Caitlin Transcript

Hi, friends, my name is Caitlin, and I am now 34 years old telling you a story about a concussion I had when I was 30. And the years and progress that it has been recovering from that. So I realize now that I had had many concussions as a child looking back. And the “big hit,” I call it happened while snowboarding, I was wearing a really high technical, very technical helmet, an MIPS helmet. And it’s supposed to help against concussion recovery, or it’s supposed to help against concussions. But I had forgotten to tighten it in the back. And so as I went down the mountain and I took these little falls, it was actually amplifying the falls because my head was shaking inside of my helmet that wasn’t done up properly. And therefore then my brain was shaking inside my head. And it’s interesting looking back now because my body was yelling at me, I remember the last tiny little tumble I took, and I was pissed. My anger was out of this world, and really unlike me. So, I met my friends at the bottom of the hill. And I felt like I needed to throw up. But I figured maybe I just pushed myself too hard. And as we started driving back into town, I remember my friend was telling me about a new girl he was dating and he was so excited. And all I could think of was, “Oh shit, what’s happening to me?” because there started to be little stars, like little black spots in my vision. I was losing peripheral sight in my left eye. And I was with the boys, I didn’t really want to say anything. So we went out for a beer and charcuterie afterwards.

And I knew something wasn’t right. I think as we all kind of do in those first couple of weeks or a couple of days. And unfortunately, our societies don’t teach us to listen to our bodies or take breaks when we need to. So I kept going to work and I just slept and this was right before the Christmas holidays. And at this time in my life, I had moved away from my family I was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario. And at this point, I was living in Kelowna, BC. So time zones and provinces away from from my humans, which meant Christmas was online. And I had gone to the hospital because I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t feeling well, I felt really sick all the time. I was sleeping lots and lots, but I was still managing to go to work, I was still managing to pull through my duties somehow. And knowing that the Christmas holidays were coming up, I figured I just needed a little bit of extra rest. We spent Christmas on Zoom with the family. And this was in 2019. And I couldn’t do it. I had to get off and lie down and rest and that hurt on so many levels and really made me aware that something wasn’t right.

My first trip to the hospital before this, they had basically said like, “Yeah, you’ve you’ve probably got a concussion, but you should recover in a couple of weeks.” And like, well, it has been a couple of weeks already. This would have happened at the beginning of December. And now I was visiting them near the end of December. And they were saying like, “Yeah, just give it a little bit more time.” They took me for an MRI there or an EEG, I can’t remember. But basically they said, “There’s no bleeding in the brain. So you’re fine.” And it was just so strange to me that when I told them about, like when I told them about my symptoms, before I had arrived at the hospital. They made it seem like it was a really big deal. And then only because there wasn’t physical damage to my brain. They then basically said like, “No, it’s not a big deal anymore. You’re going to be okay.” Super dismissive. So, when Christmas came and I couldn’t stay on my Zoom calls with my family, I was speaking to a friend and said like, “I don’t know what to do,” and she’s like, “You need to go back to the hospital.” I said, “Well, they don’t– I did– and they’re not paying attention. They don’t care.” And so she came with me. And it was so empowering to have another human beside me. Because these doctors were overstretched their bedside manner was horrible and really hurtful, super dismissive, and she could be the strong one there. And I could just be there, as a patient, it was really, really helpful, I highly recommend.

And it was from there that they, you know, I took six months off work COVID hit, so everything kind of fell into my favor in time in terms of taking time off. But that’s also where I started to realize that having a team around me, who believed me and supported me, was the most integral part to this whole thing. It was a really hard couple of years. You know, at the beginning, everyone goes, “Oh, I hope I wish you well, I wish you well,” but you don’t get it’s not a flu, like you don’t just get better in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. And symptoms persist. I remember a friend coming to visit me. And her laugh…hurt me. Her laugh was too– it wasn’t too loud, normally– but I just couldn’t. Like it resonated in a way that really made me sick. I was living by candlelight. And that was also how my recovery has changed my life, like, those small things that at the time felt like the end of the world, like how am I ever going to live if I can’t keep lights on all night or watch TV or, you know, sometimes, if I was honest with myself, music was too much I would just want to be in silence and the sound of a running fridge felt like it was burning holes in my brain.

