Here is my story: At the age of six years old, I was sexual abuse by two family members and the abuse was never told for I was raised in the Mennonite faith and the secrets behind the doors was kept hush hush and swept under the rug. At the age of seven by another family member I was hit on top of my front part of my head with a 2x4 piece of board with nails intact. All I can remember I was rushed to the emergency room and fell unconsciousness and laid in a coma from the blow to the head. I laid in a coma for six months and when I finally opened my eyes I lost 90% of my memories. I did not know my parents or my grandparents or siblings and when finally I was being discharge parents and grandparents had to teach me how to talk and walk all over again. I was shown family photo albums one after another. Not only was I diagnose with TBI after many tests that doctors and specialist ran on me-test results came out and they shared with my grandmother and father that I also may not recover a lot of my memories and have trouble in school and I did. I was there and then diagnose with Head Trauma Amnesia. Also diagnose with Dyslexia and how trouble reading numbers. When I started school I was being bullied every single day and even from the teachers. One cold winter day in the month of December of the year of 1970, I kicked a window in because kids knocked me down to the ground and removed my shoes and winter coat and left me laying there in the snow freezing. I got up from the snow and walked over to the fire-station where the children were allowed to wait inside and there was a glass screen door and I yelled out in tears rolling down my face, if they did not give my shoes or winter coat back I was going to kick the window in and that is exactly what I did. I ended cutting the main artery on the right ankle and lost a good amount of blood according to what my parents shared with me. It just happen that an off duty officer was driving home in the direction he usually do not take and he happen to hear all the screaming and yelling and saw a little girl laying on the ground which was me in my own blood. So the off duty police officer picked me in his arms and placed me in the front seat of his car and one of the kids parents jumped in the back seat of the police officer car holding a white towel around my ankle to put pressure on the ankle to help slow down the bleeding and all I can remember was apologizing to the police officer for getting blood on his seat.My parents were called and they shared the rest of the story with me. according to what they have told me that by the time they arrived to the hospital I was in surgery and I was placed in a coma and laid in a coma for three months. My ankle was shattered so the surgeon had to replace the ankle and have screws in the ankle. After the three months I woke up from my coma I had to stay in the hospital total close to six months. Finally, I was discharge and came home and again had another blow to my head because I fell and busted my head open close to the same area my head was busted opened the first time. However, I ended up quitting school in the 7th grade. I lived in fear walking to and from school. One day walking to school a gang of Black American girls jumped me and beaten me up severely and one Black girl name Judy kicked me in the head and I had to be rushed to the hospital because it threw me in a seizure. So this is my life. Today, I live with trust issues, live with phobias and fears and I am not one who makes friends easily. I build an imaginary box up around me to protect myself from every getting hurt again. I don't get close to people or let people grow close to me. My life and My world. Not a day goes by that I don't fight to survive. I have no relationship with my Adult children because all I get from them is negative feed back. "I ask For Nothing! "I take Nothing!
i found usung a pocket shirt help ,e figure out if i wqs was suppose to be where i spnt mosr of ,t time was ullsuin ubsr=tabt nubyte xould be acheivwd thru facetime if i coul see them and recog there eyes i coyl prolly do py again plah doh helprd know when im anxious
it is very hard for me. I liked myself before. I like myself a little now, I guess. I just stay really busy.; Hours in the gym because I can hardly read now. I was an academic. But now I am hyper.
I indeed had to let go of who I was before my brain injury. My chronic fatigue and sensitivity just really limited the things I can do so I really had to change even my passions to be more compatible with what I can handle now. And it really really hurts and was hard the hardest thing ever in my whole life to let go of those goals I used to have but now that I’m more used to the new me and my new goals I’m getting happier and happier
And it’s not like you have to change who you are and your core values its just sit you lean more toward certain life goals you might have had but weren’t prioritising before your brain injury
Ohh LeilAloha, ain’t that the truth? And trying to get others to understand this reality is near on impossible. My goals, which I was working so hard to achieve have evaporated.Some days I can ‘leap a building in a single bound’ other days I’m lucky to be able to crawl out of bed. Some think ‘well if you could yesterday, then why can’t you today?’ and I have simply given up on others ever comprehending this awful reality.
