked out regularly and gotten good sleep, I lose weight.

No magic bullets.  No gadgets.   No battery-operated belts which simulate sit-ups.   No plastic pants and no non-invasive body sculpting.  No lipo and no heat-activated laser fat melting.   No fat cell cream and no spells cast by the notoriously trusted fat ninja from a small band of thin warriors in the jungles of the Amazon.

Damn.  I loved their outfits.

Too many times we, as TBI survivors, want the magic bullet.   We want the infomercial that tells us in thirty minutes how we can have a new, better, happier life if we just grab our credit card and call this number in the next ten minutes.   Shipping and handling, free.

But wait!  Call now and receive TWO new brain-healthy lives for the price of one PLUS the never-before-available egg boiler that doubles as a hair straightener and tire inflator.

The facts don’t change just because we don’t like the facts.

The facts don’t change just because we choose to ignore them.

It is another New Year and thank God we are all still here with another kick at the can.  To start over again.  To crack open a sparkling fresh calendar and resolve to change our bodies, our health, our relationships, our financial situations.

And in the silence of our thoughts.  In the quiet of our hearts.  When we turn off the infomercials and power down the computer….

We know that the only way he or she will never hit us again or abuse us again is if we terminate the relationship and move out, once and for all.   We know that the only way we will get better at shooting freethrows is if we practice shooting freethrows.   We know that the only way we will get better grades is if we actually go to class and study more.   And the only way we are going to lose weight is if we eat less, eat better and move more.

Dammit.

For those of us hoping to live lives this New Year which are less consumed with brain injury, there is the simple truth that we must then begin to live lives which are less consumed with brain injury.  We must, every day, step over the ruins of a life that no longer exists and keep walking towards a new one.  Despite the problems thinking.  Despite the legs that don’t work right.  Despite the headaches.   Despite the messed up words.  Despite everything.

Not unlike any change.   Not unlike any new.

It is a one-day-at-a-time proposition.

Like the billions who, today, will wake up and try not to have a drink, light a smoke, go back to him/her, skip class, reach for that pill bottle…we must wake up each and every day and don the armor of the determined.   To battle the sneaking, stenching, daring, taunting doubts which nip at our heels and tell us we simply are not good enough, strong enough, worthy enough to enjoy success and happiness.

It is in the promise that, each morning, we will begin it believing that we are.

One of the biggest challenges for me in my weight loss battle is to not let one bad day last for three months.   To not have brownies for my birthday Sunday and then wake up in August twenty pounds heavier wondering what the fu&k happened to my New Year’s weight loss resolution.   LOL.

We have to remind ourselves enough and love ourselves enough to try again every day.

Let’s be kind to ourselves.  Let’s forgive ourselves the stumbles and bumbles and mumbles.   Let’s do something today to move toward our version of happiness.   And then let’s do it again tomorrow.

Successful recovery after brain injury has little to do with lingering symptoms.   It has a whole lot more to do with lingering broken hearts and forfeited dreams and the bitter nasties of feeling cheated of a life we had chosen.

Let’s choose a new one.

Let’s choose a great one.

The facts do not change until we change them.   Let’s change them for the better, beginning today.

I wish all of you the good health and happiness that you strive for this New Year.   The wonderfully warm waves of personal victory and success washing over you time and time again.  Whatever your struggle, your challenge, your mountain, I wish you strength in easing it, solving it, climbing it, beating it.

Let’s be happy.   Let’s find happy.   Let’s create it and protect it and prioritize it and relish it.

Happy New Year to all of you.   I’m cheering for you.

I Wish You Christmas

 

It’s been a long time now but I can recall participating in a Christmas show at church where I delivered the miraculous story of the birth of baby Jesus.  I wore patent leather shoes and lacy socks and a red velvet dress that itched at the collar.  I stood up in front of that tiny church with all the candles glowing and the twenty-foot-high Christmas tree up near the altar all decorated with ornaments made by our Sunday School classes.

 

The windows were frosted and we wrote our names in the condensation.  It smelled like candle wax and too much perfume.  We were late and had to sit in the folding chairs in the back.  My mom took a picture of the inside of her purse.  The man in front of me who smelled like liquor nodded off three verses into Oh Come, All Ye Faithful. And I had no idea what frankincense and mur were.  Does anyone know what mur is?

 

Now, my memory may be forty years older and brain injured and racing towards menopausal memory melt, but I sure don’t recall the story of Jesus’ birth having anything to do with people stomping over a dead body in Target to get a Black Friday deal on a flat screen TV.   I may have forgotten most of my lines but I know they didn’t mention pepper spraying fellow shoppers in order to gain a competitive edge.

 

Maybe we’ve lost Christmas.

 

I can go through my list of addresses to send Christmas greetings to and most have a change, a loss, a diagnosis, a twist of fate, a broken heart…

 

We keep losing what we grew up with and have always known.  They predict soon newspapers and writing checks will be a thing of the past.

 

We’re all so busy and so much has changed in our lives.  People die and traditions die, too.  Homesteads where our first Christmases were born are lost and left.  There are so many obligations that we have to reschedule Christmas, split it, fit it in somewhere.

 

Seems maybe we’ve strayed from Christmas.  So far that we’ve forgotten that miracles do happen.  So far that we no longer hope and dream.  So far from when we couldn’t wait for morning.  The sheer promise of good.  The anticipation of pure happiness.

 

So this year I wish you Christmas for Christmas.  I wish you that special something that has long meant Christmas to you.  That brings you back to a time when we didn’t know any better than believing in magic, in the miracle of one most glorious day.

 

Maybe it’s an ornament your mother’s mother made.  Maybe it’s a special cookie recipe you haven’t enjoyed in years.  A quiet evening by the fire in front of the Christmas tree lights.  The sounds and songs of carolers by moonlight.  The candlelit midnight service singing Silent Night.

