2. You never know who you are deep down until you have a health emergency (but I hope you don’t have one.)

3. Having a little money or a great financial advisor is very helpful. It gives you options. I’d be happy to refer you to mine if you want.

4. I never knew how resilient I was until I had a stroke.

5. My priorities have forever changed and are more aligned with my values since my stroke.

6. I no longer have time for relationships that aren’t reciprocal.

7. Growing old is not for cowards and has its challenges. May we all be lucky enough to know what that means.

8. You never know who your friends are until you truly need them.

9. Sometimes kind strangers are your best option.

10. Don’t take crap from anyone. If treated with disrespect, you have permission to bail, divorce, and or live on your own.

11. Pay it forward if possible.

12. Plan for your senior years now by becoming who you want to become.

13. Kindness and thoughtfulness are not overrated and may truly be all that matters.

14. You reap what you sow.

15. Genuineness and authenticity are upper level skills and must be worked upon.

My hard-earned wisdom is free but consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Love you!♥️

Unfortunately, I am still working my butt off to recover. I have a doctor’s appointment every 3 months to make sure my blood pressure is in check. I also have 3 physical therapists a week and do exercises daily to build up my strength. I walk from my apartment to the elevator at least twice a day for exercise—Rocky goes with me.

I feel great but take meds daily. I have a private nurse twice a week for one hour to help me shower—there are no walk-in showers here, so safety is an issue. I still can’t walk Rocky by myself and hire a dog-walker to walk him twice a day, which is by far my greatest expense. A cute creature who weighs 5 pounds shouldn’t cost $210 a week to go outside and do his business.

I’ve been a little down because of the anniversary. My life changed forever in the instant that I had a stroke. It’s like having an accident in your car that takes you a year to recover from.

People tell me I’ve come a long way—doctors, friends, therapists. But the truth is, I’m tired of all the effort it takes to do basically everything. Sure. It’s made me stronger, but did I really need and want to be stronger?!? Forgive my attitude. I’ve been letting out f-bombs all week. I feel angry at life on days like this. I’m sorry if that disappoints you. But. I am also grateful to be alive and incredibly grateful for all the people—friends and strangers—who have come to my aid to help out—the helpers. Where would the world be without our helpers? They are those kind souls who help us when our world crashes. They will be rewarded in heaven, I believe.

I hope y’all are doing good. Love you! ♥️

I had watched this family come and go for months because my porch faces the parking lot. The mom always took them to school.

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One day at the beginning of last summer, I asked the mom if her daughter was old enough to walk Rocky. I haven’t been able to walk Rocky since my stroke. It is something I greatly look forward to doing again. But I’m not quite there yet. So I paid these two wonderful kids to walk my little dog. They walked him three times a day, at 10 and 2 and then 7, right before Rocky goes to bed. Having the girl walk them quickly became her and her little brother. The girl was entering 9th grade, the boy was in 4th grade. His name is Jayden. Over the weeks I watched Jayden fall in love with my little dog. They were best friends. Or as close as little dogs and humans can get. They played and played and chased throughout the apartment.

When summer vacation ended and school started again, the mom took over with the same schedule and for the same money. Pretty soon it wasn’t just Jayden who was falling in love with Rocky, but also the dad, the mom, and Jayden. The sweet daughter was deep into high school by then.

When Jayden would get home from school he would take Rocky for a walk and then lead him upstairs to explore their apartment. I would see photos from the mom of Rocky posing in all parts of the house. Rocky on the sofa. Rocky on the chair. Rocky on the rug. Rocky. Rocky. Rocky.

This family had never fallen in love with a dog before and they were smitten.

A month ago the family told me that they had found a house to rent and would be moving in October. Rocky and I were bereft. We had fallen in love with this family, too. We watched them slowly move out of their place until the final truckload was loaded. Rocky watched from his vantage point sitting on the porch until today they drove away. This wonderful family who helped me and Rocky out after I was recovering from a stroke and I could not walk my little dog for a summer.

Rocky and I are grieving today. We miss the wonderful Nangase family upstairs. We wish them well and thank them for loving us and helping us at a time when we really needed them. They did not look back.

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I could not focus on reading a book, which is easily the biggest pastime in my life. I have always been a big reader. It is something I greatly enjoy. And I raised my daughters to be big readers, too. And of course when I was in the hospital and rehab with tons of time on my hands, I just. could. not. focus. I tried and tried to no avail.

Up until a few months ago, I kept track of everything I read—fiction and nonfiction—by writing it in my journal. But after my stroke, I kept trying to read but my mind was a jumbled mess, and didn’t seem organized enough to do it.

Horse

2022 novel by Geraldine Brooks.

