Mom’s death taught me that I wanted to live. If death could come as unexpectedly for me as it had for her, I knew I wanted to live my life with as much joy as possible and use my gifts to make a difference. I knew deeply that both my parents would want that for me.

So I fought even harder to rehabilitate. Living fatigued by pain and feeling incapable of accomplishing my goals was not how I wanted to live my life. 

I learned to advocate for myself and sought out new doctors and treatments. I refused to give up when progress was slow and people told me it was likely that my condition would not improve. I sought answers to my questions and found a community of folks around the world whose lives had also been changed by brain injury and persistent post-concussive symptoms. 

I marveled at the new information coming out about concussion recovery that was not readily available when I first hit my head - empowering me to know that because of neuroplasticity it would be possible to re-train and heal my brain. I just had to find the right providers to determine the roots of the dysfunction and help me. 

The next three years were wrought with difficult truths, like diagnoses of dysautonomia, POTS, and chronic migraine. There were ups and downs; times of light and dark. I persisted. I learned to encourage my brain to keep going rather than chastise it for failing me. I pushed my limits and slowly built tolerance to stimulating environments, music, and functioning in normal life. 

And I kept writing songs. I wrote about my Mom; I wrote about love; and I wrote about hope. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and this unexpected development out of our control was forcing everyone to slow down, I found it to be an eerily similar experience to my own concussion journey. So I wrote a soothing song about accepting how things change. Writing to share my experiences and help others gave me purpose.