Part 1: The Marathon is Over. Time to Dance! By Jesse Huffman
MindfulMarch Community Story Special
When I took part in LoveYourBrain’s Yoga series almost three years ago, I could barely move through the poses, let alone move past the nausea, dizziness and anxiety that had swallowed up my “normal.” After sustaining at least 12 mild concussions since middle school, two more in 2017 had tipped the scales into post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and a traumatic brain injury (TBI) diagnosis, unhinging life as I knew it.
If you’d asked me then if I wanted to change everything back to how it was before those injuries, I wouldn’t have hesitated to say yes. The question was more like what wouldn’t I do to regain everything I had lost. I had been a highly-motivated, hyper-functional guy— defined by the capacity to ride all morning, work all afternoon, pick up my stepson from school and cook dinner. Then repeat.
A year ago, I wrote about adapting my 20-year yoga practice to my new physical parameters. Since then, a meditation practice I had begun during my last two concussions took even deeper roots as I participated in the 2019 MindfulMarch Meditation Challenge.
I didn’t know it until recently, but these two practices were setting the groundwork for a radical shift in my do-or-die recovery trajectory. Every time I stepped on the mat or sat to meditate, I was expanding the space between my experience and my reaction to it. Maybe, I came to believe, there was room for a different outcome, one where I was better off for everything that had happened to me.
Coming to that juncture hasn’t been straightforward. The combination of physical and emotional healing involved in a brain injury can be like climbing a New England mountain. There are steep climbs, plateaus, even descents, all under thick tree cover, before catching a glimpse of a view. And when you do make it to where you can rest and see how far you’ve come, that perspective can feel totally alien— even terrifying.
The scope of what I can do, and how long I can do it for, is still much smaller than before the PCS and TBI. Many of my symptoms remain a daily challenge. But over the past year, occupational therapy, vision therapy, and medications brought me to a critical mass of functionality, and I could at last catch my breath and take in the sights. In many ways, I had crossed the finish line of my marathon of survival.
“The combination of physical and emotional healing involved in a brain injury can be like climbing a New England mountain.
I returned to a regular yoga practice at my home studio. I started riding my bicycle again, and when winter came, began cross country skiing. After nearly a year and half of living with my parents, I moved out and am now caring for myself. I started working again, part time. I finalized my divorce, met someone new and surprised myself by finding the capacity to be in a relationship again.
Yet over the past 12 months, I’ve found myself standing on that proverbial mountain top, in a state of confusion and terror. It felt like I couldn’t accept that I had actually progressed. And I had even less faith that I could actually learn how to dance with this new life.
After enough of these moments, I came to realize that despite doing more than two years ago, I was still judging my progress against the expectation of returning 100% to my old self. Meditation, yoga, and therapy offered me that shocking perspective, which lead, as these sorts of insights do, to even deeper revelations. Here was the whopper: needing to return to that old definition of being participatory in my life was the limitation holding me back from being happy right now. The question that started out as “how do I get my life back?” became, “do I even need to get my old life back?”
This is the story of discovering a fresh channel of possibility for who I can be, who I want to be, as a person living with a brain injury. Check back next week to find out where it takes me.
Jesse Huffman is a freelance writer and video producer based in Vermont.
@manhuff | http://www.jessehuffman.com