I really thought I'd blogged this before, but it turns out I put it on my Facebook page. I knew I had this somewhere and I was looking for it so I could print it and take it to the next workshop at the Hospital. It is a post that was written by one of the ladies on the SAH forum, and I asked if I could copy it because she is so eloquent! She is a solicitor who has been unable to go back to her previous job, but this is how she sees her life now:
"My brain works a bit differently to before. I can’t retain information as quickly, crowds tire me, my memory is poorer and the pace of my life needs to be slower. But all this is ok. I’m not stupid and my intellectual capacity is the same. Things are just a bit different.
I feel empowered when I tell people I have a brain injury. I look upon it as a measure of what I can achieve despite the SAH.
There’s no point in me pretending that everything’s going to be exactly the same as before and ‘putting it behind me’ as some people have suggested.
If people treat me as I was before the SAH and if I try to emulate all aspects of my life before the SAH, I am not going to cope and I will feel depressed. ‘Putting it behind me,’ will not help. Harnessing the experience of the SAH in a positive way will help me improve. Facing up to things is healthy. Sweeping things under the carpet is not, and problems do not go away in doing that.
I am not going to put the SAH behind me. It is going to be the very thing which drives me forward to achieving a better life than the one I had before the SAH.
A previous work colleague told me at her retirement party that you ‘can always play a new tune on an old fiddle!’ I intend to follow the advice!"
Wise words indeed.....
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