The Sustainable Life:
The whole focus of the BRAIN-INJURY SURVIVOR NETWORK is about HOPE ….. hope for restoration and becoming again a valued member of the community. This is by experiencing the sustainable life. Such a life has the ability to be continually maintained everyday. It is the belief and personal experience of those who facilitate this network that there are three important components in recovering from a brain injury and and experiencing life in an ongoing way. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sits on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod topples over into an Unsustainable Life experience.
The components of a Sustainable life are:
1. Structure .... Like the Body without a backbone, so is life without structure. It gives order, direction, aims and achievable objectives i.e. overall purpose.
2. Spirituality ..... gives ultimate significance .... The window of light and life ….. like a large glass window at eye level …. Is the inner room of your life which will provide plenty of light and understanding. It answers such questions as: Who are we as people?, What is the meaning of life?, Are we significant?, What values should I live by?, what gives identity and destiny
3. Social Network .... The people around us: the synergistic effect … multiplication and complementary effect of effort: Family & friends, Clubs and Organisations, Associations, Churches, General Community
These Sustainable Life Solutions will continue to work for you in the years to come. Inherent in this framework is an understanding of our uniqueness as a created being, sustained by a loving Creator. Having a clear identity enables you to become people focussed rather than self focussed. See details on the Sustainable Life here at this Website.
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Sunday, September 7, 2008
ABI Fact Sheets
Please click on the link below to be taken to a comprehensive listing of Fact Sheets from the Brain Injury Association of Queensland. Please note that this link will open in a new window.
http://braininjury.org.au/portal/content/view/18/182/
http://braininjury.org.au/portal/content/view/18/182/
Library Review
The Brain Injury Association of Queensland (BIAQ) in Australia is indicative of the books available on Brain Injury from other Brain Injury Associations around the world. The library covers many areas including:
- Alcohol and drugs
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Behaviour
- Carers
- Children’s books
- Community integration
- Depression
- Epilepsy
- Grief and loss
- Medical
- Memory
- Neuroanatomy
- Neuropsychology
- Rehabilitation
- Sexuality
- Stress
- Stroke
See the website for the Brain Injury Association of Queensland at: http://www.biaq.com.au/library.htm
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Personal Stories Of Brain Injured People ..... No. 1
...... Takalah Tan in Singapore .....
06.09.07
Dear Brain Injury Survivor, Carer or Brain Injury Survivor Associate,
I have set up this worldwide e-mail broadcast and blog site to bring a new sense of belonging and hope for restoration from your brain injury or for the person you are associated with. Brain injury results in a sudden change of life ..... The one thing we all have in common is a brain injury if you are a survivor.
The injury affects not only the person but their family and friends as well. We didn’t ask for it but it came into all our lives in a sudden way from many different causes. The result was a sudden change of life. Brain injury affects people in similar ways for anyone around the world. The one thing that suddenly changes is the way we relate to other people. This can be in some of the following ways:
* We may have a fuzzy way of relating to other people but that can change with time from a very black and white approach to people towards a more intuitive approach to people ... sensing what people are saying on the inside
* Physically connecting with other people .... you do not drive any more (As you cannot take in all the intuitive information from the driving environment). You may use public transport instead or someone drives you around (as in my case .... now eleven years on from my former injury in December 1995 ... my wife Harriet drives me around ..... see the photo above)
* For those on the Internet, we find we can use the Internet for social contact. I think that is very true in my case as my e-mail network is easily over a thousand people around the world. People are in countries as far flung as America, Australia where I come from, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, India , Singapore etc.
I had a personal case of this in May when I had an e-mail response from Takalah Tan in Singapore. Several years earlier, I had read Takalah’s story on a City News website he had sent me. I then had another reply from him in April this year. I wrote back to Takalah and said that Harriet and I would be stopping over for a day in Singapore in early May on an overseas holiday trip to France in May. I would like to catch up with him when we there. He wrote back and said than we got to Singapore, he would like to connect with me and here was his mobile phone number. He would come to our hotel and take us out to lunch.
