My Brain is back
Having My Brain Back
For a long time, I didn’t have my brain. I had a body that moved, a mouth that talked, a life that happened to me. But the part of me that remembered, that wrote, that woke up with ideas buzzing like radio stations — that part was gone. Hidden.
As a child I was always like that. I was a writer. I studied journalism at Diablo Valley College. My mother helped me with Global Teen Club, but really she taught me about writing. She taught me that words could carry you out of any room you were stuck in. She’d sit at the kitchen table with me, red pen in hand, and show me how to make a sentence stand up straight.
Then I blocked that part of me out of my life. From the Y2K period to now, things just were hidden. Trauma does that. Being unhoused does that. Being criminalized does that. You pack away the pieces of yourself that feel too soft, too dangerous to keep out. You forget you ever had them.
Until I got closure from my parents’ death. Grief has a way of unlocking doors you bricked up years ago. And suddenly, I had my brain back.
I remember being in a jail cell and my whole life flashed behind me. Not in front of me — behind me. Like a film reel running backward. Little girl with notebooks. DVC newsroom. My mother’s red pen. The years I stopped writing. The years I stopped remembering. The women I met who didn’t make it. So many women would break if they knew what I have been through. I almost did.
But I didn’t.
Now I wake up in the morning and have ideas to write again. Real ideas. Not panic, not survival plans, not court dates. Sentences. Essays. The next chapter of the nonprofit. The next blog post. I wake up and my brain is mine again. It remembers everything — the good, the ugly, the details I thought I’d lost. I can feel the synapses firing, like lights coming back on in a house that was dark for 20 years.
That’s strength. Not the fake kind where you pretend you were never hurt. The real kind. The kind where you remember it all and you still get up. The kind where you have the confidence to walk alone, because you know the person walking with you — you — is someone you can trust again.
My mother taught me about writing. Jail taught me about remembering. Grief taught me about closure. And now, finally, I have the ability to use all three.
I was always a writer. I just had to find her again. She was locked up too. But she’s out now. And she has a lot to say.
