Dear Reader, The Life That Remains
Dear Reader,
After a brain injury, continuity becomes unreliable.
The wiring changes. What once aligned between mind and body no longer does. Or rather, it aligns differently. Familiar signals arrive out of order. Response lags behind intention.
The world narrows. Days recede into appointments: doctors, clinicians, specialists. Life becomes a revolving door that moves steadily but without choice. Each visit is a measure rather than a moment. Each doorway is another confirmation that the life once known has been recast.
The body is no longer private. It is inspected. Measured. Analyzed. Movement, posture, alignment are evaluated for compliance and correction. Explanations multiply. Variables accumulate. Care becomes both necessary and consuming.
This is tiring. It is also disorienting.
Comparing who we are now with who we were before carries a particular cost. The comparison feels reasonable, even responsible, yet it asks the present to compete with someone who no longer exists. Ground is lost that way. The self becomes smaller by contrast. More provisional.
I know this. I still return to that comparison more often than I intend.
With brain injury, the body occupies a dual role. It is where the injury occurred. It is also where recovery must take place. There is no neutral ground.
Healing is not linear. Progress is expected to be tracked, demonstrated, justified. Metrics appear. Benchmarks are offered. Effort is not the issue. Documentation is not the issue. The problem is how tightly recovery is tethered to productivity, as though worth and legitimacy must be proven through output.
Productivity complicates everything.
For those injured after years of adult functioning, loss is not abstract. Ease is remembered. Competence without calculation is remembered.
After injury, tasks that once required no thought now require planning.
Some require negotiation.
I love showers. That has not changed.
What has changed is what they require. Balance is no longer automatic. A prior transplant introduced another layer of vigilance that did not recede with recovery. Crossing from stable ground into a slippery space demands attention. So does leaving it.
During those transitions, attention cannot wander. There is no room for anticipation or distraction. Each step, each shift of weight, each handhold must be deliberate.
Practices form around this. Small habits. Predictable sequences. Not to reclaim what was lost, but to work within what is available.
Many worry about returning to full capacity. The concern is understandable. It also rests on a false premise.
There is no return to a former self. There is no single category of limitation. There is only the capacity that exists now.
Learning how to live inside it matters. Making something workable from it matters.
That work counts. Even when it is quiet. Even when it is repetitive. Even when it is invisible to anyone but the person doing it.
With recognition,
Someone Like You
Written by: Gina Coston
Person living with a brain injury
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I wrote this piece to capture what it feels like to live with a brain injury: the way ordinary tasks demand constant attention and careful negotiation. It is a reflection on the quiet persistence of the body, and on learning to honor the effort that is often invisible, even to ourselves.
