I sit in a noisy café, sipping fresh, black coffee, eating a cream-filled pastry, writing in my iPhone. My brain pines for peace. My soul needs the treat, the semblance of normal life. My brain will recover; I’m going to be tired by the time I get home regardless of where I go, anyway. They…
Tag: Photography
Introducing Whole Paragraph on the Seventh Day Visualizing and Verbalizing Reading with Lindamood-Bell
My consultant popped in during the first hour of my session and read to me a whole paragraph. I ensured I understood the idea before she began reading. The idea: as she reads, I’m to visualize — create images and moving pictures in my mind — of what she’s reading. When she’s finished, I tell…
Day Three of Lindamood-Bell Reading Comprehension Visualizing and Verbalizing Program
Not much to report on day three. Things are settling into a pattern. I’m getting used to them being in winter, with people being sick and dressed in puffy vests or jackets, while I’m slowly burning up in Toronto heat. I’ve met all the people I will work with, I believe. I hope so. Learning…
Two-Headed Monster of Brain Injury and PTSD
The weather gods jumped our temps from jacket cool to sweaty tank tops. Pretty soon, we’ll be seeing caterpillars munching on flower buds and leaves as this two-headed monster was on a milkweed flower last year. Brain injury and PTSD are like a two-headed monster sitting on your psyche, slowly munching on your sanity. When…
Frayed
I’m not really sure what to write. I’ve had a month of events coming at me, new writing projects and blogs popping into my inbox, keeping me going, prodding me into action, sweetening my life with purpose. . . Suddenly I’m having to initiate work on my own again. And I’m clueless. Work ebbs and…
Moving On From Reading
There’s a huge irony in my reading rehab journey: I thought long and hard about what it would take to restore reading after brain injury; I wrote about my theoretical program; I’ve done bits and pieces of that program; I am now receiving the bare minimum of help for reading. My second and third posts…
Let Me Eat Cake
There are days when the only remedy is a slice of cake . . . maybe a whole cake. Well, OK, even in my lowest moments, I can’t eat that much! It’s March Break when students get a week or two off from the hard mental work of school. It’s predictable and reliable, that time…
To Soar, Olympics Style
As anyone who’s followed me for awhile knows, I’m a diehard Olympics fan. But going into 2018, I didn’t remember the Olympics were this year. And last week I was barely aware of them and only realized five days before the Opening Ceremony that they were about to begin! I don’t think I’ve been this…
Screwtape Teaches Us a Lesson about Reading Rehab
Reading rehab continues. Because people were asleep at the switch when I hit the emotional wall with my impaired reading so that I could no longer read books on my own and because things went rather south with my neurodoc, he’s pulled out the stops and is reading with me most days. Brains really do…