Thriving Through Trauma with Emily Berg

I had the pleasure of chatting with Emily Berg. Emily is our neighbor. And we have watched Emily and her sisters grow up over the past 16 years that we have been here, an absolutely fantastic family and watching Emily grow from a child into a young woman a college student with dreams and passions, landing her dream job and then everything coming crashing down and in burning embers on the floor. Everything she thought was was no longer a possibility in her life. Emily shares how she is embracing this journey, how she is thriving through the trauma and how the changes in life are met with strength and purpose. This is an open, authentic and real conversation. One that will have you thinking if she can do it. So can I

What is bringing joy into your life lighting you up? What is your story?

The ability to get up every day and have a clean slate have a fresh start. Part of my journey, I am a nurse. After I graduated nursing school about three months later, I was unfortunately involved in two car accidents two weeks apart from each other, which left me with my third and fourth concussion. But they were so close together that I left with the diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury. So I'm here to talk about my journey with my diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury and hopefully offering advice to others who may be going through something similar or maybe something totally different, but still life throws you curveballs and you can absolutely make your life how you want it to be.

What do you think brought you to a place of having this outlook?

In the beginning, I will say it was really, really hard, it was hard to see my life outside of what my symptoms look like, I'll touch on that a little bit later. But I think one of the biggest things is my faith, I would be nowhere without my faith, I am a very strong person of faith. I think just being able to lean into that and kind of use that as a way to be like, okay, like, this is not where I planned on being, but what's the greater plan, he's got a bigger plan for me. So I just have to trust him. And he's gonna lead me down a path that I never thought possible. I just want to be able to use this space in my journey to help others to show them that they can do things that they never even imagined even when life doesn't go the way they thought they planned.

Faith is the foundation of everything I do. Do you ever sit back and think, what would people do without that foundation?

My family and I have had conversations, like what would happen if you didn't have your faith? Or you didn't have a supportive family? Or you didn't have supportive friends and neighbors and people who are truly there for you? I don't know how somebody would get through that. It'd be so difficult, so much more difficult than it already is.

My dream job was working in labor and delivery. I had always wanted to be a labor and delivery nurse since I was in high school. That was that was the dream. That was everything I was working towards. I got it. I literally had the one position that was offered for the graduating year after me. So I got that a year ahead of time. I was like, This is great. Everything is like going exactly as planned. I'm 23 I have my whole life ahead of me. Then three weeks into that I got into my first car accident, I was rear ended. Then two weeks later, I was unfortunately rear ended again. The first one was okay, I was able to work through it.

But the second one was what really set me back. I mean, when you get any concussion, I’ll break it down into three different groups, you have physical symptoms, you have cognitive symptoms, and then that leaves you with like an emotional piece too.

So there is a concussion checklist that you fill out for your symptoms. There are 24 symptoms on the checklist. I checked every single one, except for one I did thankfully did not vomit, because that can happen sometimes after you are hitting the head. But I had light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, I had a headache, I still have a headache. I have like a persistent migraine that has yet to go away.

It's manageable. I was at probably an eight out of 10 all day, every day for I'd say a good three months. Tylenol didn't help. I had difficulty concentrating, I had processing issues. I mean, just even trying to put a thought from your head to paper was the hardest thing that I could ever do. I remember just sitting and crying because three weeks ago, I could do all of that I had my whole life ahead of me. Then all of us it took two things to stop me dead in my tracks. But I think without that I never would have been able to sit back and reflect and grow throughout this journey. I've learned so much about myself. I'm so grateful for that because I wouldn't know myself or my body in the way like I have now. So I'm so eternally grateful for that.

It opened up so many doors like being able to talk to you and I always thought that labor and delivery was the goal, right? I wanted to work in an OB office and that was what I was going to do. I was going to deliver babies for the rest of my life. Joke's on me that's not going to happen anymore. By like life goal now is to be able to work in a concussion clinic. I want to become a nurse practitioner where I can serve athletes and other people who have been diagnosed with concussions because I can sit at the other side of that table and be like, I understand exactly what you are going through. I have been there I have done that I've done the work I've done pte for almost two years to work on my balance. I've done vision therapy for my eyes because they weren't seeing things correctly. Still working through that I did speech therapy not so much for an articulation issue. It was more for processing. And I had to learn how to read again, because my eyes weren't working together, and my brain was just not having it. So it's been a long journey.

This is gonna sound weird, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I'm so grateful that that has it happened. Now, are there some days where I'm like, why did this happen to me? Absolutely. But in the end, I'm so grateful for the journey that I've been on, and I can't wait to see where it takes me next. And to see what else I can do.