 

However Christmas comes back, that’s what I wish for you.  When all the craziness we’ve created has run out of time, I wish you moments of peace.  Perfect strolls down Memory Lane.  Hope for a wonderful new year.

 

Maybe we can all simply wish well for each other.  That never goes out of style.  That never runs out of stock or is back-ordered.  To shake hands, to hug and to hold.  To really wish each other well.  Perhaps that is the greatest gift.  One not found on any store shelves.  No sales.  No deals.  It costs us only a sincere heart.  A moment’s grace. A warmth that is more powerful than grudge and greed, hatred and pettiness.

 

I wish you Christmas.  I wish you good health and true happiness on the path that you are on.  I wish you healing for every part of you.  To forgive and be forgiven.  I wish you moments of the season that fill your heart with joy, with music, with quiet tears of thanksgiving for all that we are blessed with.

 

Today and every day, I wish you Christmas.

Kara

 

 

Rudolph Rocks That Kick-Ass Blinking Nose

I don’t watch many Christmas specials.   I love the Grinch and Rudolph.   Am I the only one who cries when those little God-love-’em Whos in Whoville come out and sing even after all their presents have been stolen?   Or when Rudolph is at the head of the reindeer team blinking his sweet little nose off and says, “Ready, Santa!” and takes off into the night…

Shamelessly sentimental. 

I was thinking about Rudolph and how far that simple, sweet message reaches.   As brain injury survivors, a lot of us feel like Rudolph at one time or another.  Set aside.  Left out.  Without a place.   Like the forgotten souls on the Island of Misfit Toys. 

There’s no way around it.  Some of our trains have square wheels now.   We are spotted elephants and Charlies in the Box and fish that swim and cowboys that ride ostriches.

And a lot of us feel like Rudolph did when he and his buddy were horsing around and having fun and then his black fake nose popped off.    You catch their reactions.  Those first facial expressions.   That shocked look in the eyes.  That moment before they hide their reactions to us speaking or stumbling or any number of things that make us the ones who don’t get picked for reindeer games….

But the message that rings out louder than any ridicule, any laughing, any mocking…is the one that says:   Make it your strength.

Take that bad luck, that horrific moment, that twist of fate, that flippin’ blinking nose of yours and MAKE IT YOUR STRENGTH!!!

Recognize what it took to survive it.   Summon the courage and the determination that it took to mount a recovery.   Gather about you all that is good and right about you and the people you consider loved ones. 

And soar.

Santa went back to the Island of Misfit Toys and he gathered up ALL the toys because he knew they are all loveable.  WE are all loveable.  There is a place, a waiting and welcoming place, for every square-wheeled one of us.

And I will never believe any different for you.  For me.    For all of us.

The Whos in Whoville knew that it didn’t take fancy boxes and bows, blinking lights and ribboned wreaths to make Christmas.   What is worth and worthy and worthwhile….will never be found in what you lost.   But instead, in what you found.  In what you realize.  In what you recognize and determine important.  In what cannot come and go.  Cannot be stolen.  Cannot be taken.

It is an unshakeable strength.  An unwavering understanding that we deserve love and happiness and success.

Surely every one of us will have those moments when people shy from us and, worse, pity us.  When they are ashamed of us, embarrassed for us, maybe mock us.

But when that happens, you remember where Rudolph ended up.  Rudolph’s nose saved Christmas!!!   In that last scene Rudolph is leading the team, soaring.   Off into the night, leading the way.   Needed, necessary.   Not in spite of his nose.  BECAUSE of it. 

Don’t you ever forget that Rudolph rocks that kick-ass blinking nose of his.   Know it and own it.  Know it and embrace it.  Know it and positively soar.

Merry Christmas, my fellow misfit toys.   I love you guys.

What If We Were Thankful?

What are you doing for Thanksgiving?   Cooking at home?   Going to friends’ or relatives?   Are you going to watch the Lions play the Packers?  Go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade or watch it on TV?  Get ready for Black Friday shopping?  Pour through the newspaper and all the store advertisements?

Are you going to wear your stretchy pants?   Take that second helping of stuffing?  Save room for the pumpkin pie? 

Are you going to burn those biscuit bottoms again?   How ’bout those potatoes?   Lumpy?   Are you going to nail the turkey this time or is it going to be dry again?  Are you going with the canned cranberry gel or the real cranberries?

What are YOU doing this Thursday?  

Are you going to dread seeing your relatives?  Dread spending time with the parents?  Are you going to wish you were somewhere else or with someone else?   Maybe sit and slouch and pout in the corner and text all day?

Are you going to hate having to cook and clean up for fifteen unappreciative guests who come early and fall asleep on your couch late?  Are you going to pretend to get along with your spouse so that nobody knows you are divorcing?   Are you going to privately resent going to his side of the family or her side of the family because their stuffing is god-awful…

What are YOU doing this Thursday?  What are you choosing to do this Thanksgiving?

Are you going to hate?  Bitch?  Criticize?  Lament?  Dread?  Rage?  Lose your patience?  Fail to appreciate? 

What are YOU going to do this holiday?  How are YOU going to recognize this holiday of Thanksgiving?

I know what some people will be doing this Thanksgiving. 

This Thursday eleven people are going to die from asthma.   Fifteen hundred will die of cancer while another 3400 will be diagnosed.

This Thanksgiving more than five thousand people will suffer a head injury, more than fourteen hundred will suffer a sexual assault and twenty-one thousand sets of parents will lose a child.

 

On Thursday almost eight hundred people will find out they have Alzheimer’s and

30 people will be diagnosed with MS.    Forty-five  people will be murdered on Thanksgiving and more than three thousand will die in a car crash.

