Living with disability means finding solutions and healthy coping mechanisms that help you to function in the day to day world. I have always been a doodler, but after my injury I began relying on my doodles, often circular mandala-esque forms, to help me retain information I learn during lectures. The part of the brain I lost is located in the left frontal hemisphere, quite possibly the hippocampus, and relates to short term memory.

My insurance case was closed about 9 months after the injury. It was after this, while still in college, when I discovered that I could not learn through memorization like I had before. To store memories I need to make them long-term memories that relate to an understanding of the philosophical logic of what I am learning. My geometric drawings became guide maps for what I am hearing. I am in the 99th percentile for visual memory, so these drawings I now call NeuroMaps are tools I use to make up for my brain damage.

My injury was in 2003 and I don’t know how the standards of care then compare to what they are today. What I do know is that when I moved to Maryland to relaunch Mobius Keramikk in 2021 I learned that neither my college or workers compensation insurance provided me the resources to understand and live with TBI. I was provided no assistance in getting insurance after I graduated (this was before the ACA when pre-existing conditions excluded you from purchasing health insurance plans on the marketplace). I was also told I was normal because I retained a high IQ and deserved no compensation because the part of my brain I lost didn’t affect anything. I was 20 and naive. I trusted authority and assumed that they had my best interest in mind.

So 18 years later when I moved to Maryland and discovered the misinformation I had been given, the fact that I am disabled, and that there is a medical term called long term TBI that explained every single trouble I faced that made my progress as a functional adult be less than my brother, friends, and colleagues. 18 years after the fact I finally made sense. To say I was horrified does not do it justice.

I often write about being able to sit between polarities. This was true then. I was so beyond relieved to learn about long term TBI and that I am disabled as it meant I wasn’t broken. I also was so mad that I spent 18 years thinking I was inferior and just not fast enough, capable enough, or equipped to handle life, and that this was an inherent flaw in my own character. At that point in 2021 I vowed to use my voice as an artist and business owner to advocate for Traumatic Brain Injury education and advocacy and share my story. I want to do whatever is in my power to not have another individual with TBI go through life as I did.

This is when I first started NeuroMaps, turning my designs into coasters and trivets and even jewelry! What I found with my business is that the challenges of long term TBI as expressed in the jobs I have had and the level of poverty I have lived in make me a bad candidate for business loans and grants. In searching for business grants for disabled, for women, for artists, there were always stipulations that prevented my applications from being considered. I was unable to find any TBI survivor entrepreneurial grants in the host of grants for disabled individuals. It is a sad but honest truth that it takes money to make money. This is why I am donating 50% of proceeds of NeuroMaps.