Look Where You’re Looking

In all the correspondence I have enjoyed with so many survivors over the years, the biggest complaint seems to be that their people don’t understand them and their injuries.

This is a frustration, for sure.  It’s exhausting to try and explain things that don’t even make sense to us, especially at the beginning.  I can remember so many people asking me so many questions that I had no answers for.  I’ll bet I made some shit up.  LOL

But, over the years, I have come to appreciate the fact that people cannot understand.  We have to keep from hoping that anyone we love will know this so intimately.  Only if they are injured could they know…

And, even then, their experience would be discreet to their damage and their bodies and their lifestyles.

That’s why we are here, you guys.  Together, all of us.  I get such a kick out of seeing the 100+ countries that this blog travels to.  Canada and Australia and the UK, a lot (hi, you guys!).   But also to Singapore and Mexico and Niger and Sweden.

Literally all around the world we go  :)))

We have to try to stop setting ourselves up for heartache and disappointment by hoping that all of our peeps will be able to fulfill all of our needs.  It cannot work that way.

To those whose people accuse them of lying or malingering or failing, in one or a hundred ways, I’d zip those people right out of my intimate places.  You don’t have to understand everything in order to believe the person experiencing it.

My people, God bless them, have come to know ME and to believe me!  In the absence of every answer that made sense, they simply took the time to know me and how I had changed and what that implied.   They didn’t need to know everything about our brains or even everything about my damage.  They just needed to figure out how to help me stay in the game and keep moving forward.

That’s all we can ask for.

Please don’t expect all your people to understand what this feels like.  Thank God they should never.

Take a good, hard look at those who would accuse you and steel yourself from continuing to go to them for something they cannot offer.

And then come on back here.  🙂  You, from New Zealand.  You, from South Korea.  You, from Ireland.

Come back where we are all here in our brain injured stew.  Pretty awesome, all  🙂

We may be threads alone, flinging and clinging…But, together, we all make up one great blanket that is meant to warm us all.

Can’t lose a one of you.

 

I love you guys.  xo

Advertisements

Informative Conversation

I belong to a Facebook group for women who have suffered concussion and TBI.  One of the conversation threads really tore a scab off for me when the women were lamenting how so many of their spouses, kids and loved ones are so impatient and unforgiving when it comes to how much they forget in day-to-day activities.

It hurts, still, to recall how, when my dad would have another stroke, the hospital and rehab personnel would ask him what day of the week it was, what year and who the president was.

It didn’t upset me that he didn’t know the answers.  I didn’t feel impatient with him or irritated or embarrassed of him, like so many in the FB group recount.  Instead, I felt sick to my heart FOR him for, even in an advanced stage of cognitive damage, there was enough of him there to feel the shame at not knowing.

It breaks my heart still.

Until it starts happening to you, you cannot imagine the pains of embarrassment and vulnerability that come with the realization that you don’t have all the tools you used to wield easily.  Whether from age or injury or spreading condition, the stealing of our memory is a heartless, cruel thief.

For those of you struggling with loved ones who are intolerant of your problems with memory, I invite you to send them a copy of this blog and invite them to be a part of your SUPPORT GROUP that is willing to help ease and reduce such a painful part of our injuries.

Informative conversation is an on-going practice that keeps people with cognitive impairment “in the game” by using cues in everyday conversation.

Instead of fearing that and waiting for a brain-injured person to forget that son Timmy has his first baseball game on Tuesday, family members can help by inserting this information into everyday conversation for days leading up to Tuesday and throughout the day on Tuesday.

For example, they can say things like, “I wonder if Timmy is getting nervous for his big first game on Tuesday?”  or “Maybe we can take Timmy out for ice cream after his big first game on Tuesday” and “Do we need to figure out how Timmy is getting to his big game on Tuesday?”

In more severe cases of memory dysfunction, loved ones can help by integrating even more basic, centering facts into conversations.  With my dad, I used to start out my conversations with him saying things like, “On this wonderful Spring day in April, Dad, how are you feeling today?”  or  “With Christmas just two weeks away now, Dad, are you getting in the Christmas spirit?”

It’s easy to stand outside of us with our lousy memories, point out our short-comings and say, “There you go again!”

Anyone can do that.