 

This Thursday more than 10 thousand people will lose their jobs.   Thirty-six thousand people in Detroit alone will be homeless. 

 

This Thanksgiving 850 million people will go to bed hungry.

 

What are you going to do this Thanksgiving?   What are WE going to do? 

 

What if we were thankful?  Genuinely, humbly, simply thankful…

The Sounds Of Silence

Most of you know I am a HUGE Michigan Wolverines’ fan.   I love college football and, for me, there is nothing like Saturday afternoons in Autumn.    Love, love, love them!

Although Michigan isn’t scheduled until 3:30 today, I was up and interested to tune in to the Penn State/Nebraska kickoff at noon.   Most of the world knows what has happened at Penn State in the last week.   When news of a scandal involving a former assistant coach allegedly engaging in sexual acts with young boys broke last Saturday, it took less than a week to topple the career of one of the most beloved and successful coaches in the game, as well as ending the careers of several high-ranking officials deemed culpable in the scandal’s cover up.  The fallout is far-reaching and it promises to continue for months and, more likely, years to come.

I watched last night as ten thousand people from the Penn State community held a candle light vigil for the young victims, now in their early twenties.  I watched today, prior to kickoff, when an entire stadium fell silent as both teams kneeled at midfield in silent prayer.

I wept.

The images were touching, absolutely.   But I couldn’t help thinking to myself….

Stop the silence. 

Stop moments of silence and vigils of silence.  Stop bowing your heads and stop closing your eyes.  

I wish they would have had a moment of screaming.  Of noise.  Of punching their fists in the air and stomping.

I wish the band would have played a hundred different songs at the same time.  I wish the fans would have jumped up and down in the bleachers until it registered on the Richter Scale.

Because silence is what got us to this place to begin with.

It was silence along too many disturbing links up the chain of command that failed to save, not only the child in the shower with the sixty year old man, but every boy molested by that man afterward.

In disturbing and criminal moments of silence all over the world, people choose to turn the other way, to not make waves, to not create awkwardness, to mind their own business, to keep peace in the family, to keep their jobs, to keep things simpler, to pretend it didn’t happen…

And the sounds of silence, of all that screaming silence, has been the graveyard for countless dreams, for future healthy relationships, for wonderful self-esteem and all the other facets of life stolen from young victims everywhere.

I was seven when I was first molested.   Seven.

Seven is for snow pants and construction paper turkeys for Thanksgiving.   Seven is for flag football and dance recitals and patent leather shoes.    For swim lessons and cursive writing and licking the mixer of cake batter.  Seven is for dressing up and dancing around and singing freely and watching cartoons.

I was seven and enduring the sickness of a man, my uncle,  probably forty years my senior.   His words.   His whispers.  His mouth.  His hands.   His body.

It went on for five years.   And, in that time, there were some before me and some after me who suffered as well.    And the sounds of silence saved none of us.  

There were people who knew and people who suspected and none stepped in, stepped up or stepped across that line where doing right means more than anything.  

None barged in and threw him off me.   None grabbed those huge hands from the teeny nipples of a seven year old and beat the shit out of him for me.   No one called the police.   No one did anything.

And I found out about the sounds of silence.    Silence only pierced by the sound of young tears wondering why…..

I am a healthy 46-year-old who has put in the time and done the painstaking work of sexual abuse recovery.    In therapy.  In my heart.  In my body.  In my mind.   In my soul.    I know healthy love and I enjoy healthy love.  I have self-esteem and confidence and pride.   I will look you in the eye and I will shake your hand.   I will stand up for me.   I am not ashamed of what I experienced, nor do I feel complicit in it.  

I am well.  

But I weep for the little girl who knew what a French Kiss was by the second grade.   I weep for the teenager who, when other girls were all giggling about their first kisses and first touches, knew my first kiss was not one to be celebrated.  Knew that it was dark and secretive and there was nothing innocent or sweet about it.

The last thing those young boys from the Penn State sexual abuse scandal need are more moments of silence.   They’ve endured enough silence to last a lifetime.

If anything good comes out of the wreckage that, one week ago, appeared to be one of the finest institutions in America, let it be the determination of the countless who may one day have the chance to really make some noise.  To stop bowing their heads in silence and, instead, to raise up and scream their bloody heads off in order to stop child sexual abuse.

Make the waves.  Suffer the awkwardness.  Stand up to the pressure.  Be strong in the face of what is simply right.    Be determined and resolute in the mission to save our kids.   To keep them precious and innocent for as long as THEY choose. 

Save the sounds of silence for the dead.   Leave the bowed heads and the closed eyes for those whose futures are already lost.  

Let’s do something while we’re living that actually saves the living.  Celebrates, protects and cherishes the living.    Let’s give them the futures they deserve.    Let’s preserve them the innocence they were gifted. 

Make some noise.    They’re counting on us.

Halloween and Such

Halloween is quickly approaching.  The day we celebrate putting on masks.  I find this kind of funny, quite honestly.  We put on masks every day.  Seems the day we take them off should be a better occasion to celebrate.

Traumatic brain injury is the most clever of masks.   It parades us out there as normal people.   Many of us look no different than we did before we were hurt.  We keep hearing, “You look great!”

But it hides a darker reality. 

Most of the masks you see on Halloween are just the opposite.  They ARE the darker reality.  Vampires and ghouls and witches concealing the innocent young faces of our excited youngsters wound up on pillow cases full of sugar.

But, make no mistake, most of us are hiding.   We are trying not to be seen, to be caught, to be recognized, to be revealed, to be uncovered. 

For the brain injured, we hide symptoms which Society frowns upon.   Which our employers and friends, neighbors and family members all whisper about.   We are a handful of not-so-pleasant things that people without injuries keep forgetting are caused by injury and not the fault of failed characters.

