The first time I saw Randi, I quietly observed the exchange between her and my co-worker. By the glisten in her eyes and the boisterous laughs that they exchanged, I could tell they had known one another a while. I could also tell that Randi was not someone that I would get to know through small talk. She exuded a presence that did not concern itself with conventions or trivial banter, and would protect herself against inauthentic exchanges with a vengeance.
It was not until a year after moving to Packwood that I had the opportunity to meet her outside of work at a mutual friend’s house. By then, I’d of course settled into my place within the community and was able to embody my self with complete ease and comfort. It didn’t take long for us to get into a beautiful and intimate talk about our biggest challenges and I was immediately captivated by her story.
Most literally and figuratively a force of nature, Randi’s journey on this earth is etched into the trails and roads of forests and mountains. Since she was a child, hiking had always been where she found home. At 73, when most her age have resigned themselves to quiet days at home, Randi has not stopped seeking ways out to nature. And she isn’t just combating the test of time. Just before reaching 60, Randi was was hit dead-on by a young driver and the course of her life was altered forever. Yet after being told she would likely never walk again, Randi now shuttles hikers from all over the world to trailheads across the state.
Randi has since become not only a dear friend, but a personal icon of resilience for me. In all of her humanity, struggle and pain, I have seen a spirit that has never once lost sight of its voice or purpose. I have seen a spirit that continuously shows up, confronts change, and fights for what feeds her heart. Over the years since our first meeting, not one conversation has passed without her praising the natural world that we are surrounded by. And in each of these conversations, she reminds me again and again of how continuously and intentionally we have to strive to keep sight of appreciation for those things that are most important to us. The world may present us with challenges that appear to strip that away, but she is a reminder that human spirit has the strength to rediscover meaning in the darkest places.
For our interview, I met Randi at her house, where she took some time to show me a few photographs of her favorite spaces near Packwood. Through her images, Randi conveys some of the messages that she receives by being out in nature.
Note: While I was able to share a few of her images, I unfortunately do not have copies of all the ones that she describes but have left those parts of the conversation in, as they are potent examples of how she views her surroundings.
R: This one here is called the Portal to Another Dimension.
Portal to Another Dimension by Randi Nelsen
M: Did this style of photography start after you’d had the accident?
R: No, I have been a photographer taking pictures since I was a kid. I asked for my first camera…it was a little brownie box and I got it when I was about 7 years old.
But these pictures, the most meaningful pictures of mine, have been taken since the wreck.
This here is called Through the eye of a Universal God. The head of a Dolphin sharing the face of a man. That day that I stood taking these pictures, I was watching people look at this beautiful rock and not seeing what I was seeing…or they would’ve said “AH! LOOK AT THAT FACE!”
This here is a place I called The Altar. The sun hit that rock just right…That picture hangs in my best friends office – she’s a therapist – and she finally had to put it up in her meditation room because people were meditating on that picture. Now, do you know how good that makes me feel to hear something like that?
M: Cause you know you’re finding something that speaks to more than just you
R: That’s the thing. Its not always just about us.
M: So, you find all of these spiritual messages in nature…when your accident happened, do you feel like at first, very immediately after the accident…do you feel like you clung to finding that more, or did you get deterred from that for a while
R: It did [deter me] because I was always up here photographing. I was on my way to a hike to Schriner’s peak that day. In the park, I was coming down to meet two women from MI. They gave me a lot of money to take them on Mt. Rainier
M: And I remember you told me earlier that you had been getting messages in your mind, not to go.
R: I did. That morning, I woke up and this trip had been planned for weeks with these people, these two women that knew me from my railroad days. They had met me when I went to school to become an engineer. We’d stayed in touch through the years.
I woke up that morning and I’m not kidding you. I wont forget it. A voice said ‘Don’t go’. I thought: ‘What?! No one’s ever heard of you backing out of a hike. What’re you gonna say? I’ve got this feeling? There’s a voice telling me not to go?’
Randi smiled an accepting, matter-of-fact smile that said ‘yes, that’s exactly what I should have done.