What do you going into this new field which brought chills down my spine? In your wildest dreams, what do you see? What do you imagine? What are the doors that you have seen opening? And that you continue? If you look down the road, and you see all these doors that keep opening? What does it look like?

I see myself doing a lot of things in education, educating people about concussions, I also see myself working with professional athletes. Whether that be being a nurse practitioner for a certain team, or if it's conducting studies, I've also seen myself in research, anything that has to do with the brain is extremely interesting to me, I just see a whole new world of possibilities that I honestly had never dreamed off. And I never would have ever thought I just thought I'd be happy inside a hospital where now I've my dreams are so far beyond the hospital.

So what would you say to someone who is on the beginning part of a journey?

I think the first thing I would say to them is you can't control what happens to you in life. But you have the power to control how you react to it. All of our motions matter. And it's just a process. It's a grieving process, you know, you grieve for the life that you thought you were going to have. But after you do that, I would encourage you to look at all of the opportunities that are in front of you. It might not look like it the first couple of weeks, months, you know, but as time goes on, you're gonna be like, Okay, there's certain things that like I can do now, or I like the way that things have changed because of XY and Z.

You know, I guess I go back to for me when I first had gotten injured, we take the I took a lot of things for granted, right? I mean, the ability to take a shower without feeling like your head was going to absolutely explode was something that I 100% took for granted. And then like maybe four weeks later, I'm like, okay, like today's victory was I got to take a shower without feeling like my head's gonna explode. Now, I might slip for three hours. But I'm like, okay, like, you know, you have to appreciate the small victories when they come and those small things are big things, right? And, like, you have to also find something to lean into that fills you, right? There's a lot of times when we have a change in life, sometimes it's not for the best. It's things that we don't expect, whether it's, you know, an injury or death in the family, chronic disease or, you know, something like that. And I would say like, I would encourage you to find something that brings you joy or fills you and for me that was my faith. If I was able to turn and lead, whether it was listening to daily mast or listening to prayers, or just kind of creating a routine for me that works that still, like brought me joy that I felt like I was, I was doing something.

Do you think you would have tapped into any of this? Had these these experiences not happened? These the series of events that were out of your control? Do you think that it would ever have landed on your plane?

I don't think so. I think I was so hyper focused on, you know, inside of a hospital, I was so hyper focused on labor and delivery, and I loved women's health. And like, my goal for a very long time was to be a nurse practitioner in a women's health office. I don't think I ever would have I mean, I would have maybe paid attention a little. But I don't think I ever would have developed the love of the brain that I have right now.

What is and so many people are focused on what could have them. Very often what could have been, is now totally off the table. Things change.

Was this easy for you?

Absolutely not. One of the absolute hardest things I've ever had to do in my entire life. I had my whole life planned out for me. I'm 25. I did not see these last few years going the way that they did. But without the experience, I wouldn't have had the personal growth that I did. So I feel like my advice to somebody would be first of all, there are there is absolutely somebody out there going through something similar. Tap into those resources. So whether it's, you've got a diagnosis, find a support group, find some body that you can relate to in the beginning, it was really hard. Everybody, you know, you can relate to friends who have like, Yep, I've had a concussion. I know what that feels like, right? But we're now six 810 12 weeks into it. No, like my symptoms have never lasted that long. Your therapist if you're working with people, whether that be counseling, or that's physical therapy, vision therapy, some of my greatest friendships have come from therapy, my physical therapist and I are a great duo. He knows he knows exactly how to read me. And so you walk in, he's like, how you doing? And I could I could, you know, beat around the bush be like, Oh, okay, and he's like, I can see it in your eyes. Tell me the truth. Okay, my vision therapist is 100% somebody who really changed a lot of my outlook on things. She was the first person that I met that was in the same scenario I was, she had a really bad concussion, her seven out of 10 Headache lasted for a year and a half. She's the first person that I could ever relate to with all of my symptoms. So that was really like validating for me, right. So I encourage people to go out and find a support group or find resources, but also like, lean on your family and friends. They might not understand exactly what you're going through, but they're also watching you go through it. So they understand something, they understand where you're coming from, they might not exactly understand, but they get it and they just want the best from you. And my third thing was, don't be afraid to talk about how you're feeling. Because it does no one any good to keep all of that bottled up, it's only going to lead to, you know, a really big pent up of emotions that's going to explode or it's going to turn you into a downward spiral where you might experience you know, some anxiety, depression, things like that. So I think the biggest thing is find your people and talk to them.

Did you find it hard to express your emotions in the beginning?

