When your life has been uprooted by brain injury and you don’t recognize the person in the mirror anymore, acceptance of the new you can seem like an impossible task. This book offers hope for those struggling with an unexpected, unwelcome new life. Accepting brain injury may not be easy, but it is possible. As an author, long-term brain injury survivor Carole Starr accompanies readers on their journey, offering gentle encouragement, hard-won wisdom and numerous strategies that survivors, caregivers and professionals can use. To Root & To Rise is a book you’ll want to refer to again and again.
Many brain injury survivors struggle with reading and Carole is no exception. To help survivors succeed reading this book, Carole made most of the chapters short. She divided the longer chapters into sections, so they can be processed one small chunk at a time. A larger font size improves readability and there are spaces between each paragraph, to reduce the overwhelmed feeling that can come from looking at too much text.
To Root & To Rise is more than a book; it’s also a workbook. The questions in each chapter allow readers to take Carole’s strategies and apply them to their own experience. These questions can be answered on ones’ one, with family members, with rehabilitation professionals, or with a brain injury support group. This format makes To Root & To Rise a powerful resource, not only for survivors, but also for caregivers and professionals.
Details
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Item | TRTR |
ISBN# | 978-0-9986521-0-8 |
Pages | 226 |
Year | 2017 |
To Root & To Rise: Accepting Brain Injury
Preface—Uprooted
Introduction
Chapter 1 Defining Acceptance
Chapter 2 The First Year: If I Knew Then What I Know Now
Chapter 3 Word by Word: The Journey toward Acceptance
Chapter 4 Facing Forward: Overcoming Denial
Chapter 5 Beyond Denial: Lost in the Middle
Chapter 6 Resolutions for Brain Injury Survivors
Chapter 7 Word Power: Change your Words, Change your Brain
Chapter 8 Crafting a New Life
Chapter 9 The Brain Injury Portfolio: Documenting Progress, Pride & Purpose
Chapter 10 Transforming Grief: Coping with Brain Injury Anniversary Day
Chapter 11 Oh, The Things People Say
Chapter 12 In a Different Light: The Power of Humor
Chapter 13 A Glimmer of Good: Finding Silver Linings
Chapter 14 Choosing Gratitude
Chapter 15 If At First You Don’t Succeed, Letting Go May Be What You Need
Conclusion
Appendix—List of Workbook Topics
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
Excerpt from To Root and To Rise - Accepting Brain Injury by Carole J. Starr
Defining Acceptance
Acceptance is an abstract concept that’s hard to define. What does accepting brain injury really mean? What does acceptance look like? How do you know when you’ve accepted your injury?
Acceptance is a term that gets thrown at brain injury survivors a lot. Perhaps you’ve heard statements like ‘You have to accept what’s happened to you’ or ‘It’s time to accept your brain injury and move on’. Statements like that make it sound so easy. We all know it’s incredibly difficult. The first step in moving toward acceptance is being clear about what it is. Let’s start by defining it.
Acceptance is acknowledging the reality of a situation. It’s about recognizing the difference between what can be changed and what can’t. It’s being able to say—without any internal resistance— ‘It is what it is’.
There are many misconceptions about acceptance. When I first heard the word acceptance, here’s what I thought about it:
It turns out that my ideas about acceptance were wrong. Here’s what I’ve learned about brain injury acceptance:
My favorite definition of acceptance comes from one of its synonyms: the word acquiescence. It’s derived from the Latin word that means ‘to take rest in’. We’ve reached acceptance when we’ve found our own place of peace, even as the storms of brain injury swirl all around us.
Defining acceptance is the beginning of the journey. Now that you know where we’re going, it’s time to focus on moving in that direction. The rest of this book is focused on strategies that can lead toward accepting brain injury.