Newborn Tears
Lately, as my recovery inches along, I've noticed that although I often feel like a toddler, the toddler feelings at times feel... even earlier. Some days, it's less like being a feisty two-year-old and more like being a newborn all over again. That raw, brand-new-to-the-world stage where everything is basic, overwhelming, and completely dependent on the gentle people around you. It's humbling. It's exhausting. And weirdly, it's also kind of beautiful when I let myself see it that way.
Those Wide-Eyed, Wondering Stares
Newborns stare at faces, lights, shadows—with those huge, unblinking eyes—like they're downloading the entire universe one pixel at a time. No judgment, no rush, just pure taking-it-in.
Some recovery moments feel like that too. I'll catch myself staring at a wall, a window, my own hand, because my brain is slowly, slowly making sense of the world again. It's not blankness—it's deep processing. Curiosity mixed with caution. "What is this place? What am I in? What is going on?"
I try not to fight it. I let myself stare, let the brain do its newborn work of mapping reality one tiny piece at a time. Those staring sessions often lead to small breakthroughs later.
I Don’t Need a Nap!
Hey friends,
I’ve been thinking more about this whole “recovery feels like being a toddler” thing, and there’s one part that keeps hitting me harder lately: emotions. Toddlers don’t just have feelings—they have huge, unstoppable, all-over-the-body feelings that come with zero filter and very few words to match. And honestly? That’s exactly where my brain is right now too.
Those Giant, Wordless Emotions
One minute everything’s okay, and the next a wave crashes in—frustration, sadness, being overwhelmed, or even sudden joy—and it’s so intense I can barely breathe through it. My chest tightens, my face gets hot, tears might show up uninvited, or I just feel like I need to move or hide or yell but nothing comes out right. It’s like my brain is back in toddler mode: the emotion center is fully online and screaming, but the “let’s put this into calm sentences” part is still napping in the corner.
I catch myself doing classic toddler things without meaning to: crossing my arms tight, huffing, pacing in little circles, or just staring at the floor because saying “I’m upset” feels impossible. Sometimes the only thing that escapes is a shaky “I don’t know” or “It’s too much.” And that’s okay. It really is. Just like a toddler isn’t “bad” for melting down—they’re just overloaded—I’m not “bad”, my brain is failing at processing when the feelings get too big. It’s still wiring itself back together.
Stacking Blocks
Why My Brain Injury Recovery Feels Like Being a Toddler Again
If you’ve ever peeked into the world of brain injury recovery, you know it’s a wild, unpredictable ride. I’m still in the middle of mine, and lately I’ve realized something that makes me smile (and sometimes tear up): it feels exactly like being a toddler all over again. Not in a cute, “aww, look at the baby steps” way—though there are plenty of those in recovery sure—but in the raw, confusing, “what just happened?” kind of way. Let me walk you through it, because if you’re recovering too, or love someone who is, maybe this little comparison will help you feel a little less alone… and a little more hopeful.
The Sudden “Where Am I?” Moments
You know how toddlers sometimes wake up from a nap and have no idea how they got there? Raising five kids, I’ve seen this often in their toddler years. One minute they’re in the car, the next they’re in their crib at home, blinking in total bewilderment. They wake up from their nap and confusion is on their face as they look around at the bustle around them in this new room that is different than the quiet carseat they fell asleep in. That’s my life now with memory gaps.
I’m Not Normal
Three years. That’s how long it’s been since I felt like the version of myself that other people used to know.
A traumatic brain injury didn’t just knock me out physically—it rewired how I think, how I speak, how I show up in relationships, and even how I see myself. For a long time I described it the only way that felt honest: I have a broken brain. Some days I still feel like a toddler trapped in an adult body—full of big emotions, zero filter, and the constant fear that I’m never going to be “normal” enough for the people I love.
But here’s what I’ve learned in three years of messy, imperfect recovery: “normal” was never the goal. The goal was honest. The goal was trying. And the goal was slowly becoming someone I could look in the mirror and say, “You’re doing your best, and that’s enough today.” The goal wasn’t to be loved, but to love.
I’m Still Me, I’m Just Under Construction
I read her message three times before it really sank in:
“I honestly don’t know. Because on one hand stopping contact is never easy. But on the other hand continuing contact is so incredibly mentally exhausting for me because it’s such a cycle and it’s not manageable.”
Those words hit like a slow-motion car crash I couldn’t look away from. Not because they were cruel—they weren’t—but because I recognized the cycle she was describing. I helped create it. And right now, in the middle of my own TBI recovery years later, I’m finally learning why it kept happening even though there was nothing I could have done better then, and maybe still can’t now.
A traumatic brain injury doesn’t just scramble your memory or your balance. It rewires the way you feel, speak, and connect. As I learn more about these injuries I believe my frontal lobe took the hardest hit. The part that used to filter impulses, read social cues, and regulate emotions? Suddenly it was offline. What used to be a smooth conversation became a minefield of misfires: oversharing, under-reacting, emotional whiplash, forgetting what I said five minutes ago. I would reach out when I felt the weight of her abandonment of our friendship, be unable to contribute to help her when the overstimulation got too loud, then reach out again because the silence felt like drowning.
She felt every loop.
The TBI Lesson in “I am Legend”
The last blog talked about my experience feeling like being perceived as a Zombie.
