Pictures Above: 1.) Joan Nagy (Mom) and Amy in a picture from 1973 copied from The Cape Gazette April 2005. 2.)  Amy at Memorializing our Mother at a Garden the People of Milton and her Friends gave us after she died in 2000. 3.) Amy’s Graduation form College with Mom and Jan in Salisbury, 1995. 4.) Amy’s First Christmas after TBI 1973 with Mom and Herbie the Hamster.

As I begin the Month of March, I have a lot on my mind. It’s TBI Awareness Month and I have so many goals to accomplish with daily posts to my Blog about the things that I find peace in and the things that me, my family, friends, and other TBI survivors and their families go through after having and Living through Traumatic Brain Injury. On top of my writing goals there is work and on call for the whole month. Then the Conference on March 12th at Dover Downs in Dover, Delaware; where I am honored to be a co-Presenter for a Break Out session about my Blog and the role of social media in Recovery and Support of People and their Families with TBI. Then there is refinancing my home if possible. There are so many things to accomplish this month I am hoping to get a post Every Day but I will need all of my energy, so I’ll do what I can to Honor the Month and the Survivors and Families, Mine included.

One thing I’d like to mention is that my family and I, rarely discuss any of o my writing, speaking engagements, my job, my goals or my struggles with my TBI or theirs for that matter. I reflect on the absence of my family and their awareness or maybe fear of thinking about the past. Some parts of it were so incredibly scary and traumatic to ponder. We all have our demons and I am sorry that they don’t wonder about the importance of how this journey has been to me and saddened that I am not able to broach the topic with them. It is not so much unchartered territory but simply put it is No Man’s Land ,for some of us and when trying to discuss these topics brings unmentionable pain for all involved, well then I think apathy sets in and fear of losing what you do have. Silence truly is golden and Ignorance Bliss. So I throw it out to the masses to judge, recognize, overcome, or discover your own truth in your own lives living with a survivor or your own TBI. You also can discover my many truths, which I have come to bare and for which I am happy to share.

It is better for me, if no other in my family to be able to get it out and try to help others. I can’t judge them we all experience our own loss with this horrific disintegration of who we were before TBI and who we may have been if TBI or Violence had not ever picked us up and threw us down, making us all learn to walk on new ground.
Here is a Poem I wrote last Fall 2014.

The Day As It Should Be

Today I woke up and hurt all over.
No, I did not mind, because I woke up, to smell the rain.
I slugged down the stairs, the cat intertwined in my feet
I reached to tug on her ear; she looked at me quietly, making me smile.
Pouring a cup of coffee, breathing in deeply,
Taking a long slow swig, the taste of a wonderful day begins.
Sitting on the porch trying not to think too hard, I like a good,
Slow start. I sip my coffee.

Driving to work, I relax, as cars pass, their rush to nowhere, I let them.
The day was overflowing the brim with meetings, support needs, emails, and I sat tackling all that it gave and tried to take, with the help of good people, it passed quickly.
Riding home after a second meeting, I realize how many planes
Are in flight traveling in circles, gray, graceful, masses in the sky;
Looking so out of place against the beauty of the canvass
They seemed to occupy.
I look for my red winged black bird on the bridge; my good luck bird is not found.
Cars pass, I decompress from the hurry of my day.
The sky seems different as the day did, there is a change going on,

Its energy sparkles in the air like water reflecting off the bay on a sunny day.
I find myself watching the sky ahead of me, the orange, red, blues, are just too beautiful, to not pay attention to.
Fall is in the skies and the birds by the hundred is flight,
I stop on Route 5, to just breathe and let it soak through me.
The day was as it should be and I was so ever-present
And attentive to its beauty.