But if support people and loved ones actually want to support and love, it would be great help if they would “get in the game” and actually be a part of a positive solution.  It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort or time and the difference can ease a lot of stress and aggravation in families.

If words matter then make what you say be helpful and supportive and easing to the person who is struggling.  By incorporating information into your sentences, you are GIFTING those of us who are exhausted by our struggles.  Please help instead of just pointing out that we are not who we once were.

It is already heart-breaking to know.

 

All Over Again…

I think I mentioned in a blog or two before this one how I have been dealing with the dizzies, vertigo, imbalance and motion intolerance now since before Christmas.

I’ve been to a clinic, hospital, three specialists, hearing tests and five weeks of physical therapy.  From a crystal in my ear canal to finding out I also have an eye component to the problem and maybe a neurological one.  Got new glasses.  Now waiting for a neuro-ophthalmologist to see me.  Hoping for an MRI.

Already I have recognized how similar this feels to when I was brain injured.  I don’t have answers for people who tell me they’ve never heard of this before.  I don’t have answers for why it doesn’t happen when I sit or drive, only stand and turn and walk.

What started out as “surely a virus” and not really a big deal has turned into something that is scaring me some.   Out of the four or five somethings it could be, there are a couple that are serious.

So…when everyone went back to work after the holidays…When the time between diagnostic steps began to feel torturous…I recognized that it was that time again like so many of us have experienced with our brain injury recoveries.

Time to get busy.

When we are brain injured, or suffering anything, really, we tend to want our doctors to fix us up and we tend to put off everything until we are fixed.

When we suffer more complicated conditions, it’s up to us to get on with things so that we don’t fall too far behind in our lives.

When it comes to cures and comes to healing, my theory is always to welcome it, invite it and encourage it with no time component.  But, in the meantime, we have to force ourselves not to simply wait for that healing and fixing.  We have to get busy in the meantime.

I am researching my current condition all over the Internet and, more importantly, I’m really getting to know what is going on with me.  By that I mean, I’m paying attention to what makes me better and what triggers my imbalance and dizzies and full spins.

Whether it’s your brain injury or mine…whether it’s your flu or my dizzies…our bodies and our lifestyles make each condition very specific to us.

Recovering is different from healing.  I know now that I am not healing like I thought I might so, until I can get this thing fixed, it’s my job to recover.  Does that make sense?

Right now I can’t even take ten steps without feeling like I’m falling over my skis.  I find that I start walking like I’m on a boat, side to side, instead of forward.  I can barely walk twenty steps and I need to stop.  It’s dizzying and exhausting and sickening.

Today I told myself that I need to reteach my brain to trust my steps and not freak out and send the dizzy symptoms so I forced myself to walk several sets of more than I’ve been walking for months now.

Doctors have hundreds of patients each week.  Therapists see hundreds more.  We can be tempted to wait and wait for the diagnostic course to be finished but, in many complicated cases, that can take six months or more.

In the end, they are our bodies.  Our brains.  Our days.  While we are smart to wait to learn from our doctors and tests, we are also smart to learn from our bodies and our lifestyles.  I think it’s great to read and to do research and to gather.

But, at some point, it’s up to us to start solving our problems.

For me, I’m learning to not look up when I take a dish or mug down because it sets off full spins and makes me dangerous.  I’m measuring my turns.  I’m using furniture to steady me.

When everyone I know goes off to work now, I am utilizing my time when I can sit and not be dizzy.  I’m writing another book.

What problems can we still solve?  What problems are you solving now?  After six months with a brain injury or a year or five?  What’s left?  What are the challenges, still?

We can always get better.  No matter the windows of recovery that they tell us are closing.  We can get better at ourselves and our lives.  We can replace the waiting with the advancing and the improving and the new.

 

What problem are you working today?

 

For Parents I Admire And The Children They Love And Try To Protect

Like many of you, I was sickened and saddened by the devastating school shooting this week in Florida.  When I heard, on the news, that there have been a dozen or more school shootings already in 2018, I was aghast.

Something one of the news anchors said inspired this blog.  He said something to the effect of:  Kids all over the country are talking about this on their phones, in their school parking lots and locker rooms, and out with their friends.

That scared me some.

