Brain Injury: I was involved in a serious car/bicycle accident 6.5 years ago and went through several forms of physical therapy for 5 years to help but not recover from my brain injury.

Explanation of Mask: One thing I learned is to never give up and to always have hope. Hope is a powerful protector against a chronic brain injury. A person’s hope can be helpful by finding joy or comfort in little every day achievements. It can be used to create and place focus on achieving recovery goals. In my case, the accident left me without vision in one eye.  I stopped eye PT to restore my vision after 6 months because it made me feel so horrible. After another 6 months passed I restarted eye PT.  Finally after 1.5 years of daily eye PT exercises, my vision was restored.  During my recovery I had to continually remind myself of the idiom “every cloud has a silver lining”. This is a beautiful image, representing an attitude of finding the positive in any situation, no matter how challenging it might be. It’s more than just believing that good things are coming. It’s an understanding that every negative is actually a positive, depending on how you see it. This is why my mask is painted silver.