When one system goes off-line, another starts firing.
All comebacks basically happen in the brain, so you gotta treat your brain right.
Number one, make sleep a priority, especially when there’s trauma.
Brain cells are living matter just like we are, and they need rest.
I cut all screen time three hours before bed just to avoid that energetic buzz.
It helps that I live on a boat, which to me is like a giant waterbed.
There are nature sounds.
I sleep like a catfish at the bottom of a lake.
She shelved her academic ambitions for eight years.
Watch your nutrition, too.
The brain needs water to function properly.
It needs fruits and vegetables.
Putting sugar in your body only makes it harder for cells to recover.
Also, move your body.
Otherwise, more and more wastes build up.
Building yourself back from any setback is literally a mind game.
It takes over, and I feel it.
But I also know those chemicals flush through my system in 90 seconds.
After that, any remaining emotional response is me, choosing to stay in that emotional loop.
If you have a setback, wait a minute and a half and it goes away.
I lost both my parents in 2015.
With my dad, it was somehow OK.
He was 96 and had had a good life.
But my mom was only 88 and died unexpectedly just five months after being diagnosed with cancer.
It broke my heart.
I was essentially all but dead during my stroke.
In the absence of those brain cells, part of me was gone.
I see her in the leaves as they wave at me on the trees.
I see her every time I see orange anywhere, because she loved orange.
I see her in the ripples of the water, which is like a Morse code.
This is what resilience looks like on a cellular level.