If that scared me some, then I was mortified when, the next day, an 11 year-old was arrested for slipping a note under her principal’s door that threatened to shoot up her school.

You bet kids are talking to each other.

From my 20+ years of studying brain injury and our magnificent brains, one of the most critical treasures of information has to do with brain development and the ages at which we experience it.

I think it is valuable information as parents, all over the country, try to figure out how to address and whether to address this school shooting topic with their kids.

I was curious so I asked three strangers who were parents what their kids were saying about the school shootings.  Two parents said they don’t discuss those things because they are trying to shield their kids and the other one said she had a good kid who would “never get involved with something like that.”

Parents:  Your kids are ALREADY INVOLVED WITH SOMETHING LIKE THAT!

For parents who never taught their kids about the dangers of smoking, drinking, texting while driving or unprotected sex, your kids are gathering their information, nonetheless.  Same with school violence, bullying and mass shootings.

And, if those kids are left to learn about all these things from their friends, here is the brain development information I mentioned earlier:

Young people’s brains do not fully develop until their mid-twenties.  For some, their thirties.  Unfortunately, the critical part of the young brain not yet fully developed is the frontal lobe:  the part of the brain that manages impulse control, judgment, insight, and emotional control.  So when teens and college students engage in risky and/or irrational behavior, it’s not just that they don’t have the adequate life experience to know better, but, rather, their brains have difficulty assessing the possible consequences.

They need you.

True, kids may hear your lessons and speeches and go out and try pot, drinking and sex regardless.

But, if you are not in the game, most will find themselves in dangerous and, even, criminal situations without perspective and appreciation for the consequences.

They’re not thinking like us.  Not even if they are raised by the best, smartest parents in the world.  Not even if they come from a wealthy upbringing or attend the best private schools.

They simply cannot think like a rational, measured, composed adult who appreciates consequence fully if they are simply teenagers or college kids.

Please don’t think your kids “would never do that sort of thing.”  There are over a hundred sets of parents who never imagined their kid would shoot up a school.

No parents ever teach their kids to be cruel bullies or to rape or to assault or to murder.  But these things happen, now, commonly.

Beyond just telling them what you expect and telling them what’s wrong, it’s important to find out what they are thinking.  To GO TO THE PLACE WHERE THEY ARE IN THEIR BRAIN’S DEVELOPMENT and to understand how they are putting all this stuff together and why.

I’m sure most parents will spend ten times more hours helping their kids studying math and science and doing writing assignments.  But they can flunk a test and not spend the rest of their lives in prison.  They can mess up a class and not end up on the nightly news because they threw boulders off of highway bridges, gang-raped a classmate or torched a house.

Kids can’t be totally trusted to do the right thing and to think like a responsible, safe adult until their brains are fully developed.  The very area that controls all the dangerous choices they might make simply isn’t ready for that responsibility yet.

Please, for their sake and for yours and for the safety of our communities, please don’t think you’ve taught them enough about things you would, otherwise, take for granted.  They ARE going to learn, one way or another and we simply cannot afford to think we know how they are thinking just because it seems obvious to us.

We can’t stop every school shooting but I’m cheering for you to be the ones who re-dedicate themselves to understanding the brain’s challenges at this age of development.

PS  When those kids were holed up inside that school and terrified as they heard the shots fired, they texted their parents.  No one ever wants to imagine such a scenario but, in that possible instance, parents need to know what they are going to reply and they need to prepare their kids for how to shelter in place, silence their phones, etc.

I pray for you and your kids’ safety in such a troubled world.  Love you guys!

What Are We Telling Ourselves?

As I watch the Olympics, I am wowed, of course.  Wowed by the spins and the moves and the turns.  Wowed by the flippy flips in the air and the twirly twirls and whatever they call that awesome thing…

I am near-constantly awed by the imagined number of repetitions it must have taken for each of these athletes to perfect their craft.   This leap, that throw, this spin, that turn…

I can only imagine the size of their hearts.  These young people have worked, some for four years and some for 30 years, to achieve their moment.  Their Olympic moment.

How many times did they fall on their butts?  How many mornings, dark and freezing, did they roll out of bed?  How many times did they literally drag themselves out of the cold, off the ice, out of the snow…physically and mentally wasted?

Countless.

