Memoir of a Broken Brain: Falling Down and Getting Up Gracefully

Journey with Kimberly through one crisis that set her up for failure and another life-altering experience that remapped her brain for success.

“Had the road sign read, ‘Take a sharp right turn here and follow the path to your life-altering destiny,’ I would have turned and gone in another direction. The path was marked with two color-coded shapes: the green circle indicated a widely groomed, easy trail, and the blue square led to an intermediate slope. I needed the green trail that led to the lodge at the bottom of the mountain. I had taken a hard fall on the catwalk and wasn’t feeling so good. To get to the trail, I needed to take a sharp right turn. The only problem was, I suddenly didn’t know what right meant. I could not find my right side. Everything right was gone!”

Kimberly fell into her defining role and life’s purpose (quite literally) when she skied over a cliff and sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI). One day, Kimberly was a vibrant career woman who enjoyed a successful lifestyle and an active social life. The next, she had to learn basic life skills to survive.

Kimberly’s quest for survival sent her in search of the missing pieces of her past. She learned that survival is a multifaceted anvil that shapes our decisions and forges our future. Merely existing then becomes a double-edged sword: you may have managed to keep breathing, but are you really living? The only way for survival to triumph is to acknowledge the role of fear in the face of crisis: affirmed fear liberates; coddled fear incapacitates. Denial keeps us stuck!