R: Instead, I thought: ‘Oh, everybody has these feelings. You never know what it’s gonna be…’ I was rationalizing. Then, finally it was too late for me to call [it off]. I thought: ‘Everybody, this comes along you know, changes in our life, they could be smackers…what’re you gonna do?’ And that was kind of my attitude.
I was walkin’ out the door, and I thought: ‘check the runes’. So, I grabbed my bag of runes that always travels with me – its always around me – and I reached in, and I pulled the rune of Disruption. And what that rune says is that the disruption in your life could be something major or it could be something simple like a divorce that you’re goin’ through…or the change could be so much that it would change. Your life. Forever. And I felt a chill. I’m talking the hairs stood up on the top of my head. And I thought: ‘well it’s too late now, you’ve gotta go.’
I was coming down the Canyon…and still that fear…and I was standing out in the canyon with my dog Abby ready to start in, and I couldn’t get rid of that feeling…until that car came around the curb and all that went through my mind was ‘oh my god’.
Her face speaks in a knowing as a small smile forms. Not one of joy, but just a knowing.
R: Apparently I had to walk that road. Or I wouldn’t have had that feeling inside me.
M: Do you notice your intuition differently now?
R: I always did. One time years ago when I was a young woman, I had a ’65 Mustang. It was in the late 60’s and I was headed for Arizona on a vacation. I had spent the night at a motel and I was driving at night cause it was so damn hot. Back then, we didn’t have air conditioning in cars. It was hot so i was drivin’ at night and staying in the motels during the day and sleeping. And that night I took off onto San Bernadino, I felt a Tremor outside of Palm Springs.
Okay…all I needed was a strong warning. I turned around and went back to the motel. Checked back in. He was confused…I just told him I felt I should spend the night here.
The next morning on the front page of the news and all over the radio, they are saying that the night before, a man came down highway 10 and was firing that gun into the driver’s side windows at oncoming traffic and he killed three people. And they caught him when he crossed the border.
M: Wow.
R: Things like that, and then the earthquake. That was another Bizarre thing. Years ago. I’d been driving, and god I was tired. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning. I pull into this campground, and there’s not a soul around. Not a soul. So, I lay down in my van, me and my dog. The next thing I know, goddamn earth shakes. I’m looking and there’s not a soul around. Quiet. The dog gets in and I say ‘c’mon, we’re getting outta here, something’s weird.’ I get back on I-10 and I’m looking over at the palm trees bending over hitting the ground and coming back up, and I think I’ve gone crazy! I thought: ’What the hell?!’ not realizing my van was doing that, going down the road too.
I drove out to my friend’s house in Pheonix and they come runnin’ out their door saying ‘OH MY GOD, WE’RE GLAD TO SEE YOU! We thought you were in it!”
I said ‘In what?’ and they replied: ‘That earthquake in Los Angeles.” My mouth dropped, I looked at them and said “THATS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?! I WAS IN IT! OH SHIT!” I took on out there I went up to Jay – he was my therapist – he was doin’ this high energy therapy work with me – and I go down there and I mean, it was expensive work and I’d go to him for teachings cause I mean, I was a therapist too, doing that. Wanted to know more about holistic health. He says ‘I think you better come in and take a look at the TV’. I’m standing there and I’m watching what I have gone through and I’m going ‘oh my god’.
Those kinds of experiences….
M: So, I know that after your accident there was quite a long road to healing and regaining your memory back…
R:Well I never did regain it. I have no short-term memory. The other thing that I deal with every day and people don’t realize [is] I’ve got horrible post-traumatic stress syndrome.Because of the brain injury. The seriousness of it. I have ADHD because of it.
Her face hardens, as the daily grapple with the reality sets in.
R: Because it did a number on me, and to deal with that on a daily basis drives me up the wall sometimes. People don’t realize that. I walk around with a smile….because it keeps my mind off it.
M: What I’m impressed with…I mean, lots of things…but…the fact that, through the healing and the recovery, I mean, there was a period of time you very much were not yourself
R: Oh no. Uh-uh
M: And what you’ve come to though, is not only having the memory of your intuitive experiences like the earthquake…but also coming back to how that created your identity and your spiritual strength of knowing that …you’ve been able to come back to that, even after your accident.
