Holding onto your dreams post brain injury

How do you hold on to dreams, purpose and faith while living with a brain injury? Krysalis blogger, Annie Ricketts reflects on her own experience to find answers.

Have a little faith!

Some people have their fairy lights on now, and their tree is up already. I think it is wonderful that they are spreading some joy and cheer.

Yet, when I look back to the early part of the year when I was up and down to London, attending conferences and classes, I remember a lull on my final trip home before lockdown.

It was as though everyone was aware of impending doom.

Those last flurries of activity felt like something had come to an end, even before it had. In the news, more mentions were being made of the Covid-19 outbreak in China, but it felt distant to me.

And when lockdown did finally come, nothing in my home life changed very much.

I could still see my friend Jim, who was dying of cancer, and take care of him and, oddly, he needed me more just as the shutdown happened. 

Jim was my distraction. I didn’t notice the difference not going to conferences would otherwise have made to me, because I really wouldn’t have had the time to go once his health started deteriorating.

   The thing is, I refuse to allow my experiences to instil fear in me; I am always going to keep going because I have a dream – I have a purpose.   

Every interaction brings its own realisations of my impairments. 

I know it would be safer to stay at home hiding from the world. I know that people don’t always understand me; every time I step out the door, someone misjudges me. 

So, whenever I write, whenever I venture out or chat with anyone, or meet up with my daughter or pop to the shops, I know I am raising my head above the parapet.

And each time I come home, I have another opportunity to try to recognise where my brain is letting me down. I get another chance to add insight, and I try to learn from every incidence.

I don’t have the luxury of using attitude to protect me because I don’t want to change who I am – I want to get back to being the best version of me I can. 

I didn’t justify my life with attitude before my brain injury, and I am certainly not going to start now. 

My choice, now that I have the self-awareness to make one is to be self-responsible. My brain injury isn’t an excuse – it is a reality I live within every moment of every day.

   There is no doubt at all in my mind that living with a brain injury necessitates having more than a little faith in yourself.   

You have to know that, deep inside, the original you is still there. I constantly remind myself that it is my brain that is broken and not who I am. 

When Christmas gets here, I will do my utmost to act as if nothing is wrong with me. 

I will make mistakes and ignore them; I will say things about things I don’t understand and apologise. 

I will watch the world happening around me and know I am safe amongst the people who love me and don’t much care how strange I am. 

My brain will still only do one thing at a time so, if there is music, I can’t shut it out; if you ask me to help in the kitchen and want to talk to me – expect something to go wrong. 

Come to that, expect something to go wrong even if I am sitting at the living room table, peeling carrots on my own! 

I will ask you all to slow down because I can’t keep up.

And I will fidget when I don’t understand because I‘m getting bored with my brain shutting me out of my environment.

I am always accused of cheating at games because I can’t remember the rules, the play or who went last or what happened.

Never let me be the banker because I can’t multitask and I can’t count! My brain doesn’t know what to do with itself when I am out of my comfort zone. 

   I want to help. I want to be a part of it all. I want to be the mum putting a wonderful meal on the table and the granny full of surprises.   

What you see of me is a reflection of my personality drowned beneath a range of thinking and doing disabilities. 

I am still me. Have a little faith. 

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Anne Ricketts is the founder of Global Brain Injury Awareness (GBIA); a not-for-profit community interest company she launched after sustaining a traumatic brain injury in July 2000.  GBIA aims to inform and support people in need after brain injury. More here: https://www.globalbia.org/