In 2019 I sustained a traumatic brain injury after my head hit a glass wall. My memories from the day of the accident are a blur. I remember feeling blood on my face and talking to my husband, but I can't recall if I was talking to him in person or on a cellphone. I've been told I was examined by a doctor, but I have no memory of that.

What I do know is that because of the accident, I went from being a full-time educator to being a retired teacher. Before my injury, I could engage in intelligent conversation. Now I often stutter and search for words.

About a year after my injury, my husband saw a flyer for an online writing class in one of my doctors' waiting rooms. Because I'd been a writer in my “previous life,” he assumed I'd be interested.

“No thanks,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked.

Why? Because I hadn't written anything since my injury. Because I'd have to speak to people who didn't know I had a brain injury. How would I explain my slow processing and my brain fog? I had plenty of excuses, but my husband had answers for all of them.

He kept pushing. Eventually he said that if I didn't sign up, he'd do it for me. I finally enrolled. The class had 11 students, all women who had survived some medical crisis. I listened each week as they discussed poems and essays and shared nuggets of their lives through their writing. I was mostly quiet. I never volunteered when the instructor asked one of us to read something. I was an anonymous person taking writing classes.

On the last day, the instructor asked each of us to read a piece we'd been working on. Up to that point, I hadn't shared anything. Not a word about myself or my writing. I volunteered to go first so I wouldn't lose my confidence. I wiped my sweaty hands across my legs, and my head twitched a little, as it does when I get nervous. Once I started reading my essay, which chronicled my accident and its effect on my life, I never looked up.

In the essay I described the sensation of searing metal ramrodding through my forehead after I hit the wall, the four months I spent away from my family being treated for my injury, and the terrifying weight loss and overwhelming fatigue I experienced after my injury. I wrote about how my memories were like Polaroid snapshots scattered across a table and how terrible it was to lose control of my health.

I also wrote about the renewed strength of my marriage and friendships and connection to my children. I acknowledged that my post-injury life is filled with hope and fear, love and sorrow, and that I no longer wait for doctors to provide a cure or relief. I am the relief.

When I ended the essay with “I am no longer waiting. I am planting and growing the miracles that will tell the rest of my story” and raised my head, I saw that some of my classmates were teary-eyed or weeping.

As I listened to my classmates read their stories about how writing aided in their healing, I felt transformed. In the faces I'd looked at for six weeks, I saw survivors and writers.

Why do they write? I can't answer that for them. But for me it's clear. My doctors may have kept me from dying, but the writing I did in this class brought me back to life. And writing continues to keep me going. Living with a traumatic brain injury is exceptionally challenging, but I'm writing my way through it. I have to.

Martha Bonnie lives in Phoenix with her husband and teenage son. She also has a daughter in college. Bonnie writes poetry and narrative nonfiction, including essays about traumatic brain injury. She’s grateful that she can still write, which has been a passion of hers since childhood.