As a long-time journal-keeper, I already knew the benefits of personal writing when my husband sustained a traumatic brain injury in 2003. While he was hospitalized, in rehabilitation, and long after he came home, I continued to journal nearly every day. My journal was my sanctuary, the one place I where I could pour out all my thoughts and feelings at any time of day, in any words I chose, without fear of judgment. Journaling helped me navigate this frightening, chaotic time in ways that nothing else did.

Several years later, I began to wonder if people with brain injury might also benefit from journaling. Having undergone a drastic change in the former stories of their lives, might it help them to understand their new stories by writing in the pages of a journal? Using my knowledge of journaling and its benefits, along with the skills gained during more than twenty years as a professional writer, I designed a six-week journaling workshop for them. In the fall of 2006, I was fortunate to be able to begin leading it here in Tucson. It continues today.

I then co-wrote a journaling workbook based on those workshops with Susan B. Schuster, M.A., CCC-SLP, who had been my husband’s excellent speech therapist. After Brain Injury: Telling Your Story was published in Fall 2009 by Lash & Associates Publishing/Training, which publishes practical, informative, and affordable materials on traumatic brain injury in children, youth, adults, and veterans. 

Many of the participants in these workshops, including my husband, have attended all or most of the sessions since 2007, by which I am honored and humbled. In their continuing fight to recover as much as possible from their brain injuries, their courage and honesty touched me so deeply that they inspired me to take a leap of faith: I left my successful career as a freelance writer to devote myself to being a journaling instructor.

As a first step, I became a certified instructor of Journal to the Self®,  a journaling workshop created by Kathleen Adams, founder of The Center for Journal Therapy. I am also currently enrolled in the center’s Certified Journal Facilitator program.

My journaling workshops today include one for people with brain injury and another for family caregivers of people with serious illness or injury. In April 2010, I was honored to present a two-hour journaling workshop at the National Guard Health Promotion and Annual Prevention Training Workshop in Atlanta. The topic was “Journaling to Ease Compassion Fatigue,” and in attendance were National Guard care providers, such as chaplains, psychologists, and those involved in sexual assault response and substance abuse and suicide prevention.

I now also maintain a blog, Journal After Brain Injury, with information about journaling for people with brain injury and their family caregivers.

In addition to several hundred articles written while I was freelancing, I have written more than a dozen books and contributed to others. My collection of personal essays, What I Thought I Knew, was released in September 2008 by Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, Inc.

See my resume here.