Is it possible to be both R2-D2 and C-3PO?
Brain injury recovery according to Star Wars
If you’re new to The Lovely Brains Newsletter, you can always read past issues in the archive. 🎉 Also, we did it. We made it through 2021, part 1. 🎉
I am a person with lots to say who also has a hard time talking. Like C-3PO, I chatter away with opinions and solutions, or tweet up a storm. Other times, I’m more reserved. Like R2-D2 I reserve my blips and beeps for opportune moments, barely able to squeak out one thought. More than once while speaking to someone I’ve thought, “Do I have to finish this sentence?” Effortfully I blurt out the rest.
I need linguistic compaction. For me, it is second nature to compress abstraction and expression into the tiniest spaces imaginable. I also want to travel navigable distances of thought with prolixity! Give me the map and the territory.
No doubt these three impulses are why I swing among poetry, prose, and art as my chosen modes of expression. With art, no verbalizing is necessary. I can tune my brain down and let my hands communicate my mind.
The recovery process is likewise a dance between contraction, expansion, and creativity. All the bits of skill-building eventually add up to more than their sum, but day-to-day, moving stones is hard. Knowing when to rest from moving stones is not always intuitive, either. It’s hard to recreate the map each day, discover unfolding territories, and figure out new ways to navigate all the time.
I am still learning so much about my neurology and what works for me and what doesn’t. Working gently and creatively with my limitations and needs is a daily challenge, especially when additional stress piles on. But I’m learning to continue to tapping into my creativity to make modifications.
After listening to a webinar on building children’s emotional regulation skills, I realized I need to provide my highly sensitive body with better sensory input throughout the day. So I bought a full-body nylon sock that makes me look like I’m taking up base jumping or morphing into a flying squirrel.
Since this miraculous device entered my life, I have been able to sleep much more and can wind down much more easily at night. Brains are different and we all need to creatively accommodate them in individual ways. Injured brains and neurodiverse brains need more accommodations, but there is no shame in that. (Voiceover: Dear reader, she felt a lot of shame in that).
It’s tough needing to use assistive devices each day to tune my brain up so it functions better. It’s tough waking up every day not having the brain I once had. It’s tough trying to change my brain through neuroplasticity to return to an approximation of what is normal for me. It’s tough coming to terms with the limits of my neurodiverse brain that existed before my injury that are still with me and that I never saw as the very real limitations they were.
These thoughts are sticky, the kind that can get me stuck and limit my progress if I sit with them too long. However, coming to terms with the reality of my brain and life as they exist today is all part of seeking equilibrium. Embracing grief is part of the process. Accepting that my capacity changes will still be hard, and I can keep showing up, ready to look at my situation with creative eyes.
I trust that I will continue learning to balance speech with silence, movement with stillness, my myriad starting points with limitless dreamed-of destinations. For now, healing looks like doing laundry and prepping meals, yoga and meditation, writing and relaxation. There is no try, only do.
“We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one“
Amanda Gorman orating at the inauguration was so monumental it needs to be shared again. I am inspired by how she works with her disability, using the cadence of gestural speech and spoken words simultaneously.
My recent essay on trauma
While the nation was reeling from insurrection, I was in the middle of writing an article about trauma survivors at church. This was the one big piece of writing I had energy for this month. The list of suggestions at the end of the article are pertinent for making a variety of settings more trauma informed. Have a look and let me know what you would add.
Where The Brain’s Lectionary Is
I was going to proof my book the week of the insurrection. However, I am still working on it! (I’ve been scared to share this book!) But it’s okay. I am almost there. Will keep you posted.
Thanks so much for reading and subscribing. If this newsletter has been helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, feel free to share it (especially with a brain injury survivor or brain injury advocate). As always, see you next month on the first.