Bella Dancer
SIT-REP: Holiday Hell 2000 -The Car Wreck Journals
If you're just joining us, the following SitRep journal entries and letters to my loved ones come from this car crash. If you prefer this...
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Memoir Table of Contents
Welcome Aboard!
--"Izzy, how did you start dancing?"
--"What got you into martial arts?"
--"What kind of dancer/martial artist/writer are you?
--"How do you deal with brain damage, bodily injury and
C-PTSD, yet still dance, write, train, live the way you do?"
--"How do you still find joy and beauty amidst pain and loss?"
--"Wow, you should write your memoirs!"
This Is My Story
NSFW, 18+
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 25, 2020
- 13 min
2020 WTF: Part 2 - My Holiday WTF Season 20 Years Ago
Continued from: --MY 20TH ANNIVERSARY HOLIDAY TRIGGER DAY: WT-Actual-F, 2020?! --Want to start at the beginning of this anniversary...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 25, 2020
- 8 min
MY ANNIVERSARY HOLIDAY TRIGGER DAY: WT-Actual-F, 2020?!
🔥Written yesterday...left to ferment overnight...still highly combustible.🔥 Before we get to the mushy stuff: 🎄This one is for The...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 21, 2020
- 10 min
I DARE YOU - My 20th RebirthDay
Twenty years ago this morning, I thought I'd be waking up like usual. I thought I'd scribble my thoughts into my journal for fifteen...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 21, 2020
- 9 min
ON THIS DAY 20 YEARS AGO - Nadhra Rising, a Blossoming Belly-Nerd in Home-Sewn Spangles
You know how this goes. It started out like any other day... And it did. Like the day before, I cracked my eyes open and dragged my...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 20, 2020
- 10 min
ON THIS DAY 20 YEARS AGO: Chakras and Pages and Most Welcome Changes
The first thing I did on the morning of December 19, 2000, before even getting up to pee, was crack open my eyes enough to reach for my...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 19, 2020
- 14 min
ON THIS DAY 20 YEARS AGO: The Musician & the Dancer
I have only eaten at a five-star restaurant twice in my life. Once when I was flown to New York City to film my Warrior Princess dance...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 18, 2020
- 7 min
SURFACING - The Hidden Injury in a Career That's All About *Show*
By 2005, I had decisively proven the pessimistic half of my medical team wrong when they told me I would never be a professional dancer...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 12, 2020
- 10 min
THE COMA & THE SWIRLING SEA - When Memories Are Inaccessible
Let's explore another TBI metaphor: I stand. I sit. I speak. I dance. I drive. I train. I travel. (Okay, I used to travel.) I write. I...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 1, 2020
- 8 min
I AM FORGETFUL LUCY-LIGHT: The Fuzzy Impressionist Paintings That Are My Memory
Lucy Whitmore - Forgetful Lucy from 50 First Dates: Although one of my most significant injuries is to my left temporal lobe, I don’t...
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Bella Dancer
- Nov 27, 2020
- 10 min
FROM SUPERCOMPUTER TO FILING CABINETS - My Memory after Dain Bramage
In honor of the impending holiday season, now on pandemic-steroids. #DontDrinkNDrive How do I help you understand what it feels like? If...
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Bella Dancer
- Jun 29, 2020
- 9 min
"HUSH, LITTLE GIRL" - Breaking the Choke-Chain Around Trauma & Abuse
I have a terrible history of throttling myself with a choke chain in order to protect the not-so-innocent (and thereby myself, in some...
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Bella Dancer
- Jun 29, 2020
- 12 min
DOGS, CATS & THREAD SPOOLS: Complex PTSD on Frontal Lobe Damage
“You know how you get scared or worried or nervous but you don’t want to be scared or worried or nervous so you push it to the back of...
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Bella Dancer
- Mar 1, 2020
- 17 min
TECHNO-LINGO MEDICAL MUMBO-JUMBO: How It Actually Impacts My Life
Sometime 2001 My neuropsychologist: You have to treat your brain as though it is a four-year-old. Me: Hah. A four-year-old who’s been...
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Bella Dancer
- Feb 19, 2020
- 8 min
WHAT WAS AND WASN'T INJURED: Proving the Prognoses
I was astounded the other day to learn from one of my students and closest friends that, upon first hearing about me, she had been told I...
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Bella Dancer
- Feb 19, 2020
- 12 min
THE POOL, PIDDLY SNOW & PTSD
4 years old 4th of July We’re at my aunt and uncle’s house in Forest Lake for the holiday. Their neighbors have a huge pool. Missy is...
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Bella Dancer
- Jan 23, 2020
- 3 min
"MILD" TBI ISN'T MILD: a cheesy poem about Dain Bramage
THE HIDDEN INJURY I wasn’t in a coma; my skull, it didn’t crack But I can’t figure out how to get my darn life back No punctures and no...
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Bella Dancer
- Jan 21, 2020
- 9 min
DISCOVERING DAIN BRAMAGE: No *Bleepin'* Laughing Matter
“What happened?” the taxi driver asks me as I lurch my way in and wrangle the seatbelt around me. “Drunk driver rammed me on the...
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Bella Dancer
- Jan 2, 2020
- 6 min
MORE PRESENTS FROM A DRUNK DRIVER: Traumatic Brain Injury & Scoliosis
Continued from BLAM: Merry Christmas from a Drunk Driver December 21, 2000 12:16 a.m. I-25 and Uintah, Colorado Springs, CO …my driver’s...
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Bella Dancer
- Dec 29, 2019
- 7 min
BLAM: Merry Christmas from a Drunk Driver
If only I wasn’t such a social butterfly, a hostess-with-the-mostess, a proud, doting teacher—I would have made it to the back room and...
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