Randi nods in agreement
M: What was that like to find that again?
R: It still is tough. Sometimes, I think. Because of the problems I deal with daily, of trying to keep me together and stop this mind from reacting to things that it doesn’t have to. It’s taken a lot to try to get in touch with how that has affected my life. except now. But the first year…I was taken from my home. I couldn’t cook. Cause I was an airhead. I couldn’t remember anything. and i said I couldn’t. It was the realization in the beginning when these people took me to their home in this cabin on the river, it was like somebody…and I had said, I kept mumbling “you have got to get me out of town. I am NOT gonna heal from this if you keep me here. I can’t. You’ve gotta take me into the woods, I gotta get out of here. I’ve gotta get out of the city.” I knew that, because I knew that I was not gonna be healed. I couldn’t stand the noise, I still can’t. There’s too much going on, I’m done. But there’s really nothing going on. It’s just that I’m not dealing with it [in my head]. But there, it would scare the hell out of me. they didn’t realize at first, that when I couldn’t make that basket…I pick up this basketball and hold it in my hands and I’d sit there crying.
I sat there on that riverbank at that cabin for over a year. And the first several months…I love to chop wood…. and I couldn’t even lift the hachet to chop wood. There was absolutely no strength.
The doctors told them to take me out in public, so they take me to a shopping center. And me, my eyes get about THAT big (gesture) and I says “You can’t get me into a goddamn shopping mall before the wreck, what make you think you’re gonna get me into one now?! It’s not going to happen.” And they didn’t, I would not go…I couldn’t stand it and I’m still the same way. That has not left me at all. Going to concerts, anything. Loud noises…cause this whole [left] side of my face, clear down, I’ve lost 70% …over 30% that came out on the test…what’s going on with me…its not from my heart, my lungs is clear, if you can believe a cigarette smoker from the time she could sneak ‘em outta daddy’s lunchbox has got healthy lungs, healthy heart, and then they did the nerve conduction study and…my whole right side…was atrophied. And you can see it (shows me her leg) This leg, it’s smaller than this one. I never gained my strength back. I can go out here and chop a couple pieces of wood, and that’s it. And it’s only gotten worse. It seems like I was able to come back but…even though my motercycle riding had nothing to do with it…because of my brain, I at least know better than to go buy one and get one. Ya’ know. That was it, what it took away from me…those two things. I’d pray to god “don’t take those things. Take all you want, as long as I can walk and ride my motorcycle.
In the beginning, the doctors would say: “where do you wanna be in a year from now?”
I’d say “schriner’s peak” . When I was comin’ out of it, starting to make sense, then the doctor would say “where do you wanna be in a year?”
“Schriner’s peak”
He says to me, he says: “Randi, when they brought you in, you kept moaning ‘Schriner’s Peak’
‘That’s where I was on my way to”
He said ‘well what is it?’ I said “it’s a peak” of course I couldn’t even talk, my vocal chords were so damaged.
“why do you love that peak so much? “ and I says “cause she’s a bitch!” and he says okay.
You gain 1,040 feet for every mile in elevation you hike. She’s a bitch. And she’s my bitch.
That sense of humor. that was another thing that never left. I always had a comment to make. And I still do that today. Well you know, I got this brain thing. Be Patient. But then you know, they told me back then to tell people what happened and that I had a brain injury. So, you know, you gotta be aware of that. But people who’ve never been through it have no idea what that does to anybody. And all the years of medicine and blood services and things that I’d seen, I never thought that it would happen to me. Or, I didn’t think that it wouldn’t happen to me, cause people things do happen to people. I didn’t understand, and I was a very understanding and compassionate person dealing with injured people at the senior center. And yet, did I really? I didn’t really understand because I didn’t understand what that put them through because it happened to me. And here, I got it. That changes people’s lives forever. and nothing’s ever the same again.
M: well, that’s a big lesson if you ever have one.
R: I used to take a trip six weeks out of the year just to go play in the 11 western states on my motorcycle. I can’t do it anymore. I’ve flown once to Hawaii since the wreck.
