24 Years Post-TBI

May 19, 2022 marks 24 years since my life changing TBI. My brain injury occurred three days before my 25th birthday, so this next year also marks the year when things will flip to having lived longer post-TBI than I did prior to it. I turn 49 on May 22, 2022.

I’ve spoken a lot about this brain injury in interviews, and I wrote a whole book about my recovery. (If you’d like a copy of “If I Only Had a Brain Injury,” please contact me. It’s out of print and often crazy expensive on Amazon, but I have some signed copies available at a reasonable cost.) I’ve always considered this complete game changer the best thing that ever happened to me. Even though I’ve been medical intuitive my whole life, I would not be doing this kind of work without this injury.

Astrologically, I can see that I was due for something major. Ann Kreilkamp once looked at my transits at the time of my accident and told me, “Laura, if you had stayed in bed in the hotel room that day instead of getting in your car when your intuition said you’d get into a car accident, the ceiling would have fallen on your head!” Within moments of waking up at a red light, I felt this in the depths of my soul. “It” had happened. That mysterious, looming something that pursued me in recurring dreams was here. Now. And so, the journey began.

What a wild, beautiful, and yes, painful journey it has been. I feel I’m still on it, even though I consider myself fully recovered after four years of total disability. My brain got rewired. I am not the person I was the morning of May 19, 1998. My accident occurred at 1:11 p.m., and I catapulted into a new realm and a new way of being. I would not exchange that experience for anything.

Some of you have known me since before I hit my head. Many of you found me long after I tunneled through an underground initiation. I’m privileged to have walked with so many others through their own initiations, Dark Night(s) of the Soul, and breakthroughs to the other side. According to my doctors, I’m a walking miracle, and I humbly, gratefully and proudly wear that mantle. I experienced the touch of Grace in my recovery, but I also worked damned hard! It took grit, courage and everything I had and more to move from total disability to a thriving, happy, healthy life.

One of my doctors told me, “Laura, most people reach a comfortable state of disability and give up, but you’re different. You’re not satisfied with a comfortable state of disability.”

I was appalled at the suggestion that I would just give up. “That’s because it’s unacceptable. For me, there is NO comfortable state of disability.”

I didn’t know it back then, but I have an exact Grand Trine in Air of Sun-Moon-Pluto in my natal chart. Being under someone else’s thumb, at the whim of Workers Comp or insurance companies for the rest of my life? Not being able to support myself? Ummmmm, no! Absolutely not. Pluto gives you grit and resilience. He also gives you strength, and steely determination to reclaim your power. Pluto does not wallow in the role of victim. I refused to let injury, doctors, insurance companies or anybody else keep me down. It just wasn’t an option.

I share this story here, because I feel myself at that tipping point, where I’ve been alive longer post-TBI than pre-TBI. This feels significant, like flipping a switch. It also feels relevant on a more collective level, as the US continues its first exact Pluto conjunction since the nation’s birth. Things look bad right now — if you look with logic. My TBI threw out my rational side for four plus years. I learned to look through other lenses, to find the signs of healing along the way.

For those with eyes to see, there are many signs of rejuvenation, rebirth and resilience. Things will never be the same. We will face challenges, but sometimes what gets destroyed needed to go away. Only by removing the old — by doing a full gut rehab — do we find our beauty and full potential. I’m a walking miracle, and I know how to recognize miraculous potential. I see it all the time in clients, and I see it in the collective. Do not despair. Powerful transformation and healing are underway.

Thank you for being here now, on this wild, crazy planet at this particularly insane moment in history. As Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” I, for one, always choose the miracle.

That is the secret to every recovery I’ve ever made.