Endless comparisons of who we were and how we were and, in most instances, we now fail to pass muster.  Sometimes we feel like we should be on the Island of Misfit Toys.

But I took off my mask years ago.   I was exhausted by it.   I had lied and covered up for a long time early on.   Months, maybe a year even, after I was hurt.  

I didn’t want people to know I had lost track of what they were saying.  I didn’t want them to know I had just fallen in their bathroom.  I didn’t want them to know I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember their name.

I didn’t report when I’d get lost or when I’d become confused or frustrated or scared.   It was easier to wear the mask then.  Easier not to alarm them or embarrass them or disturb them or make them uncomfortable.  

But, like the mask I wore when I was six, it gets hot under there.  Sweaty.  You can’t see well.  The elastic gets caught in your hair.  The plastic cracks.

At some point you just can’t wait to take it off.

And so I did.

It was reported this past week that hundreds of millions of tons of garbage from Japan’s tsunami and earthquake last March are slowly floating towards our shores.   All the remnants of a disaster.  From refrigerators to flip flops and plastic bottles and anything else that can float. 

It all comes ashore eventually.  All the remnants of disaster.

When I was a kid, I would come home and dump out all my candy and separate it into piles.   I kept the good stuff.  Milk Duds and Fudgies and caramels…

 The broken Pixie Stix and all the colored powder went in another pile.   The awful Black Crows, Clark Bars, black Chuckles and things I didn’t like went into a pile for my parents.

I took off my mask back then and made piles out of all that I had.  I separated them into things I liked and wanted to keep and things I didn’t like and wanted to give away.

Maybe we were all smarter at six.

After brain injury, our lives…our debris….comes crashing into shore inevitably.    It’s out there all right.  Out there, sure enough.  

It’s coming.  The remnants of disaster.

At some point we have to deal with the debris.  To go through it and find anything left to save.  Anything worth salvaging. 

But then, like black Chuckles and Black Crows, we have to give away what we no longer want and can no longer use.    If you leave the broken Pixie Stix in there, everything will be covered in sticky powder. 

We gotta look at the remnants of our lives before we were hurt.   We have to realize what we don’t even miss, what we have already replaced, what, perhaps, we have grown out of.

Often we are surprised to find that we have already moved on in more ways than we feared we might have to.

Monday I’m going to go and celebrate Halloween with my nephew and niece who are now seven and almost five.   I can’t wait to see how delighted and excited they are by the holiday.

But I won’t wear a mask Monday.   Never again.   It’s hot and sticky and the elastic gets caught in my hair. 

I’ll be me.   With all my stumbles and mumbles and bumbles, I’ll just be me.  That’s going to have to be good enough and, thank God, I’ve realized it already is.

All Gussied Up: 9/11, Breast Cancer, Brain Injury And Other Truths

It’s after two in the morning.  I should be doing my announcing prep right now for the two soccer games I have to call tomorrow.   I should be washing my outfit to wear, as well.  Some would say I should be sleeping.  I know I shouldn’t be eating these last crumbs from the bottom of the potato chip bag.

But it’s 9-11 and, like so many, I have been returned to an event which, even ten years later, remains too big to hold all at once.   So many of the images are the same and yet, now that the shock has worn off, I think I feel them more.  

I cried a lot tonight.

A dear friend of mine is a breast cancer survivor who now works with Stage Four breast cancer fighters.  Too many are, sadly, not likely to live much longer and many are running out of fight to fight.

She shared with me an interesting perspective from some of those women.  A truth that I had never considered.  One that I have no perspective to imagine.  

She told me that they hate the pink ribbon.  Everything about it.  That it feels like the happy pink hopeful walks and ribbons and tee shirts and hats and posters and all that is pink ribbon stuff in this world is not meant for them.  That they stand aside from that, in a darker place where hope will not reach back for them.  In a walk where they cannot catch up to the place where people are talking cure.

That really struck me.

Tonight I was thinking about all the beautiful tributes to the thousands of lives lost on 9-11.  I am, admittedly, a sucker for crisp uniforms and white gloves and chills-bringing trumpets playing Taps.  I love seeing an entire crowd singing,  “God Bless America” with their hands over their hearts.   I love those field-size flags they showed at all the football fields and baseball stadiums.

It’s all really big and maybe better that way.  Easier to take.  Softer, maybe.   Softer, yes.   Smiling women in pink ribbons holding hands as they cross the finish line of the 3 Day Walk for Breast Cancer.   Angelic-voiced children singing patriotic songs at a breath-taking 9-11 National Memorial.

It takes the ugly out of it a little, I think.  It makes it more palatable.  Gives us something nice and soft and pretty that we can use as a symbol for a more hideous truth.  Put on a yellow “Live Strong” rubber wristband.  Wear a puzzle Autism pin.  Get a calendar and a hoodie when you donate to animal cruelty organizations.

Gussy up the truth.  It’s better than seeing a picture of a cat after someone has cooked him in the microwave.

And then I watched a special tonight on 9-11 and they showed this huge metal beam that had been curled around into a circle in such an unnatural way that I couldn’t lose myself in the pretty anymore. 

And I wept.

Real people were blown away by the same force capable of bending and twisting a huge, thick steel beam into a circle.    I thought of our skin.   The pretty skin of young women or the clean-shaven skin of young men-all these beautifully-young and bright and talented and valuable and wonderful people at work on a  gorgeous Tuesday morning in September.  And how our utterly mortal bodies could possibly stand up to such a force…

They didn’t stand a chance.

There was a chunk of debris, round and thick, tangled…Like a big disk in a way.  Kind of like a rock.   It was four FLOORS of the building smashed and compressed so completely and impossibly that they could only assume bodies were flattened in it and so they treat it as sacred…

It is hard to know the truth.

