Mary Kay Campbell’s Brain Injury Journey

On a mild February evening nearly four years ago, Mary Kay Campbell was driving just as the sun was starting to set. As she gazed at the beautiful ribbon of color high in the sky, she felt calm. She had no distractions—the radio was off, her phone charging face down in the seat next to her, the cruise control set right at the speed limit of 60 mph. She was alone with her thoughts.

She wasn’t alone for long. Suddenly, a blue beat-up pickup truck pulled directly out in front of her from a side road. She couldn’t slow down—and she certainly couldn’t stop.

Mary Kay tried to swerve to miss him, but there wasn’t enough time. She hit the bed of his truck, and her white, soft-top convertible rolled 360 degrees and spun another 180 degrees. It landed on the shoulder facing the wrong way with a blaring horn and a blown-out window.

The Accident & the Aftermath

That moment of impact is still vivid years later. “I remember it all,” Mary Kay says. “The sinking feeling that this wasn’t going to be a near-miss. The force of the impact. The airbag tickling my face as it inflated. The world spinning. The blunt force to the top of my head. Cold air rushing in where my window should have been.”

A short while later, as paramedics attended to her injuries, Mary Kay had a profound realization. She had spent her career working her way up the corporate ladder to become a successful marketing executive, but she was unhappy with her job. She also wasn’t happy with where she lived. A single parent, she had recently moved her family to Lynchburg, Virginia from Charlottesville, Virginia, a place they had lived for the past 17 years.

She needed to make some changes. She just didn’t know at the time that it would be this moment of clarity—borne from the trauma of her accident—that would become a catalyst for those changes.

The Challenges of Recovery

What wasn’t so clear was Mary Kay’s path to recovery. Initially, her brain injury wasn’t even diagnosed in the emergency room where she was taken shortly after the accident. It wasn’t until she saw an orthopedic surgeon specializing in concussions that she received a proper diagnosis.

Early testing revealed the severity of her condition. “They did a computerized test to see what my processing speed was,” Mary Kay explains. “It was 16 percent on a bell curve, which was pretty bad.”

Physical therapy proved crucial in her recovery. After six weeks, her score improved to 64 percent. “One of the things I would absolutely recommend people focus on is getting the right kind of physical therapy quickly,” she says.

Living With An Invisible Injury

As Mary Kay navigated her new reality, she encountered plenty of challenges—all with varying degrees of acceptance. A marketing leader with a background in writing and journalism prior to the accident, she realized that even if she wanted to go back to being an executive, she couldn’t.

“I have a very robust vocabulary, but it’s often difficult for me to find the precise word to explain something,” Mary Kay explains. “I mix up words and numbers. I need a daily nap. I can’t remember details. And, I can’t multitask—if you ask me a question while I’m trying to follow a recipe or write down a number, I won’t be able to answer you. I can do one thing at a time.”

She also noticed changes in her temperament, which was always even-keeled before her brain injury. “My teenager would ask me, ‘Mom, why are you mad at me?’ and I had to tell them that I wasn’t mad. I didn’t know what was wrong,” she says. “I remember asking my doctor early on and he said, ‘Well, what’s happening is your brain is trying so hard to complete single tasks like cooking dinner that anything that was a slight irritant before now sets you off because your brain’s exhausted. It can’t process the way it normally would.’”

A Journey of Self-Discovery & Change

Shortly after the accident, Mary Kay made the first of many big decisions. “I moved my family back to Charlottesville,” she said. “We had a strong support network there. It just made sense.”

She then began exploring new avenues for her skills and passions and came back around to a dream she’d had for a long time. “For years, I had felt led to be an inspirational speaker and help others,” Mary Kay says. “But, as a single mom, the weight of my responsibilities kept me tethered to secure jobs with higher pay. I had to be responsible, but I was miserable.”

No longer tied to that thinking, Mary Kay embarked on a new career, where she uses her nearly 30 years of communications experience to engage and captivate audiences as a coach, storyteller, speaker, and artist.

Through her speaking business, Queens of Moxie, Mary Kay now dedicates herself to empowering people to tap into their innate strengths and live authentically through resiliency and mindset. “Moxie is more than a concept; it’s a way of life,” Mary Kay says.

It’s also an approach that’s been shaped by her own journey of overcoming significant obstacles, including living with an invisible disability. One of her keynotes, “Executive to Disabled: Supporting Your Team Members With Invisible Disabilities,” seeks to help organizations understand what invisible disabilities are and how to help team members who might be living with one. “In a recent panel I moderated, 76 percent of attendees reported having an invisible disability,” Mary Kay says. “It’s so much more common than we realize.”

A New Perspective On Life & a Focus on Self-Compassion

Three and a half years into living with her brain injury, Mary Kay says she’s found great peace—and she’s living her dream of helping others. That doesn’t mean the path is always easy. “I’m still defining that,” she says of her journey to find purpose post-injury. “There are realities that are disconcerting and disappointing and difficult and heartbreaking.”

All the same, it’s a new story that’s allowed her to slow down, find purpose, and advocate for a community of brain injury survivors and those living with invisible disabilities—a community she says is often misunderstood. “I wouldn’t have taken this leap without my traumatic brain injury,” Mary Kay says. “It’s different. It’s hard. And, it’s wonderful.”