Hope Restored: The Fork in the Road, Following a Traumatic Brain Injury

By Faye Nunnelee Byrd

Faye writes from her personal perception using her thoughts, feelings, and observations as she struggled with the personality and behavior changes following a traumatic brain injury. She related to this time a walking through Shadowland, a place of ashes. Faye tells how her hope was restored by a personal word from God, which allowed her to accept her new personality and the changed behavior, allowing her to take the new road map for her life, forging ahead with courage, because she is a survivor and knows that the journey is worth taking.

Faye lives in Mobile, Alabama. She is a 1980 graduate of Troy University School of Nursing, Montgomery Campus. She is a member of the Mobile Writers Guild, the Alabama State Poetry Society, and a former member of the National Associate of American Pen Women, Mobile Branch ,as Letters, serving several times as the chapters chaplain.

Faye has been published in The Journal of Christian Nursing, several anthologies, and different newsletters pertaining to Traumatic Brain Injury and relating emotional problems. She is a guest writer at TrustinginJesus.com. In her spare time, she enjoys playing Mexican train dominoes, cards, Chinese mahjongg, designing and making quilts, ballroom and line dancing, reading mysteries and historical fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449783341

Faye Nunnelee Byrd

My name is Faye. I am a survivor of a traumatic brain injury. I want to share with you from poems and prose, my personal struggle with the personality and behavior changes following the traumatic brain injury which I relate to as walking through Shadowland, a place of ashes. It was a pathway that I walked not by choice but of necessity, to survive. How my hope was restored with a personal word from God, which gave me the hope and courage to take this new road map for my life and forging ahead with hopeful expectations, living life to the fullness that I am capable of.

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Copyright © 2013 Faye Nunnelee Byrd.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-8333-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8334-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013901584

WestBow Press rev. date: 2/25/2013

To the men and women of the US military who have sustained a traumatic brain injury

IN MEMORY OF MY SON,

Captain James E. Byrd Jr., USAF, Retired

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me