I used to jump, hike…now I have to pick the ones that I can get to on the road.
Stuff like that. but I’m not unhappy with what I’ve been through. Not unhappy at all. And I used to say…one of the things I wish to say, is how luck I am. I wasn’t. They said “I’m lucky I lived through it.” No, I’m not lucky I lived through it. I wanted to die. I didn’t think I would live through it. And I one time, stood on that river bank where I was being cared for and I’d sit out there around the campfire all the time and just watch the ducks go up and down the river. I knew when the ducks were coming up, I knew when they were coming back down. I’d watch a Bald-headed eagle go to the next and there was this Blue Heron and you know Blue Heron they look at you it’s kind of like you’re looking into the eyes of the world. theres something about them and this blue heron would come in every morning and they would tell me to stay off the river bank. Don’t go down to the creek. It was canyon creek. But to me it was a river – a lot like the Cowlitz – it was big. And Id sit there and I’d look down there on the bank and think about how much fun I could have down there on those rocks and I’d try to see that blue heron. I knew it was landing. I couldn’t see it but I knew she was landing. So down the river bank I go. Make it down there, get over in the water, crawl up on this rock that would fit my dog and I, and there’s that blue heron. And that blue heron puffed herself up to full and she turned around and she looked me square in the eye and I could not move. I could only just sit there and let her pin me with that look. Just like I was staring into eternity. and all of a sudden she spread those wings and flew (elaborate emulation of the heron, her face releases 31:39) Here comes this rainstorm. And I’m in one of my spaces. And I’m standing out there on this river bank, rain is pouring down just in sheets like it was here and I’m standing in it and Im screaming at god and I’m telling him how stupid I think he is and that you want me to entertain thAe god mind. You tell me why I should do that?! Why didn’t you just let me die (32:18) I don’t. I cant do this. And Ive never forgotten that day cause in that storm, these ducks was coming down that river and they looked right at me and I feel them laughing and I started busting up at how ridiculous I sounded. And if I told anybody this story about those ducks looking at me in a rainstorm and laughing and how they brought me out of that space I was in of just wanting to die because I look at them laughing and how ridiculous I must sound at 60 years old to be screaming and calling god a jerk…I’ve got more brains than you do! I never did that one again. But the thing of it is, is when I would say “I’m lucky about thinkg that would happen…before that wreck….I’m not lucky. I’m grateful to have done the things I have done because if it hadn’t been for what I was into, the therapies the natural healing and told doctors nothing is broken, get your hands off me, I know how to take care of my body. it was a therapy that they’d never heard of. Cranial-sacral brain. Cause my whole energy had gotten all messed up. Clear through my body. Its a mess. And I knew that and I got this top neurologist…he says “I’m top doc. What do you want?” I says “I want you to write me prescriptions for this therapist, I says “for cranial sacral therapy” . When I left his care over a year later, his ears, nose and throat specialists all looked at me and said “ms Nelsen. You taught us a lot.” I said “ I would hope so and I thank you for standing up and having the degrees behind your name to write that and make this insurance company pay for every damn bit of it!” cause that’s what it took was having that doctor of mine, top doc: “What do you want me to do?” “write me prescriptions.” cause there was nothing anybody could do about what was happening to my brain. And soon as they done the mir on my brain to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. 48 hours, my brain was in the hands of that therapist. Three times a week. Professional doctors still don’t know, with head injury, you get into cranial sacral work if there’s no bleeding. you don’t mess with it. you don’t just leave it there and do nothing and try to figure shit out. I am so fortunate I had that background.
M: Absolutely.
R: so very fortunate. And thats where I can even be thankful to this family that has nothing to do with me. my daddy had everything to do with me being a therapist. He would bribe me. I knew a way to get around daddy when I was a little kid and stay out of trouble. Cause all I had to do was sit there and massage my daddy’s feet. (36:28) and you know what. Today, if I’m gonna give you a massage, give me your feet: Cause I’m touching everything and you’ll feel so good when you leave. I do that. Somebody gets hurt? Let me at it. You hurt a joint? Let me at that immediately. I’m not gonna touch it. I’m gonna work around it.