The documentary described the smoke that first responders, civilians and site workers breathed in for days and weeks and months after the Twin Towers collapsed.  Inside that dust was the remnants of millions of light bulbs.  Think about that.  Never occurred to me.  They were breathing in glass!  Mercury, asbestos, lead, metal, every noxious substance you can imagine and yes, human remains.  They were breathing in human remains.

It’s easier to watch the President lay a pretty wreath at a stone memorial.

I was thinking then about this blog and how I try, whenever I can, to poke fun at myself and to lighten up the dark pathway that is traumatic brain injury.  I gussy it up just like we do at every turn:  major league baseball players using pink bats for breast cancer or wearing light blue wrist bands for prostate cancer.

We all have our ribbons.  Even sinners wear nice clothes to church.

Tonight there was no escape from the truth.   I had to sit with the understanding that  those firemen went to one, two, three, four funerals A DAY for weeks until they had buried all of their friends. 

It’s hard to know the truth.

Ten years later and the people who worked at Ground Zero all those months are now starting to acquire cancers they are convinced are linked to the unspeakable things they breathed in while trying to save lives, recover bodies and clear wreckage.   Marriages have been lost, jobs have been lost, dreams have been lost and now, quite possibly, their futures too. 

So we gussy it up.

I know and have seen and heard stories of and from brain injury survivors and their loved ones that I cannot visit as often as, perhaps, they deserve.   Visuals that literally squeeze my heart and knock the stuffing from me.  Their truths are cruel sentences I can only be thankful I was not asked to serve.

Maybe tonight I weep for them too.

But I realized tonight, as I watched those people touch the bronzed names of their lost loved one at the 9-11 Memorial, that we have to gussy it up.  

It had to be bronze.  It had to be glorious.

The ribbons of breast cancer have to be bubble gum pink.  The help for starving, dying, rib-showing kids in Africa has to be fun concerts with sexy stars.  The brass buttons on the perfectly-pressed military uniforms have to be shiny and glistening as they salute our flag.

And I have to keep trying to bring a little humor here and there in a blog about an injury that isn’t very funny at all.

We have to gussy up the truth because we have to live with it.  We have to go on with it.   

We have to carry it into tomorrow.  And the day after that. 

It’s heavy as hell and we need a little help for the long run.  Maybe a little morbid humor.  Maybe a little reprieve.

We have to gather at brain injury conferences and 9-11 Memorials and Breast Cancer Walks so that we can be together.  So that we don’t have to hold the truth alone.

It’s not about hiding the truth.  On the contrary, it’s because we KNOW the truth.  It’s about holding it for as long as we have to hold it.  And holding it together.

I will continue to enjoy news coverage of women walking arm and arm in a sea of pink in order to honor their loved one who beat or succumbed to breast cancer because I prefer believing they will one day cure a disease that could have taken my friend, or any of my loved ones.  I will continue to write blog entries that poke fun at myself and try to bring a chuckle to people struggling every day with bodies no longer willing to accept commands because no one can push a stone uphill every day of their lives without resting a bit.    I will continue to sing our National Anthem with tears in my eyes and my hand over my heart because I choose to believe in a nation that is strong enough to overcome any threat against her.

It’s because of the truth, not instead of it.  It is because I am determined to carry it.  Because I am determined to carry it with you.   Because I am determined to LIVE with it.  To live.

That I won’t be broken, even when my heart is.   That I won’t run from fear, even when I’m scared.  That I won’t forget those lost, even when their memory hurts like hell. 

That I’ll go on with you.   That we’ll go forward for them.  Together.  We’ll continue to live.   As long as we get.  Knowing that easy was never promised.  Knowing that too many are not as fortunate. 

And knowing that the sun does not trick us into believing there is no darkness.   But that it still feels awfully good on our faces after a long, stormy night.

“Normal” People Do Yoga

When talking about successful recovery after TBI, one of my favorite things to say is:   if you don’t want to live a life that is totally consumed with brain injury, then you have to live a life that is not totally consumed with brain injury.

So, wanting to take my own advice, I try to focus on things in everyday life that are “normal.”  Stuff that everyone battles and conquers, enjoys and delights in, suffers and survives.  Car repairs, falling in love, fixing leaking pipes, getting ready for college football season, wishing corn- on- the- cob season would last longer, cleaning the garage, telling myself that cornbread really is a vegetable, etc. 

Today it was yoga.  Normal, wonderful, healing, helping yoga.  Yoga is my friend.

Now…Fifteen years ago I was younger, obviously.  I was more fit, more lean, more flexible, stronger. 

Today I feel like a Budha statue.

I knew yoga would help me to increase my flexibility.   I have to lose weight as well so I found online this fabulous ten minute workout called, “Weight Loss Yoga For Beginners.”

This!!!!! THIS, I tell myself, is my answer.  My normal.  My path back to being slim and fit and strong once more.   Everyone’s doing yoga, right?  It’s a typical, normal thing that healthy, normal people do.   No brain injury stuff to deal with.   I am tough, I tell myself.  I used to play quarterback in an all-boys football league.   How hard could this be?  It’s like poetry and ballet.  Pretty and happy like peeps at Easter.

Look out, size ten jeans, here I come!!!!!  Weight loss yoga for beginners…

My famous final words were, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, for starters, I don’t have a mat.  No big deal.  I’ll do it on the oriental rug.  Note to self:  buy kneepads for yoga. 

I’m a good fifteen feet from my computer monitor and can barely see what she’s doing but I’m feeling confident that I can simply make up what I can’t decipher.  How hard can this be?  It’s only ten minutes.

The woman has a low, easy, comforting voice.  She is lovely.  Like spring, she is.  The epitome of health and fitness.  Free, easy movements.  Flowing, glowing.  She is my hero, I decide.  This goddess of ideal health.  She is speaking and I find myself purring rather unexpectedly.  I may even have been giggling.