Horse is a 2022 historical fiction novel by Australian author Geraldine Brooks. Intertwining multiple timelines, the narrative examines the dynamics of thoroughbred racehorse and stud Lexington with the enslaved people who groomed him in the 1850s, and the legacy of slavery through the lens of unearthed art related to the breeder's lionized life. It was well-received by mainstream critics and won multiple literary prizes. Notably, it received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

I am happy to report that has changed in the last few weeks. I’ve been writing again, too. Consistently—3 or 4 hours a day. Just like old times. And a lot of my overwhelm and impulsiveness has gone away. It’s almost as if as I got physically stronger through the physical therapy process, I got mentally stronger as well.

It is true, that stroke victims, do start to get things back, that you thought you might have lost forever. I feel like myself, more than I have in months. Could it be that the worst part is over? The good news is that I survived. Not everyone who has a stroke is fortunate enough to expedience that. I am definitely wiser than before about how to take care of myself. From now until the end of my life, it will be much harder to take my health for granted.

Geraldine Brooks has a journalist’s background and covered several wars in the Middle East. She was also married for many years to the late, Tony Horowitz, who wrote Confederates In My Attic. This book rocked my world when I first read it back in the 1990s.

For what it’s worth, I recommend all of these books. They are each very different from the kind of books I write. But they have value for the kinds of books they are. I am a more imaginative writer. I create my characters and create their worlds. I decide what challenges they will go through during the course of the book. They are not real, but fictional. Although many readers have told me that the characters seem real in my books. And that they were missed when the story is over.

These books do not have prose that knocks your socks off. They are not southern literature with vivid descriptions of the landscape.

What I didn’t expect, were the emotional and behavioral aspects of having a stroke. For instance, I get overwhelmed very easily. Technology pushes me over the edge, when I can’t figure something out.

Emotional and behavioral changes are a common effect of stroke. Not only can stroke impact one's mood and outlook, but the area of the brain injury and chemical changes may have significant effects on the brain.

After a stroke, survivors often experience a range of emotional and behavioral changes. The reason is simple. Stroke impacts the brain, and the brain controls our behavior and emotions.

You or your loved one may experience feelings of irritability, forgetfulness, carelessness, inattention or confusion. Feelings of fear, frustration, anger, grief, sadness, anxiety and depression are also common.

The good news is many disabilities resulting from stroke tend to improve over time. Likewise, behavioral and emotional changes also tend to improve. Time is on your side.

This is the part of having a stroke that people, especially the people we love, understand the least.

Personality changes after a stroke are common and can include impulsiveness, apathy, emotional lability (such as pseudobulbar affect), depression, anxiety, and anger or irritability. These changes can affect a stroke survivor's quality of life and relationships. Understanding these changes is crucial for both the survivor and their caregivers.

Common Personality Changes:

Impulsiveness:

Stroke survivors may act without thinking or consider the consequences of their actions, potentially leading to socially inappropriate behaviors.

Apathy:

Apathy, or lack of motivation, is often associated with depression and cognitive impairment.

Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA):

PBA causes sudden, uncontrollable episodes of crying or laughing, which may not be related to the individual's actual mood.

Depression:

Feelings of sadness, loss of interest in activities, and fatigue are common after a stroke.

Anxiety:

Stroke survivors may experience excessive fear and difficulty managing daily tasks.

Anger, Irritability, and Aggression:

These can stem from frustration or the inability to control emotions effectively.

Other Changes:

Confusion: Caregivers can help by reducing visual and sound stimulation.

Forgetfulness and Memory Loss: Caused by damage to nerve cells in the brain.

Exaggerated Existing Traits: Existing personality traits may become more pronounced.

Disinhibition: Saying or doing things that are inappropriate or out of character.

There are days where I feel like I am going insane. A kind of Jekyll and Hyde character.

It doesn’t help if I am shunned by the people I care about the most. And they don’t contact me at all. Or they think the change is permanent. Will they give me another chance?

I am a lot stronger than I was. That’s for sure. And then miraculously I was suddenly on the verge of walking again. I could feel it. It has been six months since the stroke and I have gotten back to the one thing I have missed the most from my old life. Well, that and driving. I am still not driving, but someday driving is what I will be celebrating on this page.

Thank you so much for your support, love and prayers I really believe they mattered. I have more to do, of course. I will start walking with a cane at first . I will walk slowly and surely into the life I used to have. I will have no regrets, only gratitude.

I am not the least bit graceful as I take these new, awkward steps, but it resembles what I used to be able to do. I will take it with every ounce of gratitude I have. Onward!

Love you! ♥️

Susan

I am happy so many of you are re-reading my books and noticing details you didn’t notice in the first read-through. It is exciting to be read again and with a close eye to the story. This says to me that I need to get busy. I need new stories out there.