M: You do that extra mile of work with your injury, then you learn your body more intimately.
R: Uh-huh. I was into therapies…stayed in them..and then to retire and have to deal with doctors….that is the hardest thing of me going to doctors, and them not listening to me. because they have a whole different mindset.
I told em, and I’m gonna tell em because they finally found out: Its not my heart. its sending pain up through my arms and into my chest because of what’s going on in here (mind). The impact of that injury…I’ve already had surgery. They had to operate on this leg and immediately cause of the impact. I took 110 mph impact.
you couldn’t even…anybody that walked into that surgery room. I knew that they were there cause the tears were streaming down their face…I could sense the tears when they walked in and saw me. I wish I had pictures.
Boy some of the things they did when I was coming out of it and starting to realize what had happened….you tell me how old I was when I show you what I did…I’m on the living room floor of my home and I’m starting to realize that things are weird. Cause it’s not registering with me that my brain is compromised at that point. Futons. Up the walls. on the floor. And I was crawling, I was not walking. You had me holding onto chairs, You had to button my shirt. you had to tie my shoes. I was not aware of any of that. We were one day in the kitchen: (39:30) Whats happening to me?! I cant tie my shoelaces?!!” she comes running in the there, she looks at me and here I am, tell me how old I was? She heard the cry of probably a three-year-old. And here I am: (muddled cry) I can’t tie my shoelaces! whats happening to me?!” How old do you think I was? maybe three or four. and I can remember. That was the only thing I can remember is her coming in and getting down on those futons with me and holding my face. and saying “look at me. You’ve got a very serious brain injury.”
“what do I do?” She says “There’s only one thing to do, Randi” “Just tell me what to do!” She says “You’ve got to get better. Give it time.” I said “I don’t know how…” and I did it. And that’s when they put me with these people. They’d put a belt around me, take me to the store. If you walked down the aisle, if you left me standing alone, I’d start crying. I’d just go into a panic cause I didn’t know where I was at and you’re taking me out in public to a store! And you had a belt around me but we walked into the store there in Granite Falls, around a corner to another aisle and left me standing there and I went into a goddamn panic. Stuff like that that just led me into a panic: Where am I? What am I gonna do? First time I came home to Packwood. Of course, those spaces had gotten further apart, and I didn’t panic so much. and I came home for the first time – it was christmas – it was a year later a week before christmas. And this is when I found out I’d learnt to laugh at me. I’d just bust up at the things I’d put me through and I still do. I’d just start laughing cause I’d do something stupid. (42:23 laughing) I came down here and I got a room up at the mountain view lodge. And Debbie, my best friend who knew that I was coming and I was all excited…it took me six hours to get here from seattle cause I kept getting distracted. Keep it together, you’ll make it. So i got here, and I’m driving right up to high valley 7 to go visit my best friend and of course, I’m driving along you know…its dark…its christmas. And I’m thinking around the next corner I’ll see all those lights on that lead up to debbie’s house. Came around the corner and there wasn’t a light in the road. I said “ wow. Geez, abby. I guess it’s around the next curb. But the next curb went the wrong way. finally, I just got out of the car and I’m standing there and every star in the sky is showing and it’s just gorgeous. And Abby’s outside the car with me and I’m saying “where in the hell am I?” and I felt this little voice say “packwood!” I start laughing! I busted up and I say “PACKwood?! now this is too funny. Lost in packwood?!” and I get into the car and I says “now abby, around the next bend if I’m where I think I’m at right now…there should be a place where I can turn this car around.” and the voice says “but what if there isn’t a place?” Tough shit, there better be!” Went around the corner and there’s that pull out. I knew where I was. I hadn’t turned onto cannon. I was going down Skate Creek!
M: Minor details!
R: Yea, minor details! I get over there, Debbie says “what took you so long. “ and I said, you are not going to believe this I got lost in Packwood.
(We take some time to look at more photographs) Okay, so see when I showed that “through the universal eye of a god” ? This is the picture I saw first that day. That Indian. watching over eveything. This here was through the eye of a universal god. I turned around after I saw that light in there and thought: whats in that light? And we got that face. Down here I got a big picture of this. look at this face. The eye. The mouth. This big pool. The pool of redemption. The names that I pick for these photographs, I find very interesting.
