Manure, Sweat, and Surrender
Today I stepped outside with every intention of being useful. Just a simple chore—shoveling manure on our small farm. Something I used to be able to do for hours without thinking twice. Five minutes. That’s all it took today.
My arms burned. My legs turned to lead. The world started spinning. A pounding headache slammed into my skull. Sweat poured down my forehead, stinging my eyes, dripping off my face, soaking my shirt until it clung to my back like a second skin. And it was only 75 degrees outside. Not even hot by most standards.
I had to stop. Had to sit down, head between my knees, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Once again, my body had issued a hard stop I never asked for.
Sternly Misunderstood
Living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) changes everything. The headaches, the fatigue, the fog that clouds your thinking—these are the visible (or at least documented) struggles. But one of the deepest, most devastating pains often stays hidden: the crushing weight of being misunderstood by the people who matter most.
I never expected that the hardest part of recovery wouldn’t be the physical symptoms, but the way my words now land like grenades in conversations with those I love. What used to flow naturally—explaining my feelings, sharing my thoughts, resolving a disagreement—now feels like navigating a minefield with a map I can barely read.
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.
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.
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.