Defining "NORMAL"

Eureka! Finally someone is about to define "normal".

I was born in 1959, the book of the month was a story of Dick and Jane and a dog named spot.  The story was all about an idyllic setting with the one car, the white picket fence and if you were not a part of this click then you were abnormal.

Here is the true definition of normal:  If you have an alcoholic in your family, have a child molester in or around your family, have a child that goes off the beaten track and embarrasses the hell out of you, have at least one divorce under your belt, know of or are a wife or child abuser, have dealt with drug addiction, smoke or have smoked, are broke or have been broke, had a family member die from cancer, had broken bones, been in a car accident, gotten measles, mumps, chicken pox, have a gay friend or relative, been fired from a job or been downsized out of your job, had a concussion, scraped a knee, received stitches, lost a tooth, have stolen something, not returned something, spoken behind someone's back have a relative that no one likes, have a friend or loved one in jail, know of or have had a teenage pregnancy, then by God you are almost NORMAL!

Yes, this is what normal looks like to me so why in the hell would you want your brain injured loved one to become this?

Does normal makes sense to you now?

Then why waste time pursuing it?

It forces you into the wrong direction!   Backwards when in fact you want to go forward.

You do yourself and you brain injury survivor a great deal of harm if in fact you yearn for what was.  The past is the past and the future is yet to be defined and it is what you do with the time at hand that will determine a favorable or unfavorable outcome in the future.

It is up to you to take oneself from where you are to where you want to be and attitude is what will get you to your final outcome.  Have a bad attitude?  Get a bad result.  Have a reasonably positive attitude and the outcome will be what you expected it to be, a reasonably positive one.
If you set your expectations too high then the fall from not achieving them will be as equally low.  If you lower your expectations and keep them positive then if you fail to achieve the fall from grace will be less.
Take baby steps back from the brain injury and do not expect the world or thinking the path to Normal is forward. Normal is anything other than where you truly want to be.  You want to be better than what you are right now.  It may be a departure from the path you were previously on and I can share in your grieving process, but you now have a new path with new challenges and new goals.  Take them on with pride and maybe in 10 or 20 years you too will look back on the fallacy of what you thought was normal and laugh into its face and declare, I am so over who I was and a better person for it!