ON WRITING

My writing career began because of a mother’s worry.

Like most parents, I want the best life imaginable for my children. As a child psychiatrist and a survivor of childhood trauma, I know the long-term effects of adverse events in childhood. While I was actively recovering from my brain injury, I worried about how my kids were dealing with the changes in me and in how our family worked. But I was too injured to do anything about it. I also noted that none of the medical professionals that I saw, of which there were many, during my rehabilitation, ever expressed concerned about how my kids were coping or how my family was functioning. Once I was able to read and be on the computer again, I was surprised by how few resources there were on parenting after a brain injury.

When the world became quiet and still during the Covid Pandemic, I felt the best I had since my injury. I began to write a workbook about parenting after a brain injury. I wrote about all the things I wish someone had helped me and my husband with after my accident - like how to talk to my kids’ teachers about what was going on at home. It’s still a work in progress. Through my writing, I became aware that I needed to process my TBI experience more than I needed to complete this workbook at that time.

I still intend to finish this book so I would love to hear from parents with TBIs and kids of parents with TBIs about things they wish they had known or questions they needed answered.