Forging a New Path to Healing

Asi pull out of the parking garage in Los Angeles, I'm looking forward to the drive home to Encinitas. After three weeks in the city on a work project, I know that the 115-mile drive down the California coast smelling the salty tang of the ocean air and listening to the roar of the surf against the shore-will invigorate me.

- By Margaret Wolff

I head for the freeway, making a left at the first intersection. That's when a woman runs the red light and rams into my car, pleating its side against my thigh. The impact spins me like a top. I hit three other cars, ricochet down the block, and come to a stop in front of an old stone church.

My consciousness instantly splits in two. My ego, rabid from the fear of annihilation, screams, while another voice inside my head-impatient, imperious declares, Who is this woman screaming and will she pul-eese shut up!

Navigating Loss

The accident, which happened in 1997, leaves me with enough brain damage to blunt my ability to understand and communicate information. I lose 80 percent of my peripheral vision and a prodigious chunk of memory. I stutter. My sense of direction is erased; I get lost everywhere I go. When I go out-if I go out-1 cup my hands over my eyes in an attempt to reduce my visual field so that the sights around me don't is overwhelm my brain. One day, during a ning neuropsych examination, I'm so agitated chat by my inability to complete some of the erent tests that I lash out at the technician and burst into tears. Still, I don't consciously entertain that something is amiss. Such ic is the power of denial.