And then Holy Sh*t!! OMG!! WTF!!!  Did you see THAT!!!!!

She bent her body as if there were hinges, HINGES!!! at her waist.  I’m not lying.  Like a flippin’ piece of paper, she just folded straight down and I’m thinking WHOA!!!!   Nobody can fold down like that.   That is unflippinreal.

From across the room I yell, “Hey, Gumby woman!!!  You look like a sheet hanging out on the line.  No flippin’ way I’m folding down like that.”

She then moves onto other positions.  We do things on our knees that apparently shatter my kneecaps  into several large, jagged pieces.   I curse the lack of kneepads.

We allow energy to shoot out of our heels.  She has her face to the ceiling while mine is barely looking above the floor.  We put the pressure of tractors onto our shoulders, separating them cleanly at the socket.  Note to self:  look for brother’s high school football shoulder pads in garage.

I am now sweating profusely.  My arms are shaking.  I’m out of breath. 

Geez, how long is this workout….

I crane my head over my warrior pose arms, now “pushing the air down”  like she directs and realize….OK, it’s been almost two minutes now.

Crazy Gumby woman now wants me to do something called a Downward Dog.  Now I have owned dogs.  I know dogs.  I love dogs.  THAT does not look like any of my dogs.  My understanding of a downward dog is one of my German Shepherds laying down and rolling over, showing me a belly to scratch while chewing on a Beggin’ Strip.

No, this Downward Dog is something altogether different.  Like inhuman different.  There is no laying down.  My belly isn’t scratched.  No bacon anywhere in sight.   This crazy Gumby foldy woman is now walking her feet up towards her hands.  Walking them right up to her hands until she is closing like a CD case and it finally hits me.  She’s no Gumby.   Oh no no no no no…No normal person can do that with her body.  Foldy hinge woman.   No.  Nobody human does that. 

I know now.  It becomes clear to me.  This is bigger.  Far bigger.

This woman is Satan.

Now, admittedly, I was shaken.   The Bible said the Devil will come as a normal, likeable person whom crowds will flock willing to.

At this point I have to admit that I didn’t expect Satan to come as a yoga instructor.   My bad.

I am standing there in my Warrior Two Pose wondering what does one do when one’s yoga instructor is Satan?   Does she know I know?   Obviously she can see me here through the screen.   Do I make a run for it?  Can I even run, now that my legs have been reduced to mere pudding logs?  Was that her plan all along? 

I find myself wondering, is it wrong, somehow, to keep on with the session when you realize your instructor is Satan?  I’m up to six minutes now.  I hate to quit when I’m so close.

I remember how many times friends had told me, “Yoga is hell.”  DumDum, me.   They were warning me.  I had no idea….

Satan now tells me to cross my left elbow over to the outside of my right knee.  She does it with no effort.  I’m assuming she could have reached that left elbow around  and around her right ankle if she had felt like showing off.   I was half expecting her to tell me to twirl my flippin’ head around in circles until I spit out green stuff. 

She’s telling me in her soft, easy, I’m- hypnotizing- you- to- come- join -me -in- Hell kind of way,  to just breathe.  Deep breaths.   In and out.  Easy.  Soft.  Even.  Nice easy breaths. 

I’m panting and close to hyperventilating.  I’m starting to see white and I’m wondering if I should run to the white light.  Maybe this is how it works.   I can’t know for sure.   I collapse against the wall, resting my jagged knee puzzles.

Now she wants me to stand with my legs bent and make a triangle with my arm straight up and my other hand touching the floor.  She says, “As if you are leaning against a wall…”

I yell out, “Hey crazy foldy Satan bitch, I’m already leaning against the wall….”

She does not send lightning.  I find myself vaguely grateful.

We move onto pushups and I realize that, even with a brain injury, I have crystal-clear memories of doing pushups.   Somewhere in a happy place with toe socks and Shaun Cassidy posters and rock candy…

That was such a happy time.

Before Satan.

I assume by now that my elbows have sustained, at least, hairline fractures.

Eight hours or three days passed and I am face down on the Oriental rug, sweating profusely, breathing heavy, knee puzzles screaming, hips dislocated, thighs burning,  toes cramping, shoulders (see hips)…

I hear Satan say, “OK. Great job.  You’re done.” 

By the time I lift my head, the screen is blank.  She has disappeared.   Just like that. 

Well, of course she has, I say to myself.  It’s not like she would use a door.

I roll over and look down at my body.  Fearing she has somehow tattooed 666 on my arms or legs or forehead, all that is on my arms and legs and forehead are the indentations of the Oriental rug and some cat fur.

I have made it, I sigh.   I have a passing thought that one more day being “normal” might just be the death of me.   I say a prayer, just in case. 

And then I go hit the shower.

 

 

We’re So Damned Lucky

Nope.  Not kidding.

Now, before you conclude that my brain injury is obviously more serious than first thought, please hear me out.

My Mother used to always say something about, “having to pay the piper.”  I never really understood the quote but I knew what she meant.  It usually came hot on the heels of a wicked hangover I had just conceded.  Accompanied with a snip of a smile.

“Hot pipes, Swanson?  You got hot pipes?  Time to pay the piper.”

She’d laugh.

It seems, at some point in our lives, often several times, we realize it’s time to pay the piper.  There’s the guy sitting in the dentist’s chair with all kinds of horrifying things going on, sweating while he’s trying to figure out if the $ 1850 bill will fit on his all-but-maxed-out credit card.  He’s lamenting all the yearly cleanings and checkups he canceled and failed to reschedule over the years.