I am in the process (and probably will be for the rest of my life) of letting go of my former goals and it is not easy. On the good days I think “yea, I can still do that” but come the following day I pay for it in pain 10 fold. I still haven’t mastered that ‘acceptance’ bit. I am a stubborn %$#@& and I do not like being beaten. For me that final acceptance seems like admitting defeat and I find that fact depressing, but it seems I have to firstly admit I have no choice in the matter. Grrrrrrr. I HATE THIS REALITY.
Hey ya’ll. I am post-22 years, so this life is not new to me. I let go of my old self rapidly, because, in the beginning, I knew nothing else. I knew and remembered my husband and family, but little else. That sounds awful, when, in fact, it took away the transition. For a while, this was the only me i remembered, in a wheelchair, basically a big baby. I remember the big picture of my former life, with rare, random details, but the only me i truly know is this me. I know my story, because i’ve heard it often, and for years, it was just that, a story. Eventually, i personalized it, but by then, I knew, understood, and accepted who I am. The transition takes time.
I wish i could remember who i was before the head injury happened when I was 8 years old. I am 31 and still struggling. 
Yes I’ve been there. I’m sorry to hear that you would encounter people judging you like if you can do something one day why can’t you do it the other day. I certainly have a fear of that and think I psychically read other people’s minds about that same subject. But who knows my counselor even says that I need to stop thinking I can read minds and think these paranoid things are true when they’re probably not true. 
I think that my dad suffers a lot like you. He had a stroke which caused brain injury and family just really had no idea what he needed or what is problems were because he would never ever talk about it. What I’ve learned is that even if it feels like you’re about to die it’s so hard to do, you need to do what you can to communicate how you’re suffering or unable to do something or if someone else is offending or hurting you or doing something that’s keeping you from feeling healthy. Cheer up, you will find the support you need don’t give up. I even want to create more of an in-person get together of people like us where we simply have fun and enjoy life together in the ways that we can. Like for example maybe you’re like me and you miss having someone to socialize with in a fun playful way like playing basketball or swimming together or going for a walk together common I often think that brain injury people all need more physical fun where you’re more like moving but you’re less like thinking. Well I know for me specifically I have the least energy when I’m talking and thinking especially if it’s about knowledge I have to access from the past or plan in the future not just like in the moment kind of things. Because it requires the part of my brain that was injured to think. And it can’t handle that very long. And I can’t handle dealing with stress really at all. So if it’s at all stressful it has to stop and I have to go pee in my alone quiet space. But there are probably certain activities that would just help you feel at peace and enjoy life more but there just might be unusual and hard-to-find to do with other people or get support in doing them alone or something like that please let me know if you think of anything I’m here to help whenever I can. Aloha, Merl
I am well past that stage (20 years post) and fortunately, my husband divorced me soon after. Releasing my past was easy because I learned long ago that the past is the past, and all there is, is the present and the future. I can never be who I was. Releasing the past is a conscious decision. Who I was is gone. Once I accepted that, it was gone.
I am working on it in baby steps. I do, however wonder what my life would turned out if the brain injury never happen. I don’t like asking for help because some people can be cruel and they look at me like I am stupid. My own daughters have abandoned me and don’t want a relationship with me and a good friend no longer a friend. I stutter and have a very hard time making conversations because in them middle of conversation what I am trying to say comes out all wrong and I forget in a split second what I wanted to say. I stay away from people and don’t make friends so quickly. I stay to myself.
I battled it for three years and pretended a lot. Then that got too exhausting. I’m not sure what the new plan is but it will be better lol.
When I close my eyes and nobody and nothing is there… I am still there and I know that it is me. That might sound irritating right now but it is helpful right now to me.
You can never truly let go. I’ve come to a better realization of what’s never coming back again and that’s what the hardest thing to do after any kind of injury.