Theres the pool of redemption.
M: When you hike around…well, when you take people out these days and see spaces like his and images in the rocks, does it kind of guide your actions and behavior of the moment (yes) or are they more like bigger picture messages?
R: No, whenever I address this issues like talking with you, I get into the spirituality. We all get different messages and mine comes from the earth and nature. It also tells me that there’s real life there. Something happened in that area. heres the prayer of deliverance there’s this guy. There’s his mouth, nose…who is he? But he looks like he’s praying. And here? What’s this here? This little critter with a hat on? And then down here I get this image of being very female, that there’s a woman there. I went back time and time again. And I got him the other day when I was there. He’s still there. There’s a lot more. But here. This one. I just love this one. I pick up that something happened in this place to leave these images behind. and yet that big flood that we had in 2006, that tore up that campground? I think that may have revealed that that was always there because these pictures were taken before that storm
Somebody’s watchin’ over them both. Some animal. Somethin. But this whole area – I can take you over there , you can stand there in that waterfall and see….
Heaven sent a rose [these images] jump out at me. I have to go back and see “ are you still here? Or was that my imagination? Oh! It’s still here!” And that’s what I find amusing, is people don’t notice it.
Abby…she was with me through that wreck. makin’ me walk. She wouldn’t go out with people to pee. She wouldn’t go without me. So they had to help me down 27 stairs to the backyard so that my dog could pee! because she wasn’t gonna go anywhere without her mom!
M: So I think a lot of people think about like the word pride as being like a negative thing. Like people are too prideful. (it’s not) I agree. I feel like pride is a sense of self. and when you found you couldn’t chop wood. (I wouldn’t leave it alone! I would not leave things alone!) Is that because you knew how important it was to re-establish that? (uh-huh)
R: I had to and thats it. it’s the same thing with billy owens. The best thing you could’ve done for him was bring him right back home where he’s familiar with things. Best way of dealing with brain-injured people, you got to keep ‘em around whats familiar to em or they will forget. and what was familiar to me…like those people. I mean, how blessed could I get to find a family. These friends of mine that knew a family that would take me up in the woods and watch out for me and bring me back and forth to doctors and everything. They did. they were paid very well by me. they made quite a bit of money. but i didn’t care. It wasn’t about money. It was about being in a safe place on the river bank. Of getting out of that town. My friends know me well enough to know that “youve gotta get her out of town.” They did. people banded together. Those people didn’t know me. They just knew the woman working with me. And mark…I couldn’t eat. and the first time that I knew I was gonna eat…didn’t know if i could eat it all but I was gonna eat…was when the husband – mark was his name…a nd I met him…his wife was there ,and he walked in that door…they had three children. it was just the place for me to be because I was more of a kid and that son of theirs was 9… and I’d watch him on his bicycle and he’d watch me try to shoot baskets. I was always a good basketball player….by the time I left there I was shooting baskets, I was chopping wood…cause I wouldn’t leave it alone. Once I discovered I couldn’t do it, I was like “bull shit! I know how to do that!”
M: And then, where you still haven’t been able to re-establish like full physical pride, you’ve gone to…your creative outlet for that has been to do the hiker’s shuttle. So you exercise that…
R: I stay in it. That’s it. it’s been a life-saving thing. me being home, I love the mountains…so I can’t go on 22-mile hikes…but I can still go enjoy. and thats important. I can still enjoy it. I gained something. And Bill ___. I don’t care for Bill but a couple weeks ago he was at cruiser’s when I went in to watch the ball game. and he said “ you know, I’ve watched you since you came home…cause he met me when I came home. And he says…I’ve watched you and you’ve grown so much. And I says “and this year was the best. Last few years it was growing and this year, I wasn’t just running short little trips up and down the pass. I was running all over the state.
I do get tired. Like yesterday, I get home and I’ll lay down on my bed after sleeping all night…fell asleep yesterday afternoon about 2 o’clock and i didn’t wake up until last night and then I was back to bed by 9.
M: But then you have such active periods.