There’s the traveling salesman who still owes seven grand on a car that has just hit the 230,000 mile mark.  When the economy tanked and business screeched to a halt, so did his ability to keep up on his car maintenance.  Now he’s looking at a car the mechanic won’t even release because it’s too dangerous to drive.   He’s got a hemorrhaging engine, leaking transmission, no struts, no shocks, no power steering, brakes that are barely working and he just spent $ 800 to fix three additional things he didn’t even know were wrong.

There’s the woman who gave up her career to raise the kids and, now fifteen years later, she has four under twelve when the husband starts buying new underwear and coming home late each night smelling like someone else’s perfume.

Pay the piper.

We all do it.  Whether we let our health go or our waistlines, our homes or our cars.  Maybe it’s our relationships we don’t pay attention to, our kids we don’t keep an eye on.  Jobs we didn’t stay current on, warnings we didn’t heed.  Preparations we didn’t make.  Safety measures we didn’t take.

We end up in a situation that sucks the life right out of us.  There’s no measuring happiness or satisfaction when everything we do from the second we open our eyes each morning to the second we close them each night is spent getting ourselves out of the situations we find ourselves in.  Or not even getting out of them.  Just surviving them.

In this crazy world where most are working two jobs…where many take care of both their parents and their kids…where there are ten things to run around doing after work or three things to do between two jobs that start an hour apart and are twenty-three miles from each other…

Most people don’t have time enough to ask themselves what would make them happy.  Many don’t even have time to realize they aren’t or they sadly realize, given their situation, it doesn’t much matter because they can’t change it anyway.

The piper’s collecting in spades.

But what if everyone got a do-over.  A Mulligan.

What if time stopped.  All the craziness stopped.  Everything that you used to fill and overfill your days with.  All stopped.  What if you inserted a block of time, an intermission, a half time…

And you found yourself with time enough to figure out what would really make you happy for the rest of your life…

We’re so damned lucky.

Of course, most people don’t consider me lucky.  Or any of us survivors.  Other than the fact that we survived, we don’t get many envious glances.

True, there have been a couple of knuckleheads who told me I was “so lucky” to not have any balance because I get to park in the handicapped spot.   There was one person who told me I might be “lucky enough” to qualify for food stamps.

But, by and large, no one really wants to be me.

They think I’m crazy, in denial or just plain brain injured to be as happy as I am.  Happy as a clam.

Twisted bliss, they concur.

After all, I don’t, for a second, resemble the successful business woman I once was.  The money, the suits, the house, the car, the body, the freedom to spend, to go, to do…

But I’m damned lucky because I survived the tornado.  No, not the head injury one.

The life before it.

We survivors of brain injury are damned lucky because, for the most part, we are afforded and awarded a big huge adult time out.   The hurricanes we called our lives before we were hurt fall uncommonly still.   Quiet.  Utterly quiet.

And many of us find out it’s the first time in years, maybe decades…that we can actually hear ourselves think.

From a near-death experience comes the inevitable realization that, OMG!  we’re actually going to die one day.   And, as the world rushes by outside our windows, from the quiet of our new realities, comes the earnest whisper.   The nagging question.

How can I be happy?  What’s going to make me happy?

What’s truly great about brain injury is that most of us don’t have an endless supply of energy any longer.   Late in the day, most of us are cognitive mush.  Our brains slow down and we simply cannot cram our days silly with a thousand activities any longer.

So we learn what’s really important to us.  We learn what we really want to spend our precious time doing.

Many of us, when cognitively fatigued, can no longer depend upon our memories, our judgements and our sound decisions.

So we learn who in our lives we can really trust with our safety.

Many of us lose our financial stability, our credit ratings, and our incomes.

So we learn who in our lives has compassion, understanding and acceptance.

Many of us now have the time and a new perspective to look at our relationships.

So we learn who really makes us happy, who we simply don’t wish to tolerate any longer and who we want to spend our lives with.

And many of us find a clean slate and a new, exciting tomorrow that beckons us to recreate lives better than the ones we had before we were hurt.

So we learn to try new things, to recheck our dreams, and to cultivate new abilities.

We’re so damned lucky.

What a crazy path to take to sanity.   What an incredulous irony to find that it took our brains to be broken before we finally can think straight.

If anyone in their lives, brain injury or not, can:  Learn what’s really important to them and what they want to spend their precious time doing, learn who they can really trust with their safety,  choose the people who are willing to be helpful and who have compassion, understanding and acceptance, learn and decide to try new things, recheck their dreams and stop to measure and nurture their abilities….

That, I’m pretty sure, is a recipe for happiness.    That is a reason to feel damned lucky.

 

 

 

 

Balls And Strikes

It’s mid-summer.  Baseball season.  Softball season.  Fun for all ages.   From the 6 year-old tee ballers all the way up to the pros, diamonds everywhere are filled with the sights and sounds of summer.

The crack of the bat.  The roar of the crowd.  The hotdog vendors yelling, “Hot dog.  Getcher hot dog here!”  The pitcher going into his windup.  A baserunner stealing second and sliding under the tag.  Outfielders tossing third-out catches into the stands.  Beach balls bouncing into center field.

I played softball for more than twenty years.  I started going to Detroit Tigers’ games when I was four.  On any  Sunday afternoon in our neighborhood, baseball games could be heard on the radios of fathers outside working on the lawn, in the garage, on their cars.

What’s the best thing about baseball?  No, it’s not the hotdogs although, just between you and me, that was my vote…

It’s the fact that they call balls and strikes.

Imagine if they didn’t.

If all they called were balls, the top of the first inning would never end.  Hitters would have no reason to swing.  Pitchers would walk every batter that came to the plate.  Games would be called when the team pitching in the top half of the first ran out of pitchers after a few hours of just throwing all balls and walking in thirty or forty runs.

What if all they called were strikes?  Pitchers would throw the ball everywhere but the strike zone.  No matter if it bounced to the plate or landed in the dugout, it would be called a strike.  No one would ever reach base.   Every pitcher would throw a no-hitter every time they pitched.

