I was reading some digital newsletter that is sent to my email every week. There are often good nuggets in there. Not always, but most days. One that caught my eye was an article on things that “Hinder of Enhance” us as we age. Immediately, I thought of us. The word “enhance” literally means to improve the quality of. As a writer, admittedly, I tend to say an important point using 8,743 words. LOL. I was thinking, instead, that maybe everything in life is simply a question of whether it hinders or enhances us, our lives, our well-being, our success… Our successful recoveries. Does your primary ..read more

I have fond memories of Championship Sundays when my Dad would have golf on in the background of a typical Swanson Sunday afternoon. There was either a beef roast in the oven or chicken on the grill. The somber, hushed tones of the announcers usually put my brother to sleep on the floor in front of our TV, and my brothers and the neighbor boys would create a golf course in the huge field behind our house. As my brothers got older, they would take my Dad out to golf and we would gift him a new golf shirt for Father’s Day. I don’t know everything about golf, admittedly. What I DO know is that no ..read more

Those who know me know that I am a passionate college football fan. I’ve been cheering my Michigan Wolverines since 1974 and, throughout my whole life, those Autumn Saturdays have been very very dear to me. Having said that, a lot has changed in all these years. Back in the 70s, most of the games were not televised. For most college fans, we were lucky to see our favorite teams play a couple times a year. Over all these decades, the college game has changed a TON! More channels were added, more TV deals were struck, and more bowl games emerged. They went from voting on a National Champion to i ..read more

In a fleeting moment, a day, a season…You hear a particular song, realize an old lyric you had been singing wrong all this time, catch your breath from an incredible line in a movie, or get caught up in a wonderful novel… Someone says something or writes something in a card and, often, they don’t realize what kind of goodness they’ve done. The kind of word magic that pricks an ear, turns a head, shoots straight to the heart. I saw this quote in a series last night and immediately thought of you. Of us: Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack ..read more

For most of us, the healing and recovering from our injuries are something akin to slogs swimming in pools of honey. After those initial weeks when we might enjoy rapid healing of some of our symptoms, we continue to watch and watch and watch for more but, after that first rally, we can barely tell anything is better. Nothing seems to move or change. Sometimes, we don’t realize that, even when the injury didn’t improve, we did. Even when the damage didn’t heal, we could. For many years, I never missed a month in writing a blog entry. Some months there were two but there was always one. Always ..read more

Many years ago, a wise woman in my life introduced me to the concept of “paddling downstream.” I have used it and applied it all throughout my life since then and, time and time again, it has helped me “right the ship” when necessary. In a nutshell, the concept is simple. When we are paddling downstream, the journey is smoother, it helps put easy miles behind us, and we can enjoy the ride and the scenery because we aren’t always battling like we do when we try to paddle upstream. Simple enough, eh? Sometimes, simple is just flippin’ brilliant. I picture an easy river on a sunny day, paddling i ..read more

I’ve known since early in my recovery, now 27 years strong, that music could gift us beautiful gems to carry in our recovery basket. In the first weeks and months after being hurt, I utilized music and singing to help my halting, bump-along speech and processing speeds with what I consider marked success. I just read an article about how, over the years, studies great and small-but-promising have continued to reveal hopeful insight into how music helps our cognitive and overall health. It has long been my personal visual that our brains are filled with empty hallways and closed-off rooms, achi ..read more

After brain injury, our brains are damaged. That might come across as obvious but it is, surprisingly, an oft-missed ingredient to our fabulous successful recovery cakes! Successful recovery is not so much about healing. Healing comes and it doesn’t. Most of us heal to some extent and we fail to heal fully in other ways. What’s left are the challenging, bothersome, prickly stumbles of our everyday. I did the best recovery work when I started taking the injury apart and attacking smaller parts of the elusive recovery. Brain injury isn’t something that heals as one whole. It is, more often, the ..read more

Most of us, especially early on, think of our brain injuries as one thing. We look at it like it has some kind of answer that will make perfect sense. There’s dirt all over the floor so you buy a vacuum. One of your tires has blown out so you put on the spare. There’s nothing in the fridge so you go to the grocery store or you order carry-out or zip through the drive-through window. Logical, simple, sane solutions. Unfortunately, the longer it takes to recover, the more we realize that brain injuries are more like maddening Christmas lights. One light fails and everything goes. You try to find ..read more

As the anniversary of my brain injury fades and fogs through the years, now 27, I find that the effects of TBI blur and meld and stew together with the effects of age. So many things seem slower, saggier, and breezing away. “Turning back the clock” requires, I’m finding, the realization that the clock is faltering, wobbling, failing. I think it happens to people at different ages and stages but I’m starting to understand yoga classes, Zumba, and all those people walking at the mall. Where, long ago, I was obsessed with deciphering the minutia of my injury and its effects, I find that I am at p ..read more