Forthcoming book
expected 2027The Anatomy of After:
A Memoir of Survival, Brain Injury, and Becoming Again
When a therapist, mother, and survivor of a catastrophic brain injury wakes from a coma to discover that both her life and identity have been irrevocably altered, she must learn how to grieve who she was while becoming someone entirely new.
The Anatomy of After is a memoir about what happens when a life ends—but the body survives.
On August 19, 2024, I was a wife, mother of two babies under two, and mental health counselor.
In an instant, as a passenger in a catastrophic motor vehicle accident that changed everything.
My cousin, who was like a second mother to me, was killed. I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, was intubated, placed on a ventilator, in a coma in ICU.
Three hospitals later, when I woke, I slowly entered into consciousness—a world that was both familiar and unrecognizable.
I was weaned off breastfeeding for my six month old, without my knowledge, while I was in a coma, and I spent over 50 days away from my recently expanded family to re-learn all the basics of life, like walking, all over again.
I had survived, but the person I had been no longer existed in the same way.
Part memoir and part exploration of the hidden realities of brain injury, The Anatomy of After chronicles the long and often invisible process of rebuilding a life after profound loss. Through stories of rehabilitation, motherhood, grief, disability, and identity, the book examines what it means to live in the space between who we were and who we become after trauma.
Unlike many survival narratives that focus on triumph over adversity, The Anatomy of After explores the complexity of living with permanent change.
It confronts the realities of cognitive fatigue, memory loss, sensory disruption, altered relationships, and the ongoing uncertainty that accompanies severe brain injury. It also asks larger questions:
What remains when our abilities are stripped away
How do we measure a meaningful life when productivity and independence can no longer be taken for granted?
What does healing look like when recovery is not a return to the person we once were?
A unique aspect of the memoir is the author’s dual perspective as both survivor and mental health professional. Drawing upon clinical knowledge while simultaneously living through neurological disability, the book bridges the gap between medical understanding and lived experience. It offers readers an intimate view of a condition that affects millions yet remains widely misunderstood.
At its heart, The Anatomy of After is a story about transformation.
It is about grief—not only for those we lose, but for the versions of ourselves that disappear. It is about motherhood while disabled, finding meaning amid uncertainty, and learning that survival is not a single event but a daily act of courage.
The central message of the book is that life after trauma is not a return to what was.
It is an anatomy of what comes after: a study of loss, resilience, adaptation, and the possibility of becoming someone new.
Survival is not a single event, but a daily act of courage.For media requests and other information about The Anatomy of After: