Meditations on Brain Injury
by Mike Strand
Reviewed
by Patricia Benson 8/21/04 permission to reprint
I have a personal list of a few, good self-help
books that I believe deserve to be in every bookstore, whether self-help is a
high-profit category for the store or not. These books deserve a little space
and a longer shelf life because bookstores often are where people go for help
when their pain is new, private and overwhelming. But my list is quite short.
Why? Because, for about twenty-five years now, publishers have tried to put
every real or imaginable human problem between covers and announce salvation to
the world, thereby making self-help one of the most over-published,
under-scrutinized, front-list driven sections in the store. My list is short
because it only includes books that are authored by authentic people who
understand the power of telling their story simply and honestly. These books
often raise more questions than they answer because these authors know that
readers will have to take what works and figure out the rest for them selves.
These books have stood the test of time because they come from heartfelt
experience, not questionable research. But when facts are presented, the sources
are credible and objective.
Meditations on Brain Injury, by Mike Strand, is a
brief, but powerful collection of short essays on what life is like after a
brain injury. Strand suffered traumatic brain injury in 1989. His life,
relationships and his world were forever changed. He woke up from a coma a
different man. He began the long journey through grief and anger toward
acceptance and understanding. He did not set out to become an expert on coping
with brain injury. But, with speech and movement impaired, he moved to
observation of and reflection on his situation. He decided to put down on paper
the insights, understandings and inspiration he discovered, and continues to
discover, in his “rest of his life recovery.”
The essays in the book first appeared in “Headlines,” the Brain Injury Association of Minnesota’s newsletter where Strand has been a contributing columnist for the past five years. His column is called “Here and Now.” These essays represent some of his best and most popular columns. They are properly called meditations in that the form is concise, focused and particular in its considered topic, but intuitive and universal in its exploration and appeal. He fearlessly, but not without humor, examines issues like anger, dependency, and self-image as well as resiliency, responsibility and identity.
Strand is a gifted and clear writer who understands
the limitations, feelings and needs of his primary audiences: brain-injured
people, their loved ones and caregivers. So I began reading this book as an
interested bystander, having no personal experience with brain injury. By the
last page, I realized I was reading about my own life. I was, somewhere between
the lines, reading about things I had experienced which broke me in important
places and left me feeling like a stranger in a strange land. The meditations
were like maps, pointing me in new directions.
Meditations on Brain Injury is one of those really good
self-help books, now on my private list. But it deserves all the publicity and
shelf space it can get in bookstores.
Patricia
Benson has enjoyed a varied and successful career in bookselling, publishing,
marketing and communications. A former national buyer for B. Dalton,
Bookseller, she has also served as Editorial and Rights Director for Hazelden
Educational Materials, and is a former Vice President of Carlson Learning
Company. She is currently working full-time as a freelance writer and editor,
and part-time as an enthusiastic bookseller at Valley Bookseller in Stillwater,
Minnesota.
She
lives and reads in the St. Croix Valley.