And during all those times.  All those lonely moments when that podium seemed a lifetime away and their dreams appeared to be dimmed by failure, by the size of the task, by the enormity of the mountain.  What did they tell themselves?

I can.

I can do this.

I will be better.

 

 

A Banana Pepper New Year

It came on like I had been hit by a truck…A couple weeks before Christmas, at work, all of a sudden I was hit by an overwhelming sense of imbalance and dizzying unsteadiness.  It rocked me and scared the heck out of me.

For someone who has struggled with TBI balance dysfunction for more than twenty years now, even the slightest tweak to my still-whonkey balance system was enough to throw me sideways.

I made it through the holidays and, to be honest, I have no idea how.   The New Year and a visit from my cousin and then my birthday a week ago…

Still dizzy.

I had heard of many people having this so I imagined it a virus.  With the holidays, I just couldn’t deal with anything other than that so I figured out what helped and what didn’t and started to adjust.  Right after Christmas I went to a clinic.  Young and inexperienced, the woman couldn’t really appreciate how my walking is abnormal to begin with.  She was horrified and got right on the phone and called the hospital.  She told me I could phone a friend or she would call an ambulance but I was going.

There was cursing.

The hospital said I probably have crystals in my ear canal in the wrong places but that they didn’t fix that.   They said to try the meds I’d been on but to do them 3X as much.  After that didn’t work, I went to an ENT.  Two doctors said I did not have the crystals and we’d have to figure this out.  They put me through a battery of tests and they said my brain injury showed up in many.  Beyond that, they concurred that yes, indeed, I did have the crystals.   Off to therapy, they suggested.

Today it is exactly a month since I was able to work.  I have recognized in myself what I had long forgotten…that slow adjustment and adapting to a new reality.  The process I had gone through all the years ago after my brain injury didn’t get fixed month after month…

It’s lonely and isolating.  It’s frustrating.   We all know.  I’ve done the exercises I found on youtube and I’ve tried everything anyone has suggested as helpful.  Each day there are good and bad parts.  Kind of like brain injury living, really.

Although my peeps have been so supportive and helpful through this, there’s not much more to say when it’s gone on this long.  We’re all just trying to keep our hopes up and work the problems and plan for better.

I have fought to keep my spirits up and I have promised myself that this new year will not continue on like the old one ended.  I’m unwilling to accept this as permanent, even given how many people have piped in to tell me they’ve had this for 40 years and more.  What?????!!!!!!!

In honor of my personal determination to find answers and to keep seeking cures, I promised myself that I would change the new year.  I went to SubWay and ordered a whole different sandwich and asked for them to put banana peppers on it.

Take that!

LOL

Tomorrow I will make it to the therapy place two minutes from my house.  I will throw myself at their feet and plead for help.  So far, it has been days and weeks of waiting for appointments and results and next steps.  In between is the day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute struggle of living with an unsteady world all around me.

So I just wanted to send a shout out. I didn’t write during the holidays.  Didn’t get any cards out.  Not much great functioning.  But I wanted to say hello and to offer up that this is banana pepper day!!!

All of us fight the slow-slipping comfort of how we once were.  Maybe it’s as acute as brain injury.  Maybe it is as subtle as simple aging.  In any event, we all must choose to battle.  To throw down the gauntlet and to determine that we can make a good difference.  We can improve things.  We don’t have to just give up and accept things, even in the face of long, listless recoveries.

So here’s to you and here’s to me.  Here’s a finger in the eye of surrender.  Here’s to rallies and strategies and trying every new thing.

Here’s to banana peppers on a sandwich in the new year.   To all of us.  Hooo-Rah!!!!!!

Excited To Share My News!!!

Couldn’t wait to share my news with you!  In the last few years, I’ve been focused on making sure that I was keeping in the game, investing in my recovery, trying not to get old and stale…

A lot of times with brain injury, we forget that, while healing might dwindle after days and weeks and months, recovering can continue throughout our lifetimes.

We just have to keep feeding the recovery!

For me, recovering has been about daring myself out of my comfort zone.  It’s so easy to rely on our brain injuries to keep us from anything new.   Often we fall into our safe places and we stay there and, slowly, we become afraid.  Afraid of things.