I will never let go of who I was because it will always be a goal of mine to gain as much function as I had. The way i’ve ever dealt with this complete change is patience.
If you can give yourself enough time to keep looking forward, your focus upon who you were will lessen. Patience is very important to recovery from any kind of injury. If you never give yourself time, you’ll never let go to find another way to do something.
My family was told I wasn’t going to wake up from my coma and that i’d possibly stay dead the 4th time. -I woke up. They then told me i’d most likely never walk again, nor get the use of my left side back to me. I focused on that and now I can even run so if you keep looking back, something great could have passed you by or helped you with any trouble your having now.
I’ll never let go of who I was before, it’s still a dream in the making and i’m getting close just by giving myself time to Work on coming back like that. Deal with letting go by giving yourself time to find ways to better live now! Patience is needed ever so much with everything and you’ll be able to move on and never forget what strength you used to keep going. Award yourself! Your still here! Never forget how much further you can go if you remember you need to look forward more than backward, to step ahead in life. Hard to forget what troubles you may have now but look at c what you can do for them. That is how I can let go, move my focus.
Yes you are right keeping moving with activity helps it is when still things get worse.
I also have lost friends and have an odd relationship with my family. Also mid way through I can forget what I was talking about it is very frustrating. And no one outside really understands what it is like living like this. Through no choice just it happened.
Very encouraging words.
For me I had to accept this is how it is and also my future is over and I didn’t get to have one.
Like I had to equally accept no I’m not the same and that no my future isn’t the same.
I’m not explaining it well.
I was injured in 12th grade so I also had to accept the potential of the rest of my life vanishing.
I have better and worse days.
For me a lot of it was accepting I couldn’t do things and what I do instead and what that means for who I am. For example I used to read and exercise a lot. I can’t do those things now. Instead I watch movies and color.
I wish I could be optimistic but for me it’s more this is how it is you can’t change it.
I felt a lot of shame and guilt overall. Because I used to be so much more. Mostly. I’m just annoyed other people can do things I can’t now. I’m jealous they have control over their lives more than I do.
Anyway. For me letting go of who I was was accepting I’m not that person. That person isn’t me. It gets harder to remember exactly what she was like as time goes by anyway. And what being normal is like. The less I remember that I used to not have noise light sensitivity. The less I remember that person could do things I can’t.
I can’t say ‘acceptance’, more that I’m resolved to the fact that things have improved as much as they are going to. Like you I have better days and worse days, and at times the shame, guilt and to a degree, self loathing weigh very heavily. I still attempt to push myself (often too much) which just seems to reinforce that I can’t do as before, but still that ‘acceptance’ is not acceptable to me. Tsk. which may sound like an oxymoron, but having proof and accepting that proof are two different things
Well I was seven years old when my injury to my brain than again when I was around thirteen years old…bullies who I call cowards jumped me and kicked me the head a few times that laded me in the hospital by ambulance because it caused me to go into having a seizure. Now that I am adult I have no choice to accept it. Can’t go back and change the past. I learn to live with it…to accept the fact my mind don’t work as well I would like it too. It just hurts that people even family included treats me like I am fragile and they have abandoned me…I’ll sit here sometimes at my desk and wonder what my life would have been like if the brain injury never have happen. The fat did happen it is out of power to change it. I am still me living in the same body that the good Lord gave me…but my brain changes were made after the injury. I stopped making myself frustrated trying to racking my brains remembering the memories of faces and events that my sisters remembers well. I have accepted that I can’t remember those memories but it is good that my sister shares the memories I can’t remember we shared together growing up. See, I have racing thoughts…it seems to appear my brain don’t slow down…it keeps going like the energy battery. It is what it is. However, I am very good memorizing bible verses.
Well, you are better than me, I still rack my brain trying to remember things…all it does is make me crazy. Its interesting and neat that you are good at memorizing bible verses. I am not good at memorizing anything. I think most of us things we are still good at. Sometimes we get so focused on the things we have trouble with, we don’t spend enough time being thankful for the things we can still do. So, I want to thank you for reminding me of that.