January 11, 2002. There were a lot of highs that morning, my Mom and sister, came to College to have lunch with me. My sister brought her week old baby and I was thrilled. However, the main purpose of the trip was so that my Mom could take me to a psychologist in Salt Lake. There were a lot of the forms to fill out in the car and some of the questions and answers made me cry. I had laughed with friends earlier in the week about how “Mom was dragging me to a psychologist” but suddenly I was terrified.
Some of my fears abated when I met the psychologist, and he seemed nice enough. Forms in hand he had said he just finished reading about me. My response? I hope it was fascinating! He assured me that it had been. He talked with my mom first and then called me in. He said my mom had told him that when I was 2 years old, I had received a vaccination and that night had been stuttering my speech and walking a bit crooked. To my knowledge, that was the first time I had heard about that, and I was thinking, “OK, but what does that have to do with anything?” He then told me that I been suffering from a brain injury, likely since that time.
I felt immediate relief when I heard that news. When you live for 21 years and have challenges but you don’t know why, you tend to assume that it’s all your fault. If I tried harder, if I changed this. Suddenly I felt like not everything was my fault! My second thought was how far I had come, and been blessed, in spite of a disability. I had survived a move to the Philippines at age 16, I had struggled in school but was preparing to graduate from College with Honors, I had served as a student body officer. At the time I wasn’t driving because of a previous car accident, but I knew that I could drive again. I said to myself, “If I have made it this far, maybe I can help someone else.” And I have tried to do that since then.. My overall opinion of the day? One of the happiest days of my life.
For sake of explanation- my brain injury situation is unique. In the public eye, it is often associated with someone getting in a car accident, they lose skills and have to regain them. I didn’t lose any skills, I just didn’t have a lot of them to begin with! Skills that most people learn automatically, I didn’t learn because they had not been specifically taught to me. This is obvious when it comes to finding my way around. I can go to a place 10 times but unless I know specifically, turn left here, right here, it will difficult for me to find my way there again. Since my brain doesn’t “self-calm” the way most do, I have anxiety and telling me to calm down can be like telling Tigger not to bounce. I have been through psychotherapy, speech therapy and Neurofeedback therapy which requires electrodes attached to my head that monitor my brain waves. I have medication. But I am not embarrassed about any of these treatments. I see it like having a broken leg. You would do all you could to fix it. You wouldn’t think if I just tried harder or wanted it bad enough, I could make my leg heal better or faster. In my case, progression is very real, but I can’t “make it go away.” It’s with me every day.
The next few years were fairly uneventful, I did start driving again, my sister was kind enough to take me practice driving in her car, I was progressing in the early childhood education program with dreams of a teaching license and helping children with learning disabilities, like myself.
But teaching with my kind of disability was challenging, support from the university was minimal, and my dreams took a detour about 6 weeks into my final semester, when I was called into the Dean’s Office, told I was failing student teaching and recommended that I withdraw from the program. Withdraw I did, and graduated with a degree, but no license, which basically is the purpose of majoring in education. Still, there were so many blessings even at this trying time. I was finished with school! I could enjoy this last time in college without the stress of homework. My previous employer took me back, and I wasn’t sorry that I couldn’t student teach anymore. Plus, my new schedule gave me a lot more time to spend with my grandma. My biggest challenge trying to analyze what I could have done better in life so that this wouldn’t have happened to me. Maybe I should have read my scriptures longer in the day? Spent more time in service? However, challenges in life plentiful. Explanations and answers to why- may not always come.
With hopes of regaining my confidence I left the country for a year. But I did it legally, working as an English teacher in Taiwan. It was challenging and rewarding and there was much to learn. One of my favorite lessons was learned was learned due to my 94 year old Grandma passing away while I was still in Taiwan. I was spared any regret of time not spent with her, and she had been without my grandpa for many years, but I missed my family desperately and was afraid that now that my Grandma was in heaven, she would be busy that she would forget about me. However, I remember feeling privileged that I was able to face this trial. I knew that God had faith in me that I could grow from this and that he trusted me. For me, our trials are a testimony of God’s love for us. He loves us so much that he gives us exactly what we need to grow and become more like him.
Returning home from Taiwan, I started graduate school, studying special education this time and in my second semester was blessed to be a 4.0 scholarship student. For someone with a learning disability who had endured school for so long, this was HUGE. I also started a new job, working as an aide with 4-6 graders with special needs. But at the end of the school year, the kaleidescope of life shifted again when the school chose not to renew my contract, working with 4-6 graders was just not a good fit- age/personality or height wise. I had not seen this coming and it was devastating to me. I thought to myself, “Haven’t I already been through this?“ I entered a state of discouragement I didn’t know was possible. I was pulled out of my discouragement by remembering how excited I had been to take this job, to start grad school, I saw it as a second chance, a year after student teaching. I asked myself how I wanted to feel in a year? I knew I wanted to feel excited again. Plus, God never leaves us alone, and that same day that my job ended I was talking to a friend from grad school. She worked for head start and encouraged me to apply. I was hesitant at first, Head start wasn’t my plan, but I took the plunge and was hired. I was reminded that life is to continue taking small steps forward because you never know when the next step will turn into a leap.
However, yesterday I had the worst day of work I have had since I started, summed up in one word: meeting. I kept telling myself, “You can’t quit. You need this job to pay for school. I wasn’t sure if I could come and share my story of trials and triumphs tonight when I felt so un-triumphant. But thankfully, a good friend, named Marchelle, knew about what I was doing tonight, told me not to quit, and I decided that triumph in life is not how many bumps we can avoid. Life will always bring bumps, but our triumph comes in how, with God’s help, we rebound from those bumps.
