To Root & To Rise: Accepting Brain Injury

An important book for anyone impacted by brain injury. Author and brain injury survivor Carole Starr describes the journey in ways that survivors, caregivers and professionals will relate to and learn from.

• Recognizing what acceptance is/isn’t and why it’s important for brain injury survivors


• Getting through the challenging first year after brain injury


• Moving past denial


• Coping with the loss of one’s old life and sense of self


• Creating a new life as a brain injury survivor


• Documenting and celebrating progress


• Responding to insensitive comments by others


• Finding something positive in the negative that is brain injury


• Letting go of the past and moving forward

Knowing that many survivors struggle with reading and remembering what they read, Carole made the chapters in To Root & To Rise short. The font size in the print version is larger than average, to improve readability. There are also spaces between each paragraph, to reduce the overwhelmed feeling that can come from looking at too much text.

To Root & To Rise is also a workbook, with optional questions in each chapter that encourage readers to take Carole’s strategies and apply them to their own experience. These questions can be answered on one’s own, with family members, with rehabilitation professionals, or with a brain injury support group.

To Root & To Rise is a powerful resource for anyone living with a traumatic brain injury, post-concussion syndrome, stroke, brain tumor or other brain trauma, for family caregivers and friends of brain injury survivors, for brain injury support groups and for medical and neuro-rehabilitation professionals.