* We were staying at The Peninsula Excelsior Hotel. See the website at: https://www.ytchotels.com.sg/sp-ytcexcel/ We spent the morning walking around Singapore and looking at the history and some of the old buildings from the 1800’s when Singapore had been started as a city. See the post of photographs and words on my personal experienes website. This post is a record in photographs and little on the history of Singapore of our one day stay there.
* Takalah came at 11.00 a.m. in the morning. It was a strange experience in actually seeing him in actuality versus only seeing him on a website photograph. He took us out to his district or community on Singapore’s very efficient train system. We went to a communal restaurant where Takalah went around the various restaurant owners introducing us in a very personal way as his Australian friends.It was interesting to us as Australians to see how Singapore is very different to many Western cities. It is the mixing of an Eastern culture (Chinese) with a Western Culture. An Eastern culture focuses more on the family and the community (Cooperative) whereas Western Culture is highly individualised (Competitive and Corporate).
Singapore is a nation where the East is meeting the West and has a unique city of contrasts ...... the past is retained and the West is encouraged. I saw this clearly when I was reading the freely available magazine ‘Voices of Central Singapore’ and I read on the one page article by Zainudim Nordin, mayor of Central Singapore District when he wrote ‘What have You Done For Your Neighbour Lately?’ He says ‘I think we can all agree that having a cohesive communal society is one of the greatest strengths a nation can have ...... in a community we will work together for a common goal. We can put aside our differences and fulfil our role as active citizens. Working towards a common good also teaches cooperation, understanding and the ability to listen to others. It also helps to resolve conflicts. Be a volunteer: It could be your contribution towards building a united and resilient community, the basic building block of a cohesive and strong Singapore.’
The Government of Singapore has seen Singapore as a cohesive community with the whole city broken up into interconnecting cohesive communities. Each community was to work towards the common good of the community. Each community had its own residential, leisure, shopping and transport hub. Each community had an interconnecting transport system ..... the train system which connected each community with the next. See the photograph below.
Takalah took us out to his community to the communal restaurant and the communal shopping centre (things are so cheap in Singapore compared to Australia where I come from) and the general layout of the community, we saw this COMMUNAL MODEL being well illustrated.
We even caught the train out to where he lived in a residential complex with his mother. We walked up to his apartment block and caught the lift right up on one of the upper levels of the block (13th level). See the photographs above.
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Friday, September 5, 2008
Stories of Brain Injury Thrivers
Individual Stories of Brain Injury Thrivers: In the new theme ‘Beyond Being a Brain Injury Survivor into being a Brain Injury Thriver’, I have initially used my own experience in the last few years as an example of this direction. I have done this because: It is one I know well and I haven’t had much personal contact with many other survivors as I live a long way out of Brisbane, Australia in the countryside …. I live on a five acre property 35 kms out from Brisbane ….. see the story and photographs of our house at this website.
I do not drive now since my accident fourteen years ago ++ as I cannot intuitively take all the information in. I now catch public transport or my wife drives me around. In recent years, I have learnt to drive on the Internet and go around the world to many people as fast as you would talk on a telephone. I have set up a global website: New Earth Community which is a website for a new Cyberspace community around the world called ‘New Earth Community’ …. This community is linked by the Internet in Cyberspace. This community is meant to bring a new sense of belonging with the real discovery or affirmation of identity through the Sustainable Life. My story ‘The Rosewater Story’ is told at this section of this website The Brain Injury Survivor Network is a subset of ‘New Earth Community’.
