Chloe White
Walk for Thought Blog Post
11.3.2015 !
What did you learn about brain injury? !
When thinking about brain injury, I often think about people who have become severely
debilitated and who can no longer function or care for themselves. I believe that this image
readily comes to mind because this is often what is portrayed in the media. When reading the
news or watching TV, the stories that are most often published are the ones which have the most
horrific results. However, this year at the Brain Injury Alliance’s annual Walk for Thought I had a
very different experience.
At the Walk for Thought, there were two different T-Shirts being handed out: yellow and
orange. The yellow shirt stood for survivors, and the orange shirts were given to everybody else.
I was amazed at how many yellow shirts were given out. An overwhelming amount of survivors
came out to the walk, as well as family members, friends and caretakers. I was surprised that so
many of them seemed, for lack of a better word, normal. More than once I was surprised to be
handing a yellow shirt to someone who I had assumed was a caretaker. (Disclaimer: I am not
saying that although some survivors seemed “normal,” they are not dealing with debilitations
every day).
To sum up, what I really learned about brain injury is that it can present itself in so many
different ways. Throughout everyone who came through my pre-registration table, they all
seemed to have one thing in common: they had all outwardly accepted that their brain injury was
something they had to live with, and they were ready to both fight for and support others who
were in the same boat that they were