It’s like the person who doesn’t drive on the freeway for a while.  After too long, it becomes a scary thing to do and it’s too easy to just keep safe and slow on the backroads.

I knew that, for me, it was time to buckle up and hit the road again!

I’m so proud and excited to release my newest book, “Every Star You Can See Is A Star You Can Be!”

The book is geared toward young people just starting to think about who they might be and how they might identify their particular skills, talents, gifts and potential.  It’s a fun, interactive book that helps them to begin to find the perfect match of what they are good at with what they enjoy most.

I wanted to share it with you guys because you are always a part of my journey.  All these years later and I take you everywhere with me.  🙂

Maybe the book connects with me because, for those of us with brain injury, we have to restart again and we have to rediscover our talents and gifts and match them with, often, new things we like and are able to do.

We’re coming into a New Year and God Bless all of us, we are still here.  Stumbling some, maybe.  But fighting on.  Rallying.  Achieving.  Creating new lives from the ruins of those that no longer fit like they did.

I hope you’ll join me in embracing the idea that, Every Star You Can See Is A Star You Can Be!   I believe that with every best bit of me.  I believe that in every one of you.

Happy New Year, all.  I love you guys.  May you reach out from your comfort zones and dare new dreams this new year.  You are already stronger than you imagine and stronger than any I’ve met.  Treat yourself to a great new year.

Go Be Amazing!!!!

Available on Amazon

Every Star You Can See…: Is a Star You Can Be!
by Kara L. Swanson et al.
Link: http://a.co/1392HEZ

The Toilet Flushes And The Screaming Starts

The toilet flushes and the screaming starts.  This tells me it is Saturday or Sunday.

She hasn’t yet made the coffee too weak or too strong.  She hasn’t yet cooked the eggs medium when she knows he likes them sunny-side up.  She hasn’t yet burned the toast or forgotten the marmalade he likes.  That will come soon enough.

But, for now, the toilet flushes and the screaming starts.  It has gone on now a year.  A year that I know of.  It could be ten for her.  There is a child between them, after all.

“Call the police!”  I hear.  It is easy from outside.

But they don’t realize how she’ll pay for that call.  I do.  I know this close.

The officer comes and he’ll call the officer “Sir”.  He’ll tell him that the TV was on and that there was shouting on the movie he was watching with her.

The officer will ask, “Are you OK, ma’am?” and she will be scared.   Her eyes will plead with the officer:  Take him!  Please help me!  Take him away!

But she’ll tell the officer that everything is fine here.  And so he will leave.

He will blame her for that.

Even if they arrest him, he will return.  He will blame her then, too.  No matter how long they keep him, she knows he will find her again.  She knows.

The toilet flushes and the screaming starts.

I know the house is clean.  I heard the vacuum last night at midnight.  The scrubbing.  The hopeless dusting.

What could have happened, I ask myself, in that two seconds between the flushing and the screaming?  How could there be so much to scream about already this morning and the one before that?

What could possibly have made him THAT mad in the waking seconds of any morning?

He smiles at me, sure.  He asks me how things are going.  He is smooth, you know.

But, when they moved in, they dragged armfuls of clothing and belongings that had been thrown into a car seemingly in a hurry.   I remember wondering about that back then.

That was before the flushing and the screaming started.

Right after Christmas, it was.  The ground was sloggy that day, vulnerable underneath my long-suffering lawn that I’ve tried so hard to revive.

As the son dragged armful after armful of haphazard clothes and belongings across my poorly lawn, I politely asked him to please use the sidewalk.  I barely could explain how the lawn is vulnerable when his dad appeared in a flash, demanding to know what I was doing addressing his son.

Fire in his eyes.

A red flag took aim inside me.

I cannot save her, I know.  This is tough for me.  All the flushing and the screaming.   How many times can you call the police, knowing he will blame her as soon as they leave?

Blame her like the toast and the coffee and the eggs…

There’s no other neighbors around me whom he might assume would call the police.  Only me below.  He scares me too.

He’s not there all the time so I know she could leave.  She does not.  When he is gone, she could flee.  Call the police, a shelter, a friend or family.

Get out!  I scream, myself.  Get out before it’s too late!

She does not.

