A Review through Dialogue: Ruthann Knechel Johansen’s “Listening in the Silence, Seeing in the Dark: Reconstructing Life after Brain Injury”

Abstract

As educators, we never know what stories our students may be carrying with them. This book holds insights and treasures for anyone who has been witness to or experienced the hard fight back from a near fatal trauma and the resulting loss of identity. As educators, researchers, and parents it is important to understand the difficult struggle of returning to life after suffering from a traumatic brain injury. This book is a beautiful and heart-wrenching testament to that struggle, and the ripple-effect through family, friends, and community when circumstance changes an individual’s life in an instant. Ruthann Knechel Johansen has opened up many spaces which allow for contemplation, examination, and ultimately a dialogue in response to her son’s car accident and subsequent coma and traumatic brain injury.

Keywords

• concussion
• traumatic brain injury
• poetic inquiry
• life writing
• arts-based research