I have to give my mom a lot of credit- she had to raise me not just the usual way, from birth through toddlerhood, but after I had a brain injury at fifteen she had to do it all over again. With a disbelieving and largely incoherent teenager!
After my brain injury, my mom helped me go from a coma to learning everything from how to walk, talk, to tie my shoes. She also had a job, a husband, and another teenager at home. I often think of what courage it took to go to the hospital every day and face a daughter who didn’t even know who she was. I didn’t believe my mom was actually my mom until I came home from the hospital, two months later. The simple task of putting food on the table is hard enough as a parent, sometimes, I now know, let alone completing the myriad household tasks that largely fall to moms. I can’t imagine how she did it.
It was a long and difficult recovery. I had a lot of setbacks. One of the biggest was when the insurance agents came to our house to assess my injury. My mom had to sit there and watch two people go down a list of the things I would never be able to do: hold down a job? No. Have a family? No. Learn to drive a car? No. Live by myself? Maybe, but probably not. She has since told me how excruciating it was to watch her dreams for her child die.
Jennifer Chambers is a writer and editor from Veneta, Oregon. Her novel about two women with brain injury, Learning Life Again, was recently released, and she has been featured in Redbook magazine, the front page of AOL.com, the Nashville Examiner, and blogtalkradio, among other things. In her daily life, she is a mom to two boys and an editor for Groundwaters Magazine (www.groundwaterspublishing.com) She blogs about brain injury and the writing life at www.jenniferchambers.blogspot.com. Contact her there or www.jenniferbchambers.com.
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