To Root & to Rise: Accepting Brain Injury, Paperback

Description

Accept brain injury? No way
Accept brain injury? I know I need to, but how?

If you're coping with brain injury-traumatic brain injury, post-concussion syndrome, stroke, brain tumor, other brain trauma-and can relate to either of the statements above, keep reading, because this book was written for you.

It may feel like acceptance means giving in to brain injury, giving up on healing or resigning oneself to a ruined life. It's none of those things. Acceptance is looking at brain injury through a different lens. While acceptance may not change the reality or the challenge of brain injury symptoms, it can make them easier to live with. Acceptance can mean the difference between a mournful life looking backward and a meaningful life moving forward.

In To Root & To Rise, long-term brain injury survivor Carole Starr walks beside readers through the brain injury acceptance process, offering gentle encouragement, hard- won wisdom from her own journey and numerous strategies that survivors, caregivers and professionals can use. Tips and strategies include:

• Recognizing what acceptance is and what it isn't
• Getting through the first year after brain injury
• Moving past denial
• Coping with grief
• Creating a new life
• Documenting and celebrating progress
• Responding to unwelcome comments
• Finding silver linings
• Letting go of the past and moving forward

Each chapter in To Root & To Rise is short, since many survivors struggle with reading and remembering long texts. The font size in the print version is larger than average, to improve readability. There are also spaces between each paragraph, to reduce the overwhelmed feeling that can come from looking at too much text. Carole made these design decisions to make this book as readable as possible for brain injury survivors.

To Root & To Rise is more than a book. It's also a workbook. The optional questions in each chapter encourage readers to take Carole's strategies and apply them to their own experience. These questions can be answered on one's own, with family members, with rehabilitation professionals, or with a brain injury support group.

To Root & To Rise is a powerful resource you'll refer to again and again.

About the author

Carole Starr's life changed forever in 1999, when she sustained a brain injury in a car accident. She was unable to continue her life as a teacher and amateur musician. It took Carole many years to accept her brain injury and the new person she became. She's reinvented herself by focusing on what she can do. She's now an inspiring keynote speaker and the founder and facilitator of Brain Injury Voices, an award-winning survivor education, advocacy and peer mentoring volunteer group.