This happened before, just down the way.   Same situation.  Same asshole with a different face.  Same twisted belief that he owns her somehow.  That he rules her.  That she deserves to be constantly corrected and fixed and punished.

We called the police that time.  We called again.  We called and we called.

He killed her, he did.  He killed himself too.  And a young son grows up now as they hide the press clippings.

This one above me…she must save herself, I know.  She must realize she’s had enough in that hair-thin window of time before he does.

She must save herself somehow.  I pray she can.

Before the toilet flushes and there is only silence.

 

 

The One To The Left

I know I’ve written about this before but it has returned this past week, it’s been on my mind and, in a community where our memories don’t always shine, I don’t think anyone will begrudge me revisiting this topic…

I recently joined a Facebook group comprised of women suffering the effects of concussion syndrome.  Many of their struggles, early after their injuries, take me back to a time now more than twenty years ago.  I can still feel my own desperation and impatience for progress and answers from way back then.

As I have both skipped and plodded through my 20+ years of brain-injured life, my once-fledgling belief that our brains can do remarkable things has been aided and complimented by increases in brain research.  It is simply amazing what our peanuts can do!!!!

From my own positive experience especially, I know that our brains can find new pathways around damaged areas.  They can build new roads in order to better execute our demands.

But they need our help.

As I am wading softly into my fifties now, I lament with those around me how our memories fail us.  Abilities that do not feel injury-related to me.  They feel age-related.

I am aware of how enormous our brains’ capabilities and it seems a shame if we don’t use them.  Kind of like living in a mansion but only living in and using one hall closet…

My personal goal is to regain access to my memories.  To step out of the hall closet and to stretch out in the living room, the dining room and the kitchens of my cerebral mansion.  Maybe you will try, too?

By now most of us are masters at telling the highlight stories of our lives.  We know them easily and, likely, everyone who knows us has heard them more than once.

My goal is to take that picture in my mind and look left of it.  Look behind it.  Look to the right.  What do I see?

What will you see?

I was talking with my brother yesterday and we were recalling how our mom used to stand us out there in the backyard to take pictures of us in softball and baseball uniforms, Halloween costumes and first-day school clothes.  Those memories are easy for me.

But, when I looked to the left yesterday, I saw that curly tree in the yard I had long forgotten.  I looked down in my mind and I saw those blue stones we had and the black wooden borders around the bushes.

What do you see?

I have told the stories of how my Mom made sure we always had a full belly of a warm breakfast when we left for school each morning.  I’ve long-told how I used to hide my vitamins under the place mats and how my mom used to hide rolled-up dollars in the centerpiece, giggling and telling me, “They don’t have to know everything, Kara”.

Those have been my stories.  My memories.  But what would I see if I looked left of that?  Looked to the right?  Could my brain open more doors for me?  Flick on the lights to long-closed rooms?

Some mornings we ate rice for breakfast and I would make rounded igloos with front doors out of the pile of rice on my plate.  Sometimes she made us BLTs for breakfast and, because I didn’t get up when she first called, the toast was already hard and cracking.

I recall that nothing got me out of bed faster than the smell of cornbread muffins, hot out of the oven and served with hot cocoa.

The memories are still there!

We had a big tub of what we called Oleo always sitting out on the table next to a small bowl of sugar.  On the morning I was set to get braces, my Mom made French Toast and eggs and apple juice and hot cocoa and cornbread muffins-all my favorites because she knew I might not be able to eat after.

We still have tools available to us.  We still have tools in the tool box.

If we can take our memories, those highlighted moments of our lives, and pan left and pan right…If we can stay in those moments and move around and feel that moment and smell the air and taste the food and hear the sounds…

We feed our brains then.  We exercise them.  We make them stronger.

We call on them.

And then maybe, just maybe, we light up a corner of power that our brains can use to help us.  Maybe they will utilize more rooms in our mansions to execute for us.

Maybe they will discover an extension cord in a previously-unused room that might connect a broken circuit so that we can use it again.

It’s worth every shot.

Pan to the left.  Pan to the right.  See the Oleo and the blue stones.  Make the rice igloos again.  Hide the vitamins.

Go into our pasts, into our cerebral mansions, and burst out of those damn hall closets!  Let’s not just invite more access, let’s go get it.  Let’s create it.  Let’s blast through and take it.