In the last year I have a new digital camera whereby I can take 1000 photos on a tiny chip (a 2 GB Chip and I have two others as well). If you don’t like several photos, you take the photos backwards and delete what you like and then come home and download them straight to your computer. You can then downsize them into a much small size (Photographs can take up a lot of memory), attach them to e-mails and send them to someone around the world on the Internet. You can alternatively copy them across into a Word file as text then print them as a Portable Document file (pdf) See the instructions at this blog site on recommended website links for the free ‘pdf’ writer at:
http://www.pdf995.com/.
In addition, I have learned to make blogs through the free program through Blogger at:
https://www.blogger.com/start
Other people who receive your blog, can add comments to your blog site at the area indicated at the bottom and other people who read what they have said, can add comments to what they have said. It becomes possible to have a long term world wide discussion on you blog site. When you have created a blog with a name, you then go through a section of preset templates for colour and layout. Then you can add chapters of writing called posts and with photographs inserted in the post. I have250 ++ blogs now which I keep coming back, editing or adding fresh posts. See some of my travel blogs at:·
http://chateauxvillandry.blogspot.com/·
http://eiffeltowerken.blogspot.com/·
http://venicetrip.blogspot.com/ ...... just photographs·
http://sorrentovmills.blogspot.com/·
http://ravelloandvillacimbrone.blogspot.com/·
http://cinqueterre1.blogspot.com/·
http://travelblogkenandharriet.blogspot.com/
Some blogs are for sharing the joy and inspiration of life:·
http://thedamkap.blogspot.com/·
http://thepowerofcreativitykap.blogspot.com/·
http://mountainwingskap.blogspot.com/·
http://africaflying.blogspot.com/·
http://thecabride.blogspot.com/
Some blogs for sharing my past history:·
http://themullumbimbytrain.blogspot.com/·
http://thecairnstrip.blogspot.com/
Application of Blogs for Brain Injury group communication:·
http://braininjurysurvivornetwork.blogspot.com/ .... I use this blog which is included in an e-mail broadcast that connects hundreds of brain injury survivors around the world.
When you have set your first blog, you can edit your blog (or later blogs) through what is called a Dashboard. This a central control panel is which only entered by you through your e-mail address and password. Then you access to functions such as: View blog, Create a blog, Manage posts (ie. the chapters you have written in your blog), settings (where can edit the name of your blog or delete your blog altogether).
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This year with the theme ‘Beyond Being a Brain Injury Survivor into being a Brain Injury Thriver’, I have begun writing up the stories of other survivors I am in personally in contact with …. and there are lot of you around which the world hasn’t heard about. One amazing lady I went and saw at the start of last year was Meriel Stanger who lives at Deagon on the opposite side of Brisbane city here in Australia.
To get to her, it was a twenty minute car ride to the train station ….. then a half hour wait for the train to inner Brisbane …. Then a quarter of an hour wait for a suburban train out to Deagon …. Then a half hour on the train to Deagon (just as well I have good book!) …. Then a five minute walk to her house. This lady is remarkable for someone who was very badly injured when as horse rolled on her over twelve years ago in March 1995.
Her Story:
She was in hospital twelve months with many operations and had a serious brain injury
She is now in a manual wheelchair for life, is blind in one eye and can only type with one finger. She has already written and self published her first book: a 200 page book called ‘Permission to Shine - The Gift’ (the book is in the tenth reprint) which she sends around the world for a price.
She has written her second book already called ‘Shining On’ …. A book about happiness.
She is involved in so much eg. She is on the boards of several disability advocacy groups in the City, she advises on local Council boards on the needs of people with disabilities in their local council areas and she goes everywhere around the City.
