I have been thinking about what to write today, January 4, 2017 for about a month now.  Here I sit trying to think of how to form the words that swim in my mind and express them in a way that makes sense to anyone else but me.

Today marks an important landmark.  A valuable piece of history worth honoring.  Today marks the 3rd year Re-Birthday Anniversary for Austin (my son) and I since the wreck where I became a survivor of a Polytrauma and TBI and my son seemed to have escaped physically unscathed by traumatized still the same.  We continue our journey still today. We both have come so far in 3 years.  I myself have met many goals, yet miles to go before I sleep….soundly that is *smiles*.

It has been an extraordinarily long journey through this whole recovery process….and still is. I needed an outlet. I needed to learn, to teach others what I had learned the hard way so they didn’t have to work so hard, to understand myself, to hopefully allows me to heal.

This page at posthope is strictly my medical story as it has unfolded and continues to unfold.  It is fantastic and I need to make an effort to get here more often.  I went through a round of blah there for a while.

I know though that I love helping people, I am just not able to do it in the way that I used to. I started a personal blog, which was so disjointed I couldn’t find anything when I wanted to, so with the help of my tech savvy husband he taught me how to use a very user friendly program where we changed the blog to a website so it was more organized.  This was very helpful and allowed me to find things easier.  The website is a work in progress that allows me to heal and help others.  I want to help other survivors cope, or caregivers/healthcare providers maybe try to understand what it has been like for our family so they do not feel so alone, or so they can develop different ways of doing things, of helping, of surviving.

HOPE was a word my mom hung up for me when I was in the hospital shortly after the wreck. I found myself so focused on that word that sometimes, all I could do was stare at it to get me through the day. I am unaware of the time frame that was wrapped around this. However, my memory makes it feel like it was a long time.

As time progressed it became the word I would include in my meditations, my prayers, and my self-talk to keep moving forward and never give up. To me HOPE became a symbol and acronym for “Hold On – Pain Ends”. The pain never seemed to end though and so this seemed completely unrealistic to me and not something I could honestly uphold. I struggled to think of something that would help me remember to never give up HOPE.

I also wanted to have HOPE represent my experience with all the medical providers, insurance processes, and developments and knowledge we had either been blessed or seemingly cursed with. I wanted to represent my journey as an ongoing recovery process, as that is exactly what it is. Days led to weeks, weeks to months and soon it came to me one day as I was in enormous pain that some of these providers were actually trying to help me gain my independence back and I was fighting full force to gain back what I felt I had lost. I needed so badly to excel…to move forward and move on with my life.

So was created ” HOPE TBI”

Help One Person Excel – To Be Independent

Hence this site was innocently started, and continues to evolve as I continue to as well.  I also now share other people’s stories as well as it is very healing to have a voice in some form and not feel so alone in a situation where you are surely to lose life as you once knew it….lose family….lose friends….as you adjust to your “new Normal”.  The folks that do decide to stick around…they feel alone too.  Their commitment to you causes their supports to move on with life while they remain with you PERPETUALLY FROZEN (look for this as a new post title soon).

This existence is not for the faint of heart.  It is not for the weak.  It is not easy.  I feel gratitude though for my life.  Grief and gratitude are constant bedfellows that have learned to coincide with each other.

Today I am reminded to reflect on not only all that was, but all that is, and HOPE for all that will be.  January 4, 2014 I was born again.  No, not in a religious sense.  However, I continue to experience a metamorphosis of epic proportions.  I continue to strive to embrace my “new normals” and function to the highest levels possible.  Thank you to all who have stood by me, believed in me and advocated for me.  Thank you for those who cared for myself, for my son, for the other driver (Greta) and made waking up each day seem possible.

My medical story