It feels great to be reflecting on the life goals I have attained following my injury. It reminds me how far I have come.
It feels great to finding my voice at a new and deeper level in writing this blog.
I can feel my voice coming from my core. It feels great.
With our move to Austin, I have not yet been regularly giving speeches about my story as I was in the Washington DC area. And writing my blog reminds me how good it felt to be helping others and raising awareness about persistent symptoms from concussion/mild traumatic brain injury (and brain injury) by sharing my story.
So what are the big steps that I have had in learning how to tell my story? As with relearning to drive, I have experienced many twists and turns and much frustration. To put it lightly. But here are the big steps.
First, I had to get to appropriate rehabilitation.
Second, the speech therapist worked beside me to show me the level of my skills that I actually had and to develop my awareness about them. For example, I had to relearn what the topic sentence was in a paragraph and how to write a topic sentence. These were skills I first learned in the third grade.
Then, I had to learn to write my story as part of my rehabilitation and give it as a speech.
Fourth, I had to practice and practice and practice writing my story (using the template from that first speech) and practice my public speaking.
Fifth, I learned how to write different aspects of my story (without the template) and eventually learned to give my speech without having to read it.
These steps not only helped me learn to tell my story. Telling my story helped me be able to talk with different media to tell my story to them and telling my story helped me with advocacy.
More on all these steps in the posts to come. But, if you want to skip ahead and read my story as told in The Washingtonian Magazine here is the link:
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/health/i-wanted-my-brain-back/
Read More - practice, practice, practice and sharing my story
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