Love’s Closed Door
After fourteen years of knowing each other, my sister has made her position unmistakably clear: she does not want me to know her, she has no desire to know me, and she wants me out of her life. She has reinforced this boundary repeatedly. By contrast, in just one year she went from meeting a stranger to agreeing to marry him. Yet after everything we shared over those fourteen years, she continues to insist that I leave her alone. Still, she speaks of wanting a picture-perfect wedding day surrounded by a “loving family.” Yet by her repeated choice to cut us out of her life, she actively prevents and makes impossible the very love and communion she says she desires.
Suicide After Concussion
When TBI Makes Suicide Feel Like the Only Option – And Why You Still Matter
I’ve met too many survivors of TBI that I met too late to still know them while they were alive. I met others that then didn’t show up the next meeting because they had lost their battle. They had encountered this living change surviving their injury and battling each day and found themselves part of an unfortunate statistic. I’ll share some of those statistics below. But they aren’t a statistic. Each one of them is a person. A person who loved and was and is loved. A person with a story. An incredible story. Even after their deaths, I learn from their stories, from their loved ones, from the legacies, and yes from their pain. The pain of living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) can feel like fighting a war inside your own head — one that no one else can fully see and even the patient can’t fully see or understand themselves at times. Some days the battle gets so heavy that ending it all starts to feel like the only way to find peace. I know this darkness. Many of us in the brain injury community do. In fact, almost every survivor I have met shares the exact sentiment in their early months of wishing they could just reach in their head and pull their own brain out. But I also know there is light, even though it is not always visible each day. It is there, even when not seen in the moment.
This post is not about glamorizing pain or pretending everything gets magically better. It’s about naming the real reasons suicide can feel rational after TBI — for both survivors and their caregivers — and then honestly laying out why staying here is still worth it. Because it is. There is hope, and you are not alone - many of us have felt those exact feelings, the exact darkness, the exact pain - even though your story is incredibly unique and deserving of being heard.
Repair Over Exile
Why Cutting Out a Sibling Is Almost Always the Wrong Choice
There’s a quiet epidemic happening in many families today: siblings cutting off siblings, family cutting off family. What often starts as “I just need some space” can slowly harden into permanent estrangement. While the person asking for distance may believe they’re protecting their peace, the reality is far more painful — for both sides.
Silent Birthdays
The Ache of Loving a Sister You Can’t Reach
Today is her birthday again.
I know the exact date without looking at a calendar. Some things just etch themselves into you. I wake up, go to pray for her, and there it is—another year where the words “Happy Birthday” sit heavy in my chest like stones I’m not allowed to throw. I type them out in my notes app sometimes. Delete them. Type them again. Then close the app and go make lemonade, because reaching out isn’t an option anymore and all I have left are these lemons. She asked me to leave her alone. And I’m trying—God, I’m trying—to respect that.
It wasn’t always this way. I used to communicate with her every day and she would communicate back with me each day. For years we were close as a brother and sister. We used to see each other often. Enjoy doing fun activities. I’d wish her not only happy birthday but wish her happy feast days, baptismal days, confirmation anniversary days - days she didn’t even know were happening that day until I’d wish it to her. It didn’t used to be silent.
But then came the end of her high school years and the first stretch of college.
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.
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.
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.