Bella Dancer
TBI SURVIVAL FOR MILD-TO-MODERATE LONG-HAULERS - Lessons From 20 Years of Tripe
As y’all know, I don’t often do the list thing, and I certainly don't do the short, snappy ten-point list. If this post is too long and...
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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
- Jul 26, 2021
- 5 min
STRUGGLE - Watching Nature Persevere
A few weeks after my big car wreck, my dad sent this to me. It became one of the main metaphors of my recovery from severe whiplash, TBI...
12
Bella Dancer
- Dec 11, 2020
- 6 min
OCEAN GIPSY - The Underwater Realm of Traumatic Brain Injury
I'm always searching for ways to describe what living with my brain injury FEELS like. Because if you don't know, you can't know. And if...
100
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...
66
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...
35
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...
52
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...
40
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...
28
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...
20
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...
39
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...
35
Bella Dancer
- Nov 11, 2019
- 5 min
EXPERIMENTS IN CHIROPRACTIC 2: How Being Stood Up Detoured Me To A Miracle
No shit, there I was, at the coffee shop - stood up. OK, not exactly stood up. I don't normally attend my writer's social Meetup on...
23
Bella Dancer
- Nov 9, 2019
- 6 min
EXPERIMENTS IN CHIROPRACTIC: Upper Cervical
In Fall 2016, I switched from the traditional rack-n-crack chiropractic that I'd been doing since my big car wreck in 2000 to Upper...
18
Bella Dancer
- Aug 20, 2019
- 8 min
UP IS DOWN: Escaping the World of NO
Continued from: Remembering How to Say "YES": The Retreat in Spain For some reason, I’m being called to begin at the end. Around here,...
82
Bella Dancer
- Aug 18, 2019
- 3 min
AN INTRO: To Me and Traumatic Brain Injury
If you've never met me in my house, been my student, been my teacher, been backstage with me on a day when my brain was glitching, then...
20
Bella Dancer
- May 6, 2018
- 8 min
THE BIG BLUE BEAST: At the Back of the Cabinet
I thought the project would be easy. I had already sorted the year’s filing and even put it in order by date. I had planned to do it...
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