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.
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.