And I learned to sit with myself. And I learned to journal. And I learned to do that Eat Pray Love moment where you’re eating dinner really slowly with nothing else going on. Because you can’t do anything else. There’s, there’s, there’s no capacity to watch TV or go out with friends or have these conversations, laugh on the phone. And so what are you left with? And to try and I kept thinking about living this sensual life with myself like, how slowly can I cook this meal? Am I really paying attention to the olive oil that I’m pouring into a pan? Am I really chewing this food and tasting it. So slowly? Do I want to like maybe pick it up with my hands? Anything that could bring me pleasure and slow me down was the key to my recovery. It really became like a living work of art, where I would walk so slowly. And then maybe I would want to take my shoes off. Maybe I wanted to just sit down and feel a couple blades of grass between my fingers while my dog ran because I couldn’t keep up. These small, small things became part of a recovery protocol, where I couldn’t do it all all day every day. But I was able to do a few small things every day.

I really took my recovery as a job, it became what I titled productive rest. I was feeling depressed, not being able to be productive. And really like what’s my point? Who am I? I’m not giving anything to society, I’m not participating, why am I here? And it starts to rumble in your head of you know, are you ever going to come through this? Is there ever going to be an end to this? Who am I going to be I’m not myself anymore. And so there’s a lot of grief, a lot of loss, a lot of fear. And those are not emotions that we’re always really comfortable with.

And when I think about it: it was poetry. It was music. It was dance. It was crying through reading this poetry, listening to these songs, dancing in my kitchen that really allowed the energy to flow through my body. And for me to start learning how to accept and deal with grief and loss and sadness in such a profound level because I was now confronted with the thought that I may never be the same. I mean never come back to myself, and do I want to keep living? Is that a thing? And if so, how? Who am I going to be? And, you know, it’s the story of the seed. If anyone’s watching a seed, it falls to the ground, and it cracks open and it is destructive and it is hurtful and it looks painful, but the seed needs to crack before it can grow through. And it was hard to sit in that painful cracking place.

I started acquiring team members around me. And one of the most profound healers, for me was an acupuncturist who had me sitting in some of those, those really hard death spaces of self, of past self, of expectations. And I just continued to acquire more healers around if they weren’t right for me, if a masseuse was too aggressive or not understanding enough, they were fired. I would find another one. I had Reiki practitioners, chiropractors, naturopaths, anyone who I could tap into– they didn’t all happen at once, these would happen over years, but they were part of my team. And it was so important, I felt less lonely because I had this team of healers around me. And then it became my job to not let them down, it became my job to make sure that I was doing the best I could at home alone, to amplify my recovery, so that next time I went back to them, we could continue to do this really important work.

I learned to look at the world more softly. I learned to change my perspective and allow expectations to slip away of what it means to participate in this world. And I still use so much of this now I have moved to a new city and started this crazy new job and things that were my weaknesses previously because I allowed them to sit and I was patient and I was nurturing and I was loving and I was willing to let them go have actually now become my strength. And I swear to God, this concussion protocol, whether it’s as simple as returning to your nutrition or tapping in: Do you really need a cup of coffee? Or do you just want a cup of coffee? Can you have a cup of decaf thing because it gives you that same warm fuzzy feeling? And you just want a really yummy latte, should you be drinking more water? Do you need to rest? It’s 11 AM and your nervous system is freaking out because you’ve got a big meeting coming up. Maybe you need a midday bath. Maybe there’s yoga nidra that you need to tap into.
There’s, there are things that I come back to that are so basic that were my lifeboats in my concussion recovery, that are still the things that I returned to now, while I grow this fucking magnificent life, I’m looking around my apartment and I have the most beautiful world around me. And it continues to grow because I move slowly. It’s a life that I wasn’t raised to have or ever taught to have.

But it feels so authentically me now because I had to spend time in that really, really, really hard space that it was so dark. And it also tells me that when I go through dark times now I know how to come through them and I actually know that they’re not bad, they’re actually germinating.

It’s not easy. And our world isn’t always set up to support us in this kind of process. So you have to get active in the team around you, has to be the kind of people who will advocate for you and who will speak up for you and do want to know you and learn you, but I also think that the world is really broken. And I do believe that things happen for a reason, so maybe maybe this is the proverbial hit on the head from the spirits that be that are trying to actually make us the world changers, by slowing down.

That was my that was my big takeaway.

and I believe that’s time.