Inger Neal

If I had to summarize my brain injury journey in one word, that word would be information. It’s not the word I would have chosen when I was nineteen, but it’s the word that ultimately changed my life.

The accident happened when I was nineteen years old, attending technical college and working on obtaining an accounting degree. I was young, focused, and building the foundation for the future I imagined. Then, in one unexpected moment, everything changed.

I suffered a head injury, a cracked neck, whiplash, a broken collarbone, and a bruised hip bone. I was unresponsive, with a thready pulse, drifting in and out of consciousness for three days. My body was clearly injured but the deeper injury, the one inside my brain, went unrecognized.

Despite the severity of the accident, none of the doctors never diagnosed me with a traumatic brain injury. There was no explanation for the confusion, the memory loss, or the overwhelming sense that something fundamental had shifted inside me. I left the hospital without answers, without guidance, and without the information that could have helped me understand what was happening.

In the months and years that followed, I struggled in ways I couldn’t articulate. I experienced amnesia and significant memory loss. I had to relearn my ABCs, basic math concepts, and even the identities of people in my life. Imagine being nineteen and having to rebuild the foundation of your own mind without knowing why it had crumbled. I felt lost, frustrated, and often ashamed. I didn’t have a name for what I was experiencing, and without that name, I blamed myself.

For eleven years, I lived in that confusion. I worked hard, pushed myself, and tried to hide the gaps and struggles that made me feel different from everyone around me. I didn’t know that the challenges I faced were symptoms, not failures. I didn’t know that my brain was trying its best to heal. I didn’t know that I wasn’t alone.

Everything changed when I was in my thirties, sitting in a master’s class for rehabilitation counseling. I opened a textbook and saw the words Traumatic Brain Injury. As I read the symptoms, attributes, and potential accommodations, it felt like someone had finally turned on the lights in a room I had been stumbling through for more than a decade.

In that moment, I felt two powerful emotions at once: anger and happiness.

I felt anger because no one had told me. No one had recognized my injury. No one had given me the information that could have changed the course of my early adulthood. I had spent years believing I was broken, slow, or somehow not enough.

But I also felt deep happiness, overwhelming happiness because now I finally understood. I finally had a name for my experience. I finally had a framework for my struggles. I finally had information.

And information became my freedom.

When I learned about TBI, I learned that my brain was not broken. I was not broken. I was not stupid. I was not incapable. I simply needed strategies, support, and understanding. I could learn. I could retain information. I could rebuild my life with clarity instead of confusion.

That knowledge changed everything. It transformed my identity, my confidence, and my purpose. I became a champion for myself and then, naturally, for others.

As a counselor, it is my duty and my passion to explain diagnoses to my clients in ways that empower them. I remind them that they are valuable, that they are not invisible, and that their challenges do not define their worth. I tell them, “I see you. I see your value. You have options.” I give them the information they need to make informed choices about their lives, just as I wish someone had done for me.

Because of this passion, I have been afforded opportunities I never imagined when I was that nineteen-year-old girl struggling to relearn her ABCs. I have worked with businesses across the nation and U.S. territories from executives to mid-level managers to front line workers. I have collaborated with educational facilities and spoken with students, sharing my story and encouraging them to gather as much information as possible so they can make empowered decisions.

My life’s trajectory changed the day of the accident, but it changed again more profoundly the day I finally received the information I needed. That knowledge didn’t erase the challenges, but it gave them context. It gave me direction. It gave me purpose.

Today, I use that purpose to help others find their own path forward. I want people to know what I didn’t: that healing is possible, that they are not alone, and that information can be the key that unlocks hope.