"Mistakes are always forgiveable if one has the courage to admit them" ~ Bruce Lee

Being the administrator on the Brain Aneurysm Support Australia Facebook page occasionally discouraged me. I reckon I've had a Google bed  whilst I'd looked for so much information for BASA. I now have a l-o-n-g bookmark section! Some of the information seems very blah, some of it is repetitive, and sometimes I have to put in different words in Google to try and find an article about something which has caught my attention. Some, though, really do work.

This morning, on my own Facebook page Brain Aneurysm Research Funds, I had listed a few blogs which I have found. These are so good for anyone with a brain aneurysm, gone or still there, and ABI or TBI which can often happen to a BA survivor. These days I think I have ABI. These blogs are:

• Aneurysm Aphorisms (well, you're here!!)
• Kara Swanson's Brain Injury Blog
• Heidi's Surviving and Living with Brain Aneurysms
• David Grant's Traumatic Brain Injury Blog
• Will T's Nothing You Can See

Each blog is for the author's feelings - like, for instance, Kara Swanson is very happy, while Will T's blog is very much anti-life after his BA let him down. Have a read - they're all worth it.

Recently I had signed up to the ABC Active Memory brain games, and sometimes I'll follow them onto their website and join in if the game appeals to me. This morning it was a brainteaser called "The Password". My brain didn't work the way this finished... but I think that many, many people who read something like this brainteaser would do just what I did - think "logically". Have a look at it and see if you got the correct answer!

I'd found the PACE program (Positive Action towards Career Engagement), during my search for anything for BASA earlier last year. I joined it, and I went to meet my mentor, Steph, at her ANZ branch where she is a manager. That lead me into my interest for any courses I could have done, and I found Estrada College. I have signed up for a Diploma in Counselling which starts next week. I could have gone to university, but right now I need to keep recovering, and I feel that this diploma will help my recovery and will help me in any relationships I seek with people in my area who have an ABI or TBI from their brain injury.

So, how do the blogs I mentioned earlier and the ABC brainteaser and the PACE program work in together? For me, these are steps towards my recovery, and slot in with many other things I have found over the past months since I got out of hospital. I might have written, sometimes, with a feeling like Will T, but mostly I feel like David or Kara or Heidi. I know that it's a hard road, and maybe I'll never be exactly how I used to be - but you know... sometimes I feel that my BA and stroke have been a step into a wonderful future. Maybe I'll never get as far as I'd love to, but I feel good... very good about where I am.

And I'm still here!