It reminded me of another Zombie story in my life. A couple of years before I got hurt, we had a time where we had my youngest sister over to our house. We were browsing for a movie to watch with her and came across “I am Legend”. I hadn’t seen it since it had come out in 2007 but remembered it was a good action movie, captivating, and I had enjoyed it back then. But I couldn’t recall much more about it. Well, as we got into it, it was clearly a “Zombie” movie. Not like a regular Zombie movie, but still not necessarily the right movie to pick for her. We should have done a Rom-Com or something for my wife and her more I guess retrospectively. But unlike a stereotypical “Zombie” movie - this one is different, and I would now argue actually eerily similar to my TBI journey in some ways.
Lessons from 'I Am Legend' on Misunderstanding TBI Patients
In the eerie silence of a post-apocalyptic world, Will Smith's character in I Am Legend wanders the empty streets of New York City, haunted by creatures that were once human but now seem monstrous. These "Darkseekers," as they're called in the film, are victims of a virus that has stripped them of their humanity, trapping them in a state of rage and isolation. But what if I told you this sci-fi thriller can at times hold a mirror to the real-life experiences of those living with with a brain injury? Just like the “infected” Darkseekers in the movie, TBI patients often feel trapped by their symptoms, misunderstood by society, and desperately in need of a "cure" – or at least better understanding and support. In this blog post, I'll explore the movie's themes and draw some parallels to the often-invisible struggles of TBI survivors.
Why am I a Zombie?
I don’t remember much of the first couple of years from my injury. But I’m forever grateful that prior to my injury I had learned the skill of journaling from a leadership course I had attended for my job. This skillset would prove to be one among many TBI recovery skills that are often taught post-injury to Brain Injured patients that I had been blessed to develop ahead of time. These skills somehow miraculously assisted in being able to regain entry into my job after the initial months of recovery off even though barely functioning internally. I don’t have as many journal entries as I retrospectively wish I would have had from the first year, but from what I can gather as I reread these early ones, the bulk of my initial days were literally sleeping so not much to record anyway. 18+ hours on most days. Falling asleep in the middle of loud activity all around. My time awake was spent staring out the window, at nothing truly. Unable to focus. Every light too much. Each sound so painful. These spots in my vision distracting, draining, confusing. Unable to do much and with little company there often was not much to journal about beyond my kids and wife in the pieces I could gather and understand, but I also thought I “just” had a concussion and was just resting and getting better and then eventually “just” Post Concussive Syndrome and just need to keep resting and I’ll be better. I never knew what this was and would end up being.
Early on I could not watch anything. The TV made me sick physically. Each scene cut transition every 3 seconds was too quick to process, too overstimulating for me. In the first days, I recorded that my wife and I went to watch a movie and I had it turned off within five minutes unable to process even the sound with my eyes shut. Everything was too much. It hurt, made me nauseous, and was overwhelming in a way that is so difficult to describe.
Navigating Time After My Injury
Have you ever felt like time was slipping away, or that minutes stretched into hours during a mundane task? For most people, these are fleeting experiences. I remember when that used to be the case. But for those recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI), such distortions in time perception can become a daily reality, intertwined with memory challenges that make even simple routines feel overwhelming.
Today is Daylight Savings Time where we artificially adjust time. An “hour” of time just elapsed in less than a second. While not the same as these experiences of time within brain injury recovery, the reality experienced is often quite similar. How is it now an hour later without feeling like any time has passed and no idea how I got here in this new room or what I am doing? Weren’t we just eating? Imagine Daylight Savings Time adjustments occurring all of the time and unpredictably without warning. For caregivers repeating the same conversation with the patient, like the “Fall Back” hour, wasn’t it already this time of day??! This conversation again?!
For me, pondering the difficulties experienced from this phenomenon leads to the question of why this is happening? Why can’t I just experience time like normal again?
Whose Lens Are You Looking Through?
I recently attended a life-changing educational opportunity with thirteen other incredible professionals. After six months of coursework together, we met for a two-week capstone course on leadership.
On the first day together, we encountered an activity as a group together surrounding the importance of checking our perspectives, our lenses, that we are looking through. Depending on the color of lenses, different numbers on a page of paper were visible to different people. The reality didn’t change, but only with the correct lens color could all of the numbers be seen.
Circling the Drain
As a child I loved to play with the Coin Vortex Funnel donation stations that would often be found at a museum or zoo that our family would visit. For a penny, I could have minutes of entertainment. Watching the penny shoot down the shoot into a seemingly endless spiral. Around and around the coin would go. Often it would seem the coin was circling the same exact spots. Higher, lower. Around and around. From above, watching the coin circle, I would see the path. I could see what was coming up next.
A Little Closer to Death
Driving with my son yesterday to take him to basketball practice he suddenly asked, “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Are you a little closer to death?”
It caught me off guard. […]
www.creedthoughts.gov.wwwcreedthoughts
Some stories are worth telling even if they only ever end up in a word document no one else sees. Your story matters. You are not alone. Perhaps like mine, your story right now has just been written in a word document, or not written at all yet. Maybe you have been able to share it in a support group, or writing it down, or perhaps - just telling a family member or friend. Or maybe like many with brain injury you have found you don’t have those people to tell anymore and like Creed it is just a story being written for you right now. It’s your story. Author the best day you can today.
Welcome to Fog of Hope
There is hope in the fog! Welcome, you are not alone!
I’m still navigating my path, without many answers and unsure of tomorrow. But as I learn and share, I’m finding hope in the fog. Years ago, good things waited at the end of that drive in the fog—my now-wife. In this fog, good things exist too. They’re hard to see, hard to find, hard to accept—but they’re there. There is hope. You are not alone.