Good Intentions. Big Learning Curve.

My mother had a stroke that rendered her speechless and immobile for way too long of a time.   I want to tell you the story and how we dealt with it so, if needed, you will be able to do something as powerful for your own family member or friend. 

When I was writing my Master’s Thesis, my chair person asked about a certain passage, “What are you trying to say here?” The first time she said it, and she did have to ask it a few times after that, I was a little offended and embarrassed. I swallowed my pride and began to tell her quite easily and efficiently what I was TRYING to say. She said, “Well, then write that.”

So what am I trying to say here? What is my mission? What do I want to give you, the reader?  

I want to explain some pertinent details of my life and the skills I have learned so that you can borrow from them, but more importantly, metamorphosize (which according to the dictionary is apparently not a legal verb) them into your own bag of tricks.

I want to turn you onto Brain Gym http://www.braingym.org/​ so that you will look it up on the internet and learn all you can from this process.
I want you to experiment with and personalize all the things I mention to fit your own lives and life-styles.
I want you to reach into your loved one’s inner world when it seems unreachable, tip toe and play around with touch, toys and tools, stories and pictures, games and songs.

Your person may have temporarily lost access to parts of themselves. I am hoping you will be successful in helping them reach inside and access new avenues into their past, present and future possibilities.

I know not everyone can recover from a stroke the way my mother did.
If nothing else, I would like you to feel less helpless in the face of this trauma.

We were only into the journey of her stroke about four days when I knew I wanted to write a “book”.  I figured a positive catchy title would be good ….. A Stroke of Good Luck, perhaps. Or A Stroke of Genius. They were already used by others. But for me, it didn’t feel like good luck. And the genius was difficult to find although it was making appearances, like the sky on a cloudy day.
You had to be watching.

The words “My mother” have a certain impartial generic ring, which does disservice to my Mum, and to all the other Moms, Mommies, Mamas, and Ma’s we love and we are. I will have to refer to her as “my mother” throughout this writing, because, well, she is my mother. I just ask that you remember that she is Mum and Gram and Pat and Patty and a hoot of a gal and has a laugh that can get me in stitches even when I do not know the joke. “Hoot of a gal”,  “get me in stitches”…definitely her words.

Likewise, “family member” or “loved one” does not nearly reach who this person is for you that compels you to read these words.        Please know that I know that.