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I have been missing from my blog lately. To be honest, I’ve been missing from my life. Somewhere between there and here I slipped through the cracks into a depression that has left me roiled in a quagmire of ugliness and brutality that’s difficult to escape. I haven’t written because I didn’t feel like I…

Recently I saw a post on social media that said something like “I apologize if I was ever the toxic person in your life, but I’m working on becoming a better version of myself” and it just hit me hard. Looking back at my life, I realize I was that toxic person. I wasn’t hurting…

Trauma never really goes away, you just learn to live with it. Some days it feels like I’m living in a tense hostage situation and other days I feel like it’s simply a roommate I navigate life with, dancing through a too small space to avoid bumping into each other. My four year anniversary of…

The changing seasons has always been one of my favorite things. As I’ve moved around the country for my career, it was one of the things I frequently complained about missing since we were always in the south. Autumn is my favorite and as much as I love the south, it just couldn’t compete with…

“Is this a normal size bed” I whispered timidly. “Yes.” My husband just stared at me…not sure what to expect next. “Why?” “It feels like I’m too big for it. Like it belongs in a dollhouse.” “No. I promise, everything is perfectly normal sized”. I had only woken from my coma a few days prior…

It’s been a long time since I’ve paced in the shadows of the moonlight. I’ve been having flashbacks and panic attacks for hours now. It all seems so sudden. I was perfectly fine earlier. The only thing that helps when I get like this is to pace and randomly sit wherever I am for brief…

April 14 has new meaning to me now. Each year, as it approaches, I am reminded of how my life has been forever changed and how I am beyond blessed. Since my aneurysm ruptured on April 14, 2018, my life has changed in ways that I could never have imagined. Each year since has brought…

I have been absent lately. I haven’t published for awhile and several folks have reached out to me wondering where I have been. Honestly, the last few months have been rough for several reasons, but one thing I have learned is that sometimes you just need to step away and take care of yourself. For…

My migraines started in my early teen years. With me, they definitely seemed to be hereditary. My dad had them, as did his mother, his brother, and my cousins. I remember when I was little my dad would literally stand and bang his head on the wall when his got so bad. I never understood…

“I complained I had no shoes until I met the man who had no feet.” My dad used to tell me that when I was young if I was having a pity party about something. It was my constant reminder that there is always someone who is worse off than you. That has stuck with…

I never thought much about mental health until my aneurysm ruptured. I knew there was a stigma around talking about it openly, although I didn’t understand that attitude. I had used counselors before when I sought treatment for an eating disorder, but I hadn’t thought about that in more than two decades.   It didn’t…

I’m exhausted. Those two little words say so much and not nearly enough. Fatigue is a major issue that a lot of brain trauma patients deal with. It isn’t the “normal” tired. It is a chronic and overwhelming exhaustion that is debilitating. One of the best analogies I’ve seen is a battery. Before the trauma,…

My closest friends often refer to me as a badass bitch. They say it with love…I think. Even before my aneurysm, I have been through a lot and always fought like a warrior. I’ve been through twelve knee surgeries, some absolutely brutal, including a total knee replacement (actually one of the easiest) by the time…

If you’ve been following my journey, you’ll already know that I struggled immensely with survivor’s guilt. I had no idea why I deserved to still be on this earth, when so many others weren’t given that luxury. What did it mean? What was I supposed to do with this new found life? It was a…

I lost my mom at the end of February this year. She spent two years fighting lung cancer and we knew this day would come. Knowing doesn’t make loss any easier. My mom was an amazing woman. She left this world 70 offspring…9 children, 27 grandchildren, and 34 great grandchildren. She left us her legacy…

Where there is breath, there is hope. It’s taken me a long time to learn that. Early on in my recovery, I began to suffer from profound survivor’s guilt. The emotional pain was debilitating. I had no clue why I was still alive, especially when so many others weren’t and the statistics were not on…

I’m drowning. It feels like the weight of the world is pressing down on my entire body and I can’t find the surface. We are currently dealing with scary times. News of the Covid-19 pandemic is everywhere you look. It’s troubling, disturbing, heartbreaking…and downright scary. It’s extremely common for those of us who are recovering…

There are many challenges that affect survivors, but one of the hardest has honestly been the unknown. There was no warning of things that I should look for or expect. No social worker came to talk to us in the hospital about how to handle this new life I had. It literally was “congratulations on…

My time in the hospital was fairly uneventful. I couldn’t really do much. I was heavily medicated and the drugs used to prevent vasospasms caused drowsiness.  Apparently that, in addition to everything I had just been through was just too much. I was constantly being evaluated. Daily I would have a transcranial doppler ultrasound to…

Hi. Welcome to my blog. This is something that I never thought that I would do. At least on this topic. My life forever changed on April 14, 2018. I almost didn’t survive, but I did. And it sent me on the toughest journey I have ever faced. That was the day that I suffered…

So I woke up on April 14, 2018, and was so excited that I didn’t have a headache. I couldn’t get over how bad that migraine cycle had been. It was absolutely brutal, but it was over! Now I could focus on my niece’s bridal shower. I was going to emcee the games for the…

Hi, everyone! Thank you for joining me. I am Michele Cozadd and I am a survivor. I feel extraordinarily blessed to still be here and I felt that it was important to give back to the survivor community, as well as help myself through my recovery. I decided to start my advocacy with this blog…