JFK Jr., Carolyn, and Me
In This Reflection:
A life-changing accident and the long road of rebuilding
Living with the invisible weight of brain injury
The disconnect between appearance and inner experience
Adapting to a world not built for neurological differences
Finding meaning and hope in ongoing recovery
Every July, the world remembers JFK Jr. and Carolyn.
And I remember the day I became someone new.
The day JFK Jr.'s plane went down is the same day I had my own crash. I was 18 years old, a regular kid who did well in school, worked hard, and was buzzing with excitement about college. I was driving to the county fair car races when we became the demolition derby ourselves.
I remember looking left, then right at the stop sign. I pulled out. A flash of white light from the right. It was a pickup that hit us over 70 mph straight into my passengers door. My childhood best friend in the passenger seat, came flying into me, unbelted. I sustained a traumatic brain injury with coup-contrecoup damage (meaning all 4 sides of my brain were damaged).
What followed were six years of relearning everything the world assumes you already know: how to read, write, walk, and talk. Ages 18 to 24, rebuilding myself from the inside out.
I live now with debilitating headaches, epilepsy, and spasticity. I know when the barometric pressure is dropping before any weather app tells me, my nervous system became its own instrument. I am a walking barometer. I carry earplugs, sunglasses, and a baseball hat everywhere I go. Quiet armor against the bright lights and sudden sounds that others don't even notice. To the outside world, I look completely normal. That is both a gift and an invisible weight.
Living with a brain injury means navigating a world not built for you, while appearing to belong in it perfectly. It is fascinating and relentlessly challenging all at once.
When I think about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, I think about the strange kinship of very different invisible struggles. They were two people who lived entirely in public view, both quietly aching for a private life the world simply wouldn't give them. Carolyn in particular carried that tension visibly, a woman of extraordinary grace who found herself consumed by a spotlight she never asked for, longing for space to simply exist. In my own way, I understand that distance, the gap between how the world sees you and what you are actually living. Their lives have come back into the spotlight recently with the new TV series, introducing them to a new generation. Annually, as the anniversary arrives, I find myself reflecting on what we can never truly know about another person's inner world, no matter how public or how ordinary they appear.
That is something a brain injury teaches you deeply: every person you pass is carrying something you cannot see.
I am a Hope Ambassador. I live each day with a traumatic brain injury and I live each day with hope. Not the hope that everything becomes easy, but the hope that hard things can still be meaningful. That rebuilding yourself, even slowly, even imperfectly, is one of the most extraordinary things a human being can do.
If you are reading this and you know this feeling, the invisible weight, the daily armor, the exhausting work of appearing fine, I want you to know:
Your story matters.
Your survival is not small.
And you are not alone.
Hope survives.
Written by: Holly Kostrzewski
Person living with a brain injury
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I write this as a Hope Ambassador because I believe our stories, the ones we carry quietly and invisibly, are the ones most worth telling. This anniversary arrives every year and instead of letting it pass in silence, I wanted to turn it into something that might reach someone else who is rebuilding, relearning, or simply trying to make it through the day.
