This was published over a year ago, but I kind of missed it! Laura and I met when she wrote this, but I didn’t really tune into what came of our meeting because I was super focused on Evan’s story. I want to highlight the sidebar that Laura wrote to Evan’s piece, LISTENING TO BRAIN INJURY SURVIVORS, also published in the Spring 2011 edition of Brandeis Magazine. She writes, “We need to listen to what people like Tessa Venell and those with even mild brain injury tell us about their lives. Many of my research participants tell me that brain injury survivor support groups are important sources of community and hope. When these groups incorporate activities that support cognitive and emotional healing, they can help to fill the gap created in our medical model approach to brain injury rehabilitation.”
Since I’ve started to work at MAB Community Services, a non profit that works to create opportunities for people with brain injuries and other disabilities, I’m feeling much closer to this project. This is because my office is right in the Ivy Street School–the school that MAB operates for high school-aged students with acquired brain injury–and so I’m taking more time to actively work on this project. I decided to redouble my efforts to make this web space space more active, like we kept the GREEN REASON blog active during our film project. I think this more regular writing–and tweeting, too!–can help me crank more brain injury story widgets: get me thinking more about the book, and if I’m thinking about it all the time, I will be making progress. I had a great interview last week with Dr. Bullis, my Neurobehavioral Psychologist from when I was at Braintree Rehab. It was so good to see him! He did, however, seem to pose my telling this story as part of my recovery. I think it’s just a cool thing to do. It seems like Dr. Bullis likes talk about this as much as I do; is a confirmation that the work he’s doing is good and it’s right.
I’m still having a really hard time thinking about the outline, but once I can make this, and couple with the three to five sample chapters–that we already have!–we will have a nice package to present to a publisher, or to an agent who can represent us to find a publisher.
