OWN IT
For a long time I was fluent in vague — a whole vocabulary built around not quite saying it. Then one day I just said it plain: I have dysarthria. I have ataxia. I have double vision. Naming it didn’t defeat me. It freed me. Here’s what happens when you stop apologizing and start owning it.
True Colors
When my stroke hit the people around me showed me exactly who they were. Not who I thought they were. Not who they had presented themselves as across years of friendship and shared history. Who they actually were — underneath all of that, when the circumstances got hard enough and sustained enough to strip away the performance and show the real thing underneath. Some of what I saw took my breath away with its beauty. And some of it broke my heart. This article is about both.
The Pieces That Seem Missing
Most of what feels missing after a stroke has not disappeared. It has moved. And the difference between those two things is everything. The capability, the passion, the piece of your identity that feels permanently absent — it is almost certainly still there. Waiting in a corner you stopped looking in, wearing a shape you have not recognized yet because you are still searching for the original. This article is the guide to finding it.