I met Meriel again with others at the ‘Unmet Needs Campaign’ meeting held in August 2005 at a hotel in the City of Brisbane, Australia. Meriel was in her manual wheelchair. She gave me a copy her book which I read with great interest
This was after this time, I went by train to see her at her home at Deagon to interview her. What really got to me when I interviewed her at the end of the time together was the following insight: 'See the gift in your accident'
I have attached five Blog Sites on Meriel’s outlook on life:
>Self Confidence
>A Meaningful Life
>A Response to Ignorance
>Meriel Stanger’s Book Review P&H
>Legalised Murder - Rethinking Life-sustaining Measures
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Takalah Kok Liang: I personally met Takalah in Singapore (as a stop over), on an overseas holiday trip to France in May 2007. This was when my wife Harriet and I went on a 3.5 week holiday to France. The wonderful story of Takalah and his personal journey through an Acquired Brain Injury is told in these websites at:
1. Life Lessons From A Tragic Encounter – Story of Takalah Tan in Singapore:
http://www.inspiring-quotes-and-stories.com/takalah-tan.html
From the person who knew Takalah personally who said: 'Takalah Tan is someone I know living with the complex challenges of Post Traumatic Brain Injury. He is one of the most inspiring people I have ever come across. From him, I found the hope and zest to spurge ahead in my will to live life the best that I can.' Read also the pages at the very bottom the website:
Return from Takalah Tan Brain Injury Life Lessons to Inspiring Stories Page
Return from Takalah Tan Brain Injury Life Lessons to Inspiring Quotes and Stories Home Page
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There many other brain injury survivors around the world who I observe who are involved in this theme ‘Beyond Being a Brain Injury Survivor into being a Brain Injury Thriver’. If you would like your story to be known, send me a one page e-mail on your story with a photograph and giving your permission to publish your story. We would love to hear about it.
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Travelling by The Internet
| Brain injury results in a sudden change of life .....
For those on the Internet, we find we can use the Internet for social contact. I think that is very true in my case as my e-mail network is easily over a thousand people around the world. People are in countries as far flung as America, Australia where I come from, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, India , Singapore etc. My Blog Site and Website Listings as at July 2007: Travel:This is for Ken Aitken in Australia. Each of these Blog or Web Sites are generally Hot-linked. Click on the site and it will open up in different window. The Blog Sites are through Blogger (see https://www.blogger.com) …. A free website service, otherwise the a website is hosted by a hosting company with several hundreds $$ renewal fee / year. _____________________________ Italy Trip in 2005 __________________________ France Trip in 2007 ___________________________My Personal Background: I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s at Wilsons Creek, up in the mountains out from Mullumbimby in Northern New South Wales, Australia. I was raised on a banana plantation amidst the steep slopes of rainforest and wet sclerophyll (gum) forest and occasional cliff outcrops. The creek we swam in was a very clear, clean freshwater rainforest creek with big deep pools. People now in the City, would give their `eye’ teeth for it as my late father used to say.
______________________ Christian Spirituality Website: My main global website: New Earth Community is a website on a new Cyberspace community around the world called ‘New Earth Community’ …. This community linked by the Internet in Cyberspace. This community is meant to bring a new sense of belonging with the a real discovery or affirmation of identity through the Sustainable Life. The basis of this life is one which has the ability to be continually renewed and maintained. The Sustainable Life has three elements to it:
The outworking of this life is told in my recent story ‘The Rosewater Story’ at this section of the website. ____________________________________ |
Thursday, September 4, 2008
HeadCase Painting Exhibition
The 2nd INTERNATIONAL BRAIN INJURY CONFERENCE in Melbourne, Australia on September 1st - 3rd 2008 ......
Leading acquired brain injury organisations, arbias and Brain Injury Australia, have joined forces to bring you an exciting and informative three day event.
INSIGHTS and SOLUTIONS
The combined 2nd International Conference on Alcohol and Other Drug Related Brain Injury and the Brain Injury Australia National Conference 2008
Monday 1 – Wednesday 3 September 2008
Sofitel Melbourne
MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
Monday 1 – Wednesday 3 September 2008
Sofitel Melbourne
MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
Download the Conference
Handbook at this Website ....
Handbook at this Website ....
..... HeadCase Painting Exhibition .....
Actual Paintings and word descriptions
by Acquired Brain Injury Artists .......... .Read about the Exhibition at this website ....
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