Still life with brain injury

This will all make a great story. Eventually.

I’ve been wanting to write something inspiring and fun and light and joyful because it is high spring in the northern hemisphere, and everything is blooming, and I have been well-fed lately by writers who are bringing this kind of energy to their writing tables.

But, honestly, a big part of me is stuck back in November, when I fell down while skating and broke my wrist and hit my head.

In early December, when my doctor told me to go home and not use my brain for two weeks, I did just as she said.¹ I grabbed onto the silver lining of her prescription and I ran with it (to the couch)—because what I heard was:

“Do nothing for two weeks and then you can go back to doing all the things you like to do with your brain.”

I event wrote a joyful post about all the gifts I found in not doing anything.

Just because you can

Hah!

I am now 5 months out (MONTHS, not weeks) and while I can do a lot of things I couldn’t do in December, I still can’t do a lot of anything. I mean, I can, but then I get headaches and back pain flares and I have to take naps.

I have finally been connected with an eye specialist and two physical therapists who have explained that my brain cannot handle much reading/writing/driving/skating/movement because my binocular vision is not right and my brain is working extra hard to integrate sensory data from both eyes into one coherent whole. My vestibular system is also not liking much movement (of my head, or of things moving in front of my head). Thus, I can do a lot of things but not do a lot of anything.

One of the things I am doing every day are exercises to heal my brain. I get to look at beads on a string, and wait for things to focus when I’m looking through a prism, and wear funny-looking glasses while reading charts with random letters on them. I also get to look at objects stuck to my finger and track them while I move my finger back and forth.

FUN TIMES.

When I began this publication in January, I was kind of on fire with ideas for things to do here. I still have ideas, but they are more embers than flames—and they are scattered. I’m having a hard time committing to anything or feeling as if I really know what I’d like to do; I so often don’t know what I can do. I’ve been grappling with some low-grade depression (not surprising, all things considered), which is also interfering with my creative pursuits and output.

One thing I know is that this, too, shall pass. (Thank you, Grandpa, for teaching me that.) Another thing I know: This part of what it means to cultivate a creative life—times of metaphorical drought, disease, bad weather, thin crops. They come for all of us.

In an earlier version of this post I wrote that “since we can’t avoid these times, we might as well accept them. Perhaps we should even embrace them.” This morning,

Mary Hutto Fruchter

, one of the writers who has been feeding my spirit, shared words from Rumi that helped me see that something more than grudging, tentative acceptance would better serve me/us.

Of “unwelcome visitors” Rumi suggests:

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

Think of how boring our stories would be if we had no conflicts, no challenges, no opportunities for growth. And of how we need clearings within ourselves to see, hear, and then tell them clearly.

Walking is part of my treatment plan, so I’m coming to know this trail well.

Wishing you all a wonderful last few days of April.

Enough about me…I’d love to hear all about you.

How has this season been for you? What’s happening with your creative pursuits? Any good coping strategies for times when life throws up creative roadblocks and hurdles? What have you been inviting in lately? Let’s talk in the comments.

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1. FYI: I’ve since learned this was not the best treatment for my brain injury.