You are feeling better. You're having a hard time. You remembered and surprised yourself. You have no memory of a past treasured moment and it saddens you. You creatively put together the clues and reconnect in a heartening way. You lose a whole time period or any recollection of an occasion and feel the pain of such a loss. You deal with the anxiety of waiting and use your new found skills of relaxation and breathing to move through a period of intense stress. You become chaotic and disoriented and don't know what's happening to you and you whirl around in the anxious state. You are in so many ways so much better and in so many ways so much worse.

Our sanity depends on our connection with reality. Your changing reality challenges your sanity. Your childhood is permeated with fear of craziness. Yet, you are the least anxious you have ever been. Go figure. Yes, go figure. The essence of reality, changing faces or not, is now an intimate connection for you. It doesn't change. Ever. This essential truth is the cornerstone of your sense of well being, you will deal with whatever comes along. You are dealing with every loss, every gain, every joy, every pain. You will never be the same but that is not just loss. By embracing "Dealing with It", you have a new freedom, a new sense of security, and a new sense of yourself. You are a courageous woman and a smart woman. You are a woman of integrity and a woman of depth. You are a survivor of herpes simplex encephalitis. It didn't do you in. You're not a vegetable. You're not dysfunctional. You're not the same, but you're not less. You are someone to admire, someone to watch over, someone to love and someone who loves.

Your reality does have changing faces, but your spirit has, at its core, only one...the face of a woman committed to having a liberated, fulfilled life. Yes, you need help, but don't we all? Yes, it can be heavy and tiring at times, but isn't that really the nature of life? You're not the only one who must grapple with the changed and changing reality. So must we. And as we grapple together we must orient our vision to essence so we can connect there, for there is where we are being challenged to live, and in truth, where we say we do. So, if we do, then meeting you at essential truth will allow all of us to deal with the changing face of reality. At essence, nothing changed. We need to ponder quietly that dramatic truth, at essence you have not changed. You are essentially a woman of integrity, struggling to deal with your brain injury and embracing the mandate of deal with it. May we continue to follow your example and do the same.