Unfortunately, I am still recovering from a stroke I had last February, so I don’t quite feel back to normal yet. I keep waiting for normality to return. I keep waiting to be able to walk my little dog, Rocky, and get my mail, and drive my car. But my ‘big , beautiful brain’ isn’t quite as organized as it used to be. I’m more emotional than I was before. I feel like a different person than when I wrote my other fourteen books.

I wonder when I will get the strength back on my left side so that I can type as fast as I used to, instead of hunting and pecking for every letter. As I struggle, I am fighting the good fight. I am faithfully doing all my physical therapy exercises. I am taking walks down the hallway of my apartment building to develop the stamina, strength and endurance to persevere. I am striving with everything I have, to get back to you.

I believe it is a heroic journey I am on. Why not? I am bringing back everything I have learned. I have so much to tell you about the foibles of being human. So much to tell you about desire and grace. So much to tell you about what makes us brave and what makes us broken. So much to tell you about abandonment and betrayal. So much to tell you about overcoming adversity, and having forgiveness for self and others. The eternal story of truth is the belief in something greater than ourselves. I will carry on as long as I am able. Thank you for your belief in me.

I need to ask for your prayers again, to do this latest hard thing. We are built to do hard things, I am told. We are built to pursue greatness, to go beyond ourselves to bring something back to the storytelling fireside, and add some new kindling, some new hope to the blaze. I need to write with a new commitment. I have something that is mine to say.

I feel like I have aged a hundred years since I had my stroke. Tell me that at 68, I am NOT too old to write another book. Tell me that I can still write a book that you consume with interest and that you enjoy.

Easier said than done, I think. Writing books is not an easy pursuit. It takes dedication and hard work. It takes an unwavering belief in yourself, belief in the power of stories to heal.

This is my promise to you: I will do my best to not disappoint you. I will do my best to deliver a good story built from the ground up and with an eye toward heaven. This is all I know to do. Onward! May your prayers light my way.

Love you! ♥️

P. S. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. This helps support my writing. I am not exaggerating when I say it buys my groceries and pays my rent. Thank you for your consideration. Help me keep going.

Celebrities Who Had Strokes: 10 Inspiring Stroke Survivor Stories

1. Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone, an iconic actress known for roles in films like Basic Instinct, suffered a near-fatal stroke in 2001. Her condition was particularly dire due to a brain hemorrhage that lasted nine d…

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My mother never had a stroke, but I imagine she would have been a nightmare. Mea culpa. Please forgive me. I’m a mess. I am impulsive, rash. If I could figure out how to bay at the moon, I would.

Where did that sweet, long-suffering Susan go? Will she ever return? I miss her. I miss her sense of humor. I miss her kindness. I think my daughters miss her, too. I know my friends do.

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Since my stroke, I have noticed my personality change. I do not suffer fools, as they say. I have no control over my mouth. I say and do things that are totally unlike me. At times I seem hell-bent on destroying my life, blowing the whole thing up, and starting over on the ground floor. Mea culpa. God forgive me.

If you’ve seen Susan would you please send her home? Instead of Where’s Waldo, perhaps there should be a Where’s Susan book where the reader goes in search of the missing southern writer who is in hiding and can’t seem to find her way back home.

In terms of stroke recovery, I have never felt so impatient. The recovery process seems never- ending. My physical therapists tell me that they are here to help me make it end. I am to do my exercises faithfully and get stronger and more balanced every day. Easier said than done? Someday this will all be over it’s hard to imagine but I’ve already come so far. Thank you for your patience with me. If only I could be patient with myself!

Love you! Take good care!

Susan

In terms of my stroke recovery, I still have a ton of work to do—occupational therapy and physical therapy have been re…

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Rocky loves her, too, and does zoomies when she shows up at the door. She works for Freedom Home Care, a service I use here in Greenville. I am completely spoiled by them. They have been invaluable to me and were here waiting for me when I was released from Rehab.

I’ve slowly worked my way down to having one aide a week on Tuesdays for the month of May. I’ve requested that Alex be my steady aide. Tuesdays is shower day and grocery shopping day. i.e a great day to get help. Alex is helping me learn to live alone again, which I am really looking forward to. As an introvert, I’ve had way too many people around for months!

Since they are all in the nursing or caretaking fields, my aides are fascinated with the idea of me writing books for a living. So I get to be ‘novel’ in that way. Pun intended. I doubt they will ever read any of my books, and that is fine with me. They have done enough and have helped me in profound ways that I am grateful for.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” —Fred Rogers.

Susan Gabriel is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I am grateful for all the helpers that I have been blessed with through the last few months. Too many to name. Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, aides. People who were there for me when I needed help.

Not to mention the friends and family who didn’t desert me. Particularly, two college friends from years ago—we were music majors together—Carolyn Williams and Sharon Watkins. And my neighbor and dear friend Lola who has walked Rocky every day since last February when I had my stroke—I am deeply grateful. Everyone needs a Lola in their lives.

So this post is about gratitude. We can’t do it alone, nor would we want to. May we all be fortunate to have helpers around when life gets scary.

Thank you for reading, my friends. I am going to get back to writing books now. In the comments, tell us about the Lola’s in your lives or the helpers who stand out. Thank you for your interest in my stroke recovery over the last few months. I will give you a break from it now. I’m going to be just fine.

Love you!♥️

One thing in rehab the physical therapy team insisted we know how to do was put on shorts. This made no sense at the time, but I have learned to appreciate it. We would practice with a massive pair of shorts in the p.t. room and then learn to pull them up—easier said than done. We did this with a grabber tool (pictured below) that helps our injured side.

It is easily the most valuable thing I learned. I wear shorts every day (after all I live in South Carolina and it is Spring ) unless I pay an aide —thank you again for becoming a paid subscriber—to help me with things like this.

Forgive the mess on my dining room table. I am really bad about putting things away right now, as well as dropping things that need to be picked up. Things that you would normally just lean down and retrieve. You’d be surprised at how many things fall to the floor with the help of gravity. I don’t vacuum these days, I retrieve.

I have two grabber tools that I use. A cheap one from Amazon and a much nicer one (pictured) that they gave me in rehab. It is by far the most useful one because it helps you stretch a pair of shorts open to get them over your one working and one non- working leg. When you get dressed think about how you would do this seemingly basic task if injured Yikes!

Would you survive a stroke? Probably, with modern medicine today. Imagine the most challenging thing you encounter and how you would manage that? By the way, Please don’t have a stroke. Keep your weight in check and your blood pressure checked. I could have avoided these challenges if I had been more aware of my body and how to take care of it.

Thanks for reading! I hope this is helpful.

Love, Susan.

Sometimes things just happen like strokes and a myriad of other health crises. It doesn’t mean we god incarnate and have a mission like Calvary. It just means we are part of the human experiment. Bad stuff happens. Scary stuff happens. We carry on. We pretend we are brave. We do our best and try to be thoughtful and kind in the process.

I am not carrying a cross anywhere, thank you very much. I am doing my best to improve every day. I treat people with tenderness and try to help when they go through hard times because I know what it’s like to be human. I have empathy. I care about people.

P. S. I spent time writing this morning in my office. My usual writing chair is too deep and comfy to get out of, but sitting there had the feeling of getting back to some sort of normal. I am grateful. That’s all we can do, right? We carry on and help when we can. May you have peace. I love you!

Susan

Nothing new, really. I’m a little faster with the walker. I do more for myself, making my meals, taking Rocky out to pee. He will be so grateful when we get back to taking our walks. I will be grateful, too.

Still some …

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"This too shall pass" (Persian: این نیز بگذرد, romanized: īn nīz bogzarad) is an adage of Persian origin about impermanence. It reflects the temporary nature, or ephemerality, of the human condition — that neither the negative nor the positive moments in life ever indefinitely last. The general sentiment of the adage is found in wisdom literature throughout history and across cultures, but the specific phrase seems to have originated in the writings of the medieval Persian Sufi poets.

If you’re dealing with something difficult, try this statement as a mantra. If something in your life feels like a long, slow slog, try this on for size. While it seems never ending, it, too, is only temporary. We will get through it. Normalcy will return. I look forward to it. So does Rocky.

Love you! ♥️

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I am doing my best to be brave like my characters. Overcoming obstacles at every turn. The Wildflower trilogy is the perfect example of that.

If you are able to support this Substack by upgrading to being a paid subscriber, I would be very grateful. Even a little bit helps a lot right now.

My days contain an hour or two of writing, as well as exstensive physical therapy. I go to bed exhausted every night because I work so hard just trying to get around. I am getting stronger every day, but I still have caregivers who I rely on. My left side is still agonizingly slow at returning to health. Small improvements are indeed improvements, and I’ll take every single one of them. But recovering from a stroke is truly the hardest thing I have ever done. It takes every ounce of my energy. Every ounce of my focus. I feel like I’m starting over in so many ways.

Thank you for hanging with me. Thank you for caring about me. It means the world to me.

Love you! ♥️

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My dear, dear friends. Life has delivered some unexpected news, as life is known to do.

Last Sunday morning i had a stroke. I could sense it was happening, as the left side of my body suddenly took a holiday. I fell on the way to my bathroom and slid down the wall after having grabbed my phone thinking I may need it to call for help. Smart move .

…

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