My Journey to Appreciation

The last entry shared the difference between accepting and appreciating one’s self-identity.  As a survivor of 21 years, I have reached the point of appreciation of my identity after brain injury, but it was a long journey.  This article will share a summary of my journey to appreciation in the hope that it can provide inspiration.

When the injury happened, I was a high school senior (12th grader) and was already at a transition point in my life.  Filled with youthfully ambitious pretension, the plan was to launch out of the small town I felt stuck in and shine my talent upon the world, and when brain injury occurred it delayed my launch date, but I refused to give up the momentum, figuring that “a bump on the head” wouldn’t hold me back.  It was temporary.  There was a plan prior to the accident and no reason why it couldn’t continue.  I was Lethan — the actor — and would move on to at least attempt, and hopefully do, great theatrical things.

But did I still want to be an actor?  Didn’t matter, and I didn’t even explore that question.  Why should I?  I had diligently worked at this craft for half of my long eighteen years — that’s almost a decade of my life (please do read the sarcasm)!  It was what I was made to do, my plan, nay, it was my destiny!  I was too strong to let this setback damage my core drives, and theater would always be my thing!

I was in denial.

It’s important to recognize that this wasn’t a denial that the brain injury had happened, but I refused to acknowledge that it was a life changing event.  I insisted on viewing it as a blip, a skip, a bump in life, and I convinced myself that everything would be back to normal once I healed enough.  It just might take a little bit of time.  I accepted that the injury occurred, but refused to recognize that it had permanent effects.  

And this view was encouraged by other people.  Friends, teachers, acquaintances spouting words of encouragement — “Don’t worry, you’ve got this,” — “Strong person like you won’t let this keep you down,” — “You’ll be back to your old self in no time!”  I don’t fault anyone for saying these words, as they are what one says to offer support and a positive outlook.  More than that, most believed that the words were true, and that was kind, but gave me false expectations.  I was convinced that I wouldn’t experience the effects of the accident for all my life, that I would emerge from recovery the same as before.

But this is not how brain injury works.  A survivor will almost certainly experience lifelong affects of the injury.  Brain injury causes changes.  I choose these words carefully, and notice that I do not say, “The survivor was changed by the injury.”  The survivor is still the same person, but that person has, and will, continue to experience changes.  My performance piece Who Am I, Again? begins and ends with the statement, “I am Lethan.” I use this phrase because it insists on a permanence of self-identity, but that said, a stable self-identity does not mean an unchanging personality.  The truth is that every person constantly goes through changes in his or her life — discovering preferences, learning skills, forming relationships — all these and more indicate changes, but it is important that the core identity of a person is recognized as constant.  Brain injury causes changes, but it does not change who that person is — I am I.

I emphasize this because learning to adapt to the changes caused by brain injury can create questions about one’s self-identity.  It can feel like qualities that are viewed as a necessary part of a person are either no longer present or have fundamentally changed.  A survivor may even be conscious of these changes, but not want to acknowledge them because the previous quality is a part of how that person has defined him or herself.  This can cause the survivor to cling to former qualities that may have changed as after the injury, and refusing to acknowledge changes may create conflict or stress.

This is confusing, so for clarity, I’m going to explain it again, but in another way.  

We all change over the course of life, and most times this change can be accepted because it occurs in a gradual manner.  Granted, there may be a few times in every life when, in an instant, there is a “big change” that occurs, but most times we can account for the events that led to this “big moment”.  Yet when brain injury occurs, big changes will become apparent throughout the rehabilitation process, but they don’t have the series of surrounding events that add context for these changes.  Sure, after brain injury the reason could be stated as, “Well, you had brain injury,” but often the event of the injury isn’t remembered by the survivor, and its hard for an unremembered event to provide sufficient rational for an unbidden change.  What’s more, if a survivor is told, “Everything is going to be fine and just like before,” as described above in my experience, unanticipated changes can cause greater confusion, angst, and frustration.  This can lead a survivor to attempt to deny that the injury affected his or her life — “Sure, I had brain injury, but I’m fine now.  It was just a bump on the head,” — and by not admitting that these changes happened, a survivor may hang onto habits or tendencies that they remember as a defining feature, even if holding onto such a habit is no longer a positive experience.

As explained above, a habit I can clearly cite in my experience that caused me to deny my changes was my love of theater.  Sure, I still loved theater after the accident, but didn’t have the same passion, had lost some of the onstage charisma, and the drive to explore the art was completely missing— acting had become a thing that sometimes I did, even though I never felt good about my work.  Yet I refused to acknowledge that the need to perform as an actor was no longer a part of who I am.

This did eventually change, but I can’t pick out a specific moment when I decided that I no longer was an actor, as my move from denial and toward acceptance of the new situation was gradual, a change that could be accepted over time.  If pressed to provide my rational, I think it grew from not feeling comfortable among my peers in theater, finding a spectacular team of professors at my university that supported me in alternate subjects, and from just trying new things — but I was eventually able to recognize that theater, well... it just wasn’t my thing anymore.  My accident had messed up my plans and now I need to do something else.

This was acceptance.

I accepted that my accident had caused changes in both my passions and talents, and these changes hindered my intent to be a stage actor.  Now it was time to find something new, and there were many paths to explore — music composition, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, political science, law... Each subjects touched on something I enjoyed, but nothing gripped me the same way theater had — I never felt the same completeness, yet had to accept that the accident had ruined, or at least had changed my relationship with the theater.  After all, I was alive, and this was one of the conditions I had to accept in exchange for this life.

Eventually I found Storytelling, and it became a new passion that was a great joy, but it still felt like a substitute.  Theater was no longer an option, and I had to accept that now storytelling is what I do.  It was a second choice, and one that had to be accepted.

When this acceptance morphed into appreciation is similarly difficult to pinpoint.  In Scene 32 of Who Am I, Again, the character of Larry states his realization that his accident, “...kinda made me who I am today, / and I’m okay with that.”  For dramatic effect, it would be fun to say that it was this interview that inspired my appreciation, but in truth it was several years after composing the piece when the transition to appreciation fully occurred in my being.  What I do know is that the source of this change was recognizing how I could use my experience to help other people.  That the injury didn’t need to be something I attempted to ignore while it hampered daily life, but by embracing the experience I could better learn from what had happened and use it as a base from which to build a new life.  I came to recognize that the knowledge gained from the injury could help other people who are new to the journey of survival, and by helping others, I am still finding ways to help myself.

Being a survivor is a part of my identity, and I don’t need to hide that.  It does not define me, and I will not let it limit me, but I will appreciate the knowledge it has granted me.  This does not mean appreciating the injury, but recognizing what the experience has granted — a rare understanding of life that can be used to can help fellow survivors navigate the murk of recovery.  By helping others, I can find joy and peace with who I am.

I appreciate who I am and what I am able to share.

Those are my thoughts, and I hope they help you.  If you enjoyed, please share this posting and/or leave a comment.