Our brains are more remarkable than we could ever fully imagine.  But let’s, at least, start to imagine.  Let’s, at least, begin to unleash their power.

Rock on!!!

 

 

Everyone Finds What They’re Looking For

In a brain injury blog, where so many of us struggle daily with our brain-damaged memory function, it’s almost comical to write, Everyone Finds What They’re Looking For…

But it’s true.

We’ve had a tough few months of natural disasters.  A slew of devastating hurricanes, earthquakes and wild fires.  Millions fleeing homes only to return to nothing.  Millions more without power, without clean water, food or neighborhood versions of normal with schools and churches and stocked, well-operating shops.

There is the back and forth banter between the leaders of the United States and of North Korea.

Also, recently, the huge media-saturated coverage of NFL players taking a knee during the National Anthem and the horrible shooting tragedy in Las Vegas.

There’s been a lot of stuff to consider, to decide within ourselves, to post opinions about and to discuss at dinner tables and around water coolers.

Everyone Finds What They’re Looking For.

Some will consider the natural disasters just par for the course during a regular hurricane season.  Some will enlist those disasters to back up their rallying cries of a warming, increasingly-unstable planet.  Some are checking their bibles and searching the skies for locusts as they become more convinced that all of these hurricanes, earthquakes and fires signal the end of the world.

Between the United States and North Korea, some will sound alarms that we are headed for nuclear war.  Others will consider both leaders’ rhetoric to be, largely, just the saber-rattling of school-yard boys.

Witnesses to the NFL players’ kneeling during the National Anthem will split into groups of self-proclaimed patriots who are offended and First Amendment advocates who staunchly defend the right to peacefully protest.

The fallout from the horrible shooting in Las Vegas will become less of a human story and more a political one as people on both sides of the gun rights debate shine a spotlight on this tragedy as evidence of their particular stance.

Everyone Finds What They Are Looking For.

There will always be evidence, in any given situation, to support what we believe.  That is the common thread in a tangled mess of conflict in an ever-increasingly, complex world.

Closer, more intimately, each of us will suffer hardships and setbacks with regard to our brain injuries, our relationships and our positions in our families and our communities.

Everyone will find what they’re looking for.

Maybe more than ever, we are now bombarded with the overwhelming opportunities to take a look at what it is exactly we are looking for and see if, maybe, THAT needs to change…

What do they say?  Two is coincidence and three is a pattern?

Each of us has to decide, for ourselves, how we will slant the experiences in our lives and the events in our world.  We have to take in, sort, identify and categorize all that affects us.

What is the goal?

A long time ago I chose my goal.  I want to be peaceful and optimistic.  I want to keep moving toward a gentle light and away from the drama and fear of the dark.  I want to believe that good people, all full of light, will always rise to the top and help to propel us forward from the hardest of times.

And so I find what I’m looking for, too.

In all of those horrendous natural disasters and, too, the shooting in Las Vegas, I focus on the people who, time and time again, chose to help strangers.  From California to Houston, from Mexico to Florida and from Puerto Rico to a country concert in Las Vegas, first responders in the form of police, fire, paramedics, rescue dogs, hospital and morgue staffs all chose to find what they were looking for, too.

A chance to save lives.  A chance to save homes and communities.  A chance to heal victims or comfort victims’ families.

Beyond them are uncountable volunteers in shelters and on-scene to assist however they could and can.  Neighbors helping neighbors.  Ordinary people offering their communities hoses to help put out fires, boats to help find survivors, shops and cars to shelter during a hail of bullets.

What did you look for and what did you find?

Opinions are a dime a dozen.  They are as diverse and changing and particular as style and fashion.  In the end, when it comes to your injury and how it affects your life, only your opinion has the power to make better and to invite improvement.

If your goal is to find evidence that this brain injury has ruined your life, you will find that evidence.  If your goal is to stay convinced that this injury is only about what you cannot do any longer, then you will find that evidence, too.

But if your goal is to uncover evidence that this injury is not stronger than the good of you, you will be amazed at how much of that evidence exists.  And if your goal is to live an enriched life that invites new people, new experiences and new abilities, you will find that evidence too.

What is it exactly you are searching for?  Decide carefully because you WILL find it.