Me 1997 right before leaving for Minneapolis. Sporting my Mullet and Where’s Waldo Shirt
Reaching
The day begins.
The only sign I’m alive
is the smell of coffee
seeping through the thick, hot air.
My mind is weary from sleep
I didn’t get through the night.
Thinking
and tossing in the sheets.
Smoke drifts
from my cigarette,
effortlessly into the air.
I watch it carefully,
wishing it were me.
I trudge from room
to room
surveying my soul.
Like a forest,
full of hope and promise.
A small tree reaching for the light,
struggling against the tall canopy-
for a piece of the sky.
A moment and place
that no one hands you.
It can all be yours-
for the price of being humbled
in your own humanity.
A walk of shame in your step,
the fall from grace in your demeanor
and finally a grin
of satisfaction
in the face of defeat.
About www.recoveryofthemind.com
Live Life so you never have to say, “I should have.”
I have lived like this, because at an early age I was brutally beaten and kidnapped while walking to school and acquired a traumatic head injury with a seizure disorder and a lifetime of recovery. I live despite what everyone believed I would become. You would not know any of my struggles or what I have overcome and face daily, if you met me on the street or spoke to me for any amount of time. People with Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) are mostly anonymous. You can rarely tell that anything has happened to them or that they may need extra support or patience, they are strong, intelligent, kind people, living in all shapes, sizes, colors, and sexual orientation, out there defying the odds daily. Their lives often have been turned upside down by their head injury and they are seeking or had to find a new normal and themselves all over again. I hope to be one voice that speaks out for them/us in a World that is not listening, understanding, or providing much in the way of assistance to people with TBI when we are in need.
As a writer who observes all people and works with people with disabilities for the past forty plus years, I have noticed that those with TBI are often misunderstood and some of the most underfunded among disability groups in the country, and I want to help change this.
I hope to inspire people to live well against all odds and those odds are treacherous mountains to climb, but I am here to say you can summit them!
Recoveryofthemind.com 