R: But the active periods every day, that I do…I go into town to return a movie. This is how I’m dressed. colder than hell, but I’m just going straight home. But I come out in a storm and now here I gotta look and see what everybody else is doing. and away I go and here I’m standing out there so cold, trying to get these pictures of Leach Lake and that cause it’s so gorgeous and there’s ice all over and when I send em out to my friends…they say “what in the hell were you doing standing out there with no hat and no coat on!” I said “yeah, thats the thing about my brain. It does real crappy things sometimes to me! and I just go for it, cause I just got that mood!” and I says “then I run for the car!” oh geez I gotta get warm. Oh I better go back…oh no! you gotta go to Leech Lake and see what that looks like! Maybe the swans are still there! What are you thinking, going on 73 and being stupid?!….no, I had fun!
M: If you can do it, you can do it!
R: So it goes on and on, you know. Its just crazy.
M: Now I know you and I have gotten into it a little bit about kind of anger being one thing you really really grapple with through all of this.
R: I do. I do, and that why i just…cause a lot of it comes from the post traumatic stress. and thats when I am just you know its not uncommon for me to go off and be crazy because of the post traumatic stress syndrome. Because it’s too much stress. now all of a sudden all of this shit comes together convoluted…
M: Do you ever find that you can feel it coming on and warn people…
R: I’m starting to recognize it…over some of the things the last couple months is: You. Pay attention. you know you don’t have attention. You have an attention disorder, but pay attention! Cause you do. Like you said you start to feel it, you get up and walk away and go home. and thats the way I’ve been deling with it. You don’t sit here and let it blow you away. You blow it away. and that little thing just came in. And that’s why I’ve been isolating myself, because I do feel it and I don’t like it. Its uncomfortable, because my brain is scrambled and I can’t stop that. Its …unless somebody has something like that, you can’t understand. And billy is gonna go through it. The best I can do is talk to him.
He said “am I gonna have short term memory. And I said no, you’re not. its gone. and you have to learn to deal with it. You don’t take it inside. It can make you feel crazy. And so I thought “you stop that crazy because of what it does to me and my body. Everything. It’s no fun.
But you’ve got to walk away and let people be their people and say “it has nothing to do with you. And I find that it has not got to do with me. I’ve learned to ignore it and not take it on and let it become this….but I also had a therapist tell me “you’ve got to tell people that you have a brain injury.” They assume they won’t get it…no more than I’ve got it…until it happened to me.
M: So what would you say for yourself then, is the most important thing you tell people?
Be aware of your own self-growth. (1:02:21) Let people, especially young people know “I now it’s hard you’re going through this…but its not the hardest thing you’ll go through. all these little things we go through, they’re not important because what’s important…its like this one thing my spirit…where I can get into my picture file and show …and it comes out of this humor but its true…about when we’re young and “oh you…and this older person: “hey! You ain’t seen nothing yet that’s laying ahead of you! this is nothin! Its just relationships and all this shit…and its nothing! absolutely. There’s more important things. A lot more important things. You’ve gotta have a good relationship with yourself in order to have one with someone else. And friends. You know, I read a statement many years ago as a kid. You know, you only get out of this life having one friend. we call a lot of people friends, but they’re not your friends. I have people “randi, let us help you. give us a call if you need help. But I make the phone call and “oh, we’re too busy.” So I step back and I realize I’m making the wrong choices, to call them friends.
M: And thats part of the self growth. The self-responsibility.
R: You know. All this life is about…is changing. And you should be glad for change. Because nothing ever stays the same. and you’ve got to be able to adjust to that, that nothing is ever the same. And one minute you can be happy…in a happy marriage. But I see those falling apart all the time. You know, we always think we have to have somebody of our own to be worthwhile. No we don’t.
M: So, [I’d imagine] the physical experience of getting in an accident of that severity and suffering the result of that to the degree that you did brought up a lot of changes. But I guess I am curious in your own words what the whole experience was like for you…from the reaction of dealing with it and then over time as that unfolded, and realizing how you kind of had to shift – essentially – how you related to yourself and everything else.
Flight of the Honey Bee 