In the beginning, yes, because with a concussion, you're when in order to obtain of concussion. You're Brain and your skull move differently. So your skull goes forward, your brain goes backwards. So it's the hitting motion of the brain on the skull that causes what we would call a bruising is the easiest way to do it. When that happens, there's also a friction that occurs, that tears your brain cells. So when that happens, your brain cells aren't able to expand and contract that the way that they usually do. And they release a lot of chemicals that aren't supposed to be released. So it causes a lot of like a chemical imbalance. So in the beginning, I was so emotional I was, but I was also tired. I was in pain. I was just, it was not fun. But you learn how to deal with it. And I like Oh, I'm like, I hate crying, right? Like, I don't like to cry. But like, I've learned throughout this process, that's my greatest release of emotion. So if I'm feeling some way, I need to be able to cry. And then I'm, I'm okay. Yeah. And obviously, that's gotten a lot better with time and coping strategies. And, you know, just overall getting better, right, you have the ability to, like, do certain things. I could never for the first three months, couldn't walk outside without sunglasses and a hat because my light sensitivity was so bad, gloomy days, were my friend, you know, and in Binghamton, we get a lot of just gonna say this was the perfect place.

A lot of my strength comes from accepting where you are. So for me accepting my situation was extremely difficult, because it's definitely not something that I had planned. And when the initial treatment plan didn't work, and we had to switch, I just switched physicians three times before I found the right care team and the right captain of the ship, so to speak. It was really hard to accept where I was, I was angry, I was annoyed, disappointed. And I think the hard part was watching everybody else's life go on, you know, and I'm still here. And that still, you know, bothers me sometimes to this day, but it's a lot different. So I think the first thing that someone has to do is like, Accept where they are, accept. And then once you accept where you are, you have to kind of do like, an internal interview with yourself. Okay, what do I need right now, in this moment, that's going to bring me some sort of joy? Is it maybe I'm gonna go for a walk just to clear my head. Or maybe I'm gonna go ask a friend if they can bring coffee over because a coffee house may be too stimulating for me, or something. So I think you have to accept your situation first. And once you do that, okay, now what do I need in order to make me feel fulfilled. And I think that was a big piece. And all of that is life happens. But it's how you pick those pieces up and make yourself feel fulfilled. When that happens. That makes all the difference in the world. So I would encourage somebody to kind of accept where they are. It's hard. Trust me, I get it. It's so hard. Yes. But once you do that, it kind of opens up a whole other world of like, okay, I've accepted where we are, where I am. Now, what do I need to go forward?

That was the answer for a lot of it. Because at the time, I didn't know, my head hurt, I had terrible whiplash. I felt like I was gonna throw up. I was dizzy, right? Like, what do you need? I don't know. But then asking what I needed in reality was what I needed, because you just wanted somebody to care about you in that situation. You know, a lot of times, people are like, oh, what can I do to help? And it's like, well, your text of hey, how are you doing today is exactly what I needed for this.

So I think my biggest one that I have learned throughout this whole experience is you are yourself biggest advocate. Nobody is going to sit on the other side for you and advocate for yourself like you do.

You know your body best, you know what you need. And if they're not listening, they're not the right doctor for you, or they're not the right care team for you, then then you go find somebody that is going to listen to you and is going to say, I'm going to fix you that happened to me. When I met my third nurse practitioner who is amazing, I want to be her when I grow up. I remember I was scared out of my mind, I had no idea what this experience was going to be like because the other two before that were terrible. I walked into the room and she said woman, I am going to fix you. And that has stuck with me since and she absolutely absolutely as fixing. She is amazing. So that's my first piece of advice.

My second piece of advice is you can absolutely do hard things, you are a lot stronger than you think you are. And sometimes whether it's physical pain, or you know making you hit rock bottom to realize it, you can absolutely do hard things, there's always a way up and out of something, you are never stuck, you might feel like you're stuck. But there are so many people and resources and things out there to help you so that you don't feel like that. And I feel like my third one is we as humans, we're all resilient in some way, shape, or form. We all are going through something different. But at the end of the day, every human goes through a life change. Instead of looking at our differences, let's look at what's similar.

If you choose not to be resilient, you can always go back and make a different choice. But it might be a different path from what you chose in the beginning. But you're absolutely right life is a series of choices you choose one way or another. You can choose to be miserable, or you can choose to, you know, like I'm going to pick myself up and we're going to do this yes, you're going to absolutely choose that. I don't think it's necessarily somebody's born with it or not. i It's all about a series of life choices. And sometimes people might not have had life experiences to be like,

Journal Prompt:

They say challenging times can either make you or break you.

I want you to think about a time or a journey that is either made you or broke you. If that time broke you, I want you to write down things that you do or cling to, to make you feel joyful, happy, seen, and somewhat whole. If there's a time that made you into who you are, I want you to write down things that you learned about yourself or things that you did to help you along the process.