Listening in the Silence, Seeing in the Dark: Reconstructing Life after Brain Injury

248 Pages·2002·1 MB·English

by  Ruthann Knechel Johansen

Listening in the Silence,
Seeing in the Dark

Ruthann Knechel Johansen
Listening in the Silence,
Seeing in the Dark
Reconstructing Life
after Brain Injury
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2002 by Ruthann Knechel Johansen
The excerpt from “Transcendental Etude,” from The Dream of a
Common Language: Poems 1974–1977by Adrienne Rich, copyright©
1978 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., is used by permission of
the author and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. The excerpt from
The Wishing Bone Cycle: Narrative Poems from the Swampy Cree
Indians, gathered and translated by Howard A. Norman (Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Ross-Erikson Publishing, 1972), is used by permis-
sion of Howard A. Norman. The excerpt from “Little Gidding”
in Four Quartets, copyright 1942 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1970 by
Esme Valerie Eliot, is reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and
Faber and Faber Ltd. The excerpt from Tao Te Chingby Lao Tzu, a
new English version with a foreword and notes by Stephen Mitchell,
translation copyright©1988 by Stephen Mitchell, is reprinted by per-
mission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., and Macmillan Publishers,
Ltd. “Poem 10,” from The Kabir Bookby Robert Bly, copyright ©
1971, 1977 by Robert Bly, © 1977 by the Seventies Press, is reprinted
by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johansen, Ruthann Knechel, 1942–.
Listening in the silence, seeing in the dark : reconstructing life
after brain injury / Ruthann Knechel Johansen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-23114-7 (cloth : alk. paper).
1.Johansen, Erik, 1969– —Health. 2.Brain—Wounds and
injuries—Patients—Biography. 3. Brain—Wounds and injuries—
Patients—Rehabilitation. 4.Brain—Wounds and injuries—
Patients—Family relationships. 5. Bibliotherapy. 6. Storytelling—
Therapeutic use. 7. Parents of children with disabilities. I.Title.
RJ496.B7 J65 2002
362.1'97481044'092—dc21 2001027681
[B]
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally
chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
For
Erik, Sonia, Robert,
and all who wait in silence

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.
Tao te Ching
Vision begins to happen in such a life
as if a woman quietly walked away
from the argument and jargon in a room
and sitting down in the kitchen, began turning in her lap
bits of yarn, calico, and velvet scraps,
laying them out absently on the scrubbed boards
in the lamplight...
and skeins of milkweed from the nearest meadow—
original domestic silk, the finest findings—
and the darkblue petal of the petunia,
and the dry darkbrown lace of seaweed;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
Such a composition has nothing to do with eternity,
the striving for greatness, brilliance—
only with the musing of a mind
one with her body, experienced fingers quietly pushing
dark against bright, silk against roughness,
pulling the tenets of a life together
with no mere will to mastery,
only care for the many-lived, unending
forms in which she finds herself,
becoming now the sherd of broken glass
slicing light in a corner, dangerous
to flesh, now the plentiful, soft leaf
that wrapped round the throbbing finger, soothes the wound;
and now the stone foundation, rockshelf further
forming underneath everything that grows.
Adrienne Rich, “Transcendental Etude”

Contents
Introduction
1
threshold one
The Impact of Vulnerability
4
threshold two
Waiting in Crisis
27
threshold three
Uncertain Deliveries
55
threshold four
Becoming Again
80
threshold five
The Scattered Self
116