You know how sometimes people say they want to “pull out their hair”? For brain injury recovery I have felt that so strongly that I want to pull my hair out so strongly it pulls my brain out with it too.

I sat in a brain injury support group recently and listened as someone new to all of this poured out their pain. Their words came out in broken pieces — the exhaustion, the confusion, the rage at their own brain, the way everything that used to be simple now felt impossible. They were raw and honest in a way that only someone still in the thick of it can be. Some sentences didn’t make sense. Words were out of place.