We gotta call balls and strikes.

Too many times in life we stop calling balls and strikes.   A person, a relationship, a job, a condition….we decide they’re either all bad or all good and that’s what gets us into trouble.

We end up not being honest about what is real and what is true.  We choose what we want to believe and make things unrealistically black and white.   All balls.  All strikes.

Doesn’t work.  Leaves us angry, betrayed, disillusioned, hurt…

Take politics, for instance.  We have an angry, divisive country.  Oh my.  There’s so much anger!

I used to get so angry about politics and then I decided to call balls and strikes.

Now I have come to believe that politicians on both sides of the aisle just want to beat the other side.  It has nothing to do with what Americans want or need.  It’s just about making the other side look bad so you can either get re-elected or take back the seat in the next election.

I decided that, after any election, roughly half of everyone is going to be happy and the other half is going to be angry.  Whichever side you happen to fall on, you can expect to either shoot the arrows or dodge them for four or eight years and then you’ll switch positions.   You can watch all the political TV you want but you have to realize that, depending on which party a channel leans towards, the reporting is going to be biased one way or another.   You realize that you’ll never know the truth about a decision, a law, a politician, a party because you’ll never have all the information that the people making the decisions have.

Voila!  No more time wasted getting angry.

We have to call balls and strikes.

In most every failed relationship, there is a hero and a villain, depending on whom you are friends with.  Balls and strikes go out the window when he is a no-good, lousy, cheating, physically abusing, drinking, sloppy so and so with an over-bearing mother and a beer gut and a remote control surgically attached to his hand.

We choose not to ask the real questions.  We crown one and damn the other and that’s the end of that story.

When, if we were calling balls and strikes, we’d ask ourselves…  We’d ask her…  “What is your place in this?”  “What was it about you that made you pick someone like him?”  “Why did you CHOOSE to stay after he hit you, cheated on you, molested your child?”  “What were the red flags you ignored?”  “What is it about you that made you allow this for X amount of years?”  “How did it serve you to allow you to ignore, deny and tolerate all of this?”

Hmmmmm….

If we don’t ask those questions…If we don’t figure out our responsibility in most of the things that go wrong in our lives….If we don’t call balls and strikes and be willing to look at our actions, relationships and situations honestly, then we are doomed to repeat them.

That woman, the hero (shero), will move on to another one, three, five more relationships that are no different than the first one.   She’ll fill a lifetime up with the same relationship that comes in a different face.

We have to be honest about what our situations mean.  What they imply.  What they are saying about us.

Balls and strikes.

Too many times we take a bad break, a bad turn, a bad run of luck and we simply accept our lives as failed, miserable, damaged, disappointing, over.   When you’ve had five of the same relationships with the same man who simply has a different face and name each time, it’s no longer the man’s fault.   Five years after a brain injury, when you find yourself still sitting on the couch yelling at God every day, it’s no longer the injury that’s keeping you there.

Magglio Ordonez is an outfielder for my Detroit Tigers.  He’s a career .300 hitter.   He’s an All Star.

Well, this season he got hurt and got off to a bad start and, almost two months into the season, he was hitting a paltry, dismal .186.

When you’re hitting .186, you’re looking at a mountain to get back to “normal.”   You walk up to the plate every day and see those horrendous numbers attached to your name.  There’s no denying it.  There’s no hiding it.   Fans are cat-calling.  You can hear the booing when you continue to bounce weak grounders to second base four times a night.

What do you do?  There are no quick fixes.   You can accept it.  You can tell yourself all kinds of things.  You can retire and cling to the memory of how you used to hit homers and doubles and ring up RBIs every night.

Magglio has simply gone up to the plate every night and battled.  He’s taken extra batting practice and watched extra film.  He’s sought advice.  He’s worked hard.  He’s gotten up every morning and shown up every night.

He’s up to .245 now and climbing.

The value of calling balls and strikes reaches far beyond the white chalk lines of a baseball field.  Being honest and seeing both sides of our situations helps us to minimize the anger and frustration.  It allows us to become more compassionate by seeking the other side.  Seeking the truth.

Imagine how many blood pressure spikes we could bring down and how many episodes of road rage we could eliminate if we just took a second to call balls and strikes.   To be honest and accept that, even though its wrong,  people every day drive distracted by a dozen things.   To think, for a second, wow, maybe that old man has just lost his wife of fifty years and is driving back from picking out her casket.   He’s driving slowly because he has tears in his eyes…

Or that parent screaming his fool head off in the bleachers at his kid because the kid hasn’t gotten a hit yet.   How amazing it would be if, instead, he simply cheered the fact that he is blessed with a kid healthy enough to be out there in the warm sunshine, running around, learning teamwork, learning the value of sports, keeping his body healthy.

Hmmmm…

I have a brain injury and I have all the ammunition I need to make excuses for anything I fail at or choose not to do.  I am certifiable.  Ha.

But I’ve decided to call balls and strikes in my life.  I’ve decided to hold myself accountable for my actions.  I get headaches a lot but, hell, I don’t have a brain tumor.  I can put an ice pack on my head.  I can take pain killers.  I can go to sleep and still there’s the hope and anticipation that tomorrow will be better.  That I’ll make it better.

I have lousy balance but I’m not going to complain when there is a man who got his legs shot off in Iraq or a woman who has MS or the kid lying in a bed paralyzed from the neck down.

I just read the story of the mother in Africa who, because of the famine, walked with her five kids FOR A MONTH to get to an aid station.

Hard to complain about my electricity going out for five hours the other day…

I will not see my life as all black and white when there are handfuls of rainbows around every corner I dare turn.  Down every road I start down upon.

No game is fun if we don’t choose to call both balls and strikes.  Especially the game of life.