Living an adaptive active life

 I never intended planned--of course--to incur nor live with a traumatic brain injury.

(TBI).No one does.  Since I am lucky to have survived, my attitude is to work hard to reclaim as much of my pre-injury life as possible and even to embark on new experiences that I didn't before (mostly because I barely had time to breathe between working and raising children.)

 While I can't run the San Francisco marathon like I did many years ago, I can and have walked a half marathon with a cane; use a treadmill; ride horseback. I have done all three after my accident.

(I rode horseback as a child but had not been on a horse for twenty years prior to my accident. Now I ride every week. 

It is true that the way I do these activities does not look like someone without a disability does them.  But that doesn't make them any less of an accomplishment. Many able-bodied people never ride a horse nor ski. These activities are challenging for me in differing ways. Both are immense core workouts. and challenge my left neglect.

As you may recall from high school science, the right hemisphere of your brain controls the left side of your body. The impact from my accident was on my right side which translates to a left side impairment.

    It may be the case --and probably is--that some (maybe even most)individuals have a great amount of difficulty coping with what they have lost.  

I view it through an entirely different lens.  I wouldn't know about adaptive clothing or adaptive sport)s existed if I didn't need them. I  will devote separate posts to each subsequently, but the video and photo are precursors.  I live adaptively and am proud of it.  I am also thankful that  for profit and non profit endeavors are increasingly paying attention to those with disabilities (including TBIs.

    Traumatic brain injuries are each unique in their resulting impairments, but they are alike in that each person with TBI can and should do things that bring them joy, even if they look different than someone without a TBI.