People
Injury A Hidden Blessing
Nearly eleven years ago, Natasha was jaywalking across a street and struck by a car. It was just a month before her 17th birthday, the summer before her graduation from high school.
The accident cost her more than a delay in education and celebrations. The resulting brain injury cost Natasha the loss of memory. It cost her friendships.
But Natasha doesn’t count the costs, she counts the blessings.
“If I hadn’t had that accident, I don’t know what my life would be like now,” she says. “Because of that accident, I came back to The Word.”
Natasha’s Christian faith is central to her life and to her healing journey. Although she lost many of her friends after her accident, she doesn’t focus on that.
“My friends left me, but Jesus didn’t,” she says with a smile.
Natasha takes responsibility for the accident. She was disobeying her parents who had asked her to babysit her siblings as it was their anniversary. Instead of going home to do that, she was going to meet a friend, crossing the street “when it was not my turn.”
Natasha feels that if she hadn’t disobeyed the law by jaywalking, the accident would never have happened. As she reflects on that time in her life, she sees the rebellious teenager that she was and feels that she was headed on a life’s path that was not healthy.
“I was being disobedient to my parents. The friends I had were not the greatest influence on me,” she says. “The accident and my brain injury actually turned out to be a good thing.”
Today, Natasha has a healthy, full life. She helps with chores at home. She regularly attends two church services and when she cannot attend, a kind friend sends her a link to a recording so that she doesn’t miss anything. She reads her Bible every day.
“My brain injury encouraged me to read the Bible,” she says. “As I’m reading, I choose verses I like and write them down so that I can review and summarize them.”
Natasha also attends the Acquired Brain Injury Drop-In groups at Communitas Supportive Care Society. Here she meets with others who understand what it’s like to live with a brain injury. Natasha has also made unexpected connections.
“I changed my last name to my step-dad’s and I met an older man at Drop-In who knew my step-dad since he was a kid,” Natasha says.
She was able to surprise the man by having her step-dad pick her up from the Drop-In so that they could meet. It was a happy reunion and made such a strong connection that Natasha and her step-dad went to the man’s funeral when he passed away.
As well as making connections with others, Natasha participates in the various activities offered like the recent art project called “Unmasking Brain Injury.”
Each mask represents the artist’s personal journey. The darker colours on the right side of Natasha’s mask represent the injury to the right side of her brain. The colourful music notes represent her love of music, particularly that of the Veggie Tales animated series. Front and centre is the Bible.
“I put the Bible in the centre because after the accident, I found peace and help from The Word,” she says. “I felt lost but once I started reading the Bible, I knew that I would have something positive to do every day.”
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