For over thirty years the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) has led the nation in observing Brain Injury Awareness Month by conducting public awareness campaign in March of each year.
The theme for the campaign is Change Your Mind providing an awareness platform for educating the general public about the incidence of brain injury and the needs of people with brain injuries and their families and Individuals
I shall never forget when I first became aware of just how important it is that I share my story of my mother’s tragic accident, when she lapsed into a coma at the age of two, while her parents were living in an underground dugout in Woods County, Oklahoma where their family was in the Land Rush of Oklahoma in 1908.
I was over-awed, after sharing my mother’s story, at a Christian writer’s conference in 2010. A young woman approached me and told me how grateful she was that I had told my story that day because her daughter had been in an automobile accident that caused her to be disabled for life yet she was soon to become a new mother.
A year later I saw her again and she said that somehow it was working out with their family and the new grand baby.
It helps knowing someone else has experienced what you are going through.
Not long after that experience I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room next to a young woman. Being the perpetual story teller that I am, I began sharing my story about my mother’s brain trauma.
I noticed she became speechless while I told my story.
After I finished she said “there’s a reason you just told me that story. I am helping my sister-in-law, who was brain damaged in an auto accident to raise her teenage daughter.”
She confirmed how important sharing my mother’s story really is.
It took me a long time to find out what happened to my childlike mother but one thing I will always know she loved me so much and wanted to do better but didn’t know how. I shall never forget her blinding tears when we went to an orphanage.
I would probably not be here today had it not been for my parent’s neighbors matching them up after my maternal grandfather died leaving my thirty-nine year old mother with no family support system. My paternal grandmother also had just passed away leaving my already ill father with no one to care so it was an easy match.
But anyway my sister, Alice, and I came into this world in a most unusual setting and we both vividly remember the taunts and stares of other children because of our funny clothes and everything that goes with being poor.
Children can be cruel.
I don’t think anyone knew what had happened to mother but the school yard bullying hurt us both to the core.
Being a child is hard enough but standing out in a crowd hurts.
What I am here to say is that what happens to someone else can just as easily happen to you. To think not is to be naive.
I recall one summer in the early 80’s when three young people in this area had accidents that caused them to lapse into a coma resulting in permanent brain damage.
Sometimes just hearing someone else’s story gives us the courage to go on. We should not be so afraid to reach out, to share where we came from.
After all “we are all angels flying with only one wing and we can only fly embracing each other.”
Whatever happens to us can be a tool we can use to lift other’s to their feet, out of depression and lead us to a brighter day.
Where will my story lead I do not know but one thing I know is that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and He always gets me to the right place at the right time.
Contact Sarah at [email protected]