Belonging After Brain Injury: Relocating Dan explores the life of the author’s brother who has dealt with the effects of a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) for over four decades. It recounts the institutional, psychological, and social labyrinths he and his family have navigated following the TBI he sustained at the age of eighteen.
This insightful volume offers a holistic account of the impact of TBI on the survivor and his family. It reveals the difficulties a TBI survivor has had to endure and provides practical information about physical, psychological, and psychosocial symptoms and their consequences. Dan’s story offers new perspectives and strategies that will help alleviate seemingly intractable problems and highlights the central importance of forming connections with others in order to lead a fuller life. The author’s account of her own journey, learning to help care for and advocate for Dan, offers an invaluable guide for TBI survivors and those who care for and support them.
Belonging After Brain Injury: Relocating Dan will be of interest to TBI survivors and their families. Its rich insights will be essential reading for medical and mental health professionals, as well those involved in the care and rehabilitation of TBI survivors and families.
0. Introduction. 1. Obtaining Consent. 2. Correcting the Record. 3. Dan’s Life: 1960–1984. 4. Dan’s Life: 1984–2006. 5. Life at Trinity Village: 2006–2017. 6. Crossing the Rubicon. 7. New Normal. 8. Finding Agape. 9. Newer Normal. 10. The Power of Belongingness. 11. Epilogue. 12. Index.
Biography
Katie H. Williams is a writer who formerly taught classes in cultural and interpersonal communication, rhetoric, and writing at Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College. She is also Dan’s sister who has made, and watched others make, mistakes over the past 43 years that compromised the quality of his life, simply because she, and they, didn’t know better. She learned a lot about these mistakes in her post-graduate education, studying communication and its impact on social as well as personal identity and belongingness. Then she learned more in the writing of this book, which she has put into practice with a satisfying degree of success.
