The Real Lives of TBI Wives

Ep. 58 | When Erika Brouillette pulled up to Hope Heals Camp in Nauvoo, Alabama, she expected to unload the truck herself. That is what she always does. Instead, people swooped in before she could figure out where to start and she just stood there, not quite knowing what to do with herself.
That moment at the truck was the first sign that this place was completely different from anything her family had ever experienced. And it only got more different from there.
Hope Heals Camp is a weeklong camp for families affected by disability and every room, every space, and every gathering is thoughtfully designed for every body. It is the culture. Nobody explains themselves at Hope Heals Camp. Nobody apologizes for their reality. Nobody manages other people's discomfort with their situation. Disability is not something to hide or minimize or get through, it is something to celebrate.
This episode is Erika's shares her families experience that week. The spa day she did not know she needed. Maddyx going from furious about being there to already planning next year. Layne dancing at the silent disco. Wayker wandering off to find his own friends in a space finally safe enough to let him. Shelby's CC Derek, a quiet surgeon who just knew how to care for him well.
It is also about the people who gave their time, Alex and Corey Fleeman playing the right song for every single moment, Ginny Owens breathtaking at the piano, Leann Morgan bringing brand new comedy tour material to a room that needed to laugh, and Amy Julia Becker hosting the entire week with real stories, real advocacy, and a continuous stream of me too moments for every disability family in that room.
Every CC and volunteer pays to be there, while campers pay nothing, because donors decided that disability families deserve a week where everything is handled and nothing costs them anything.
 
Hope Heals Camp
Amy Julia Becker
Ginny Owens
Leanne Morgan
Alex and Corey Fleeman
Reclaim

Ep. 57 |
If you have ever talked yourself out of a trip because the logistics felt too heavy, too complicated, too much to coordinate on top of everything else you are already carrying this episode is for you.
When the Brouillette family was chosen to attend Hope Heals Camp in Nauvoo, Alabama, Erika's first instinct was to drive. Seventeen hours later, Layne getting home from a mission trip to Mexico the day before, and a price difference of nearly a thousand dollars between Birmingham and Atlanta changed that plan fast.
Days of preparation, homemade tube feed made from scratch the night before departure, enough catheters and drain bags and supplements and motion sickness patches to cover a week away, a friend of a friend watching the dog, and a family decision to just stay up all night and get it done. Their flight was at five forty-five in the morning.
This episode covers everything that happened between that decision and the moment they pulled into camp  the wrong birthdate on Shelby's ticket discovered at TSA, the TSA Cares program Erika had never heard of before this trip, the packed Delta flight with zero leg room and the kind stranger who switched seats, the light rail in Atlanta with a wheelchair and no sleep, and the bright red Dodge Ram the boys insisted on.
It also covers the trip home, Mend coffee shop in Atlanta, the World of Coca-Cola, and learning  that traveling with a disability in Atlanta means someone will drive you from the rental car drop-off straight to your terminal door.
This is the episode with all the logistics, all the things she is passing on to you so that next time you think about talking yourself out of something you have one less reason to do it.
 
TSA Cares
Sunflower Lanyard
Hope Heals
Hertz Program
Come continue the conversation at Reclaim
 

In October 2024, Danielle Damrell was driving home in her neighborhood when a Ford F350 hit her head-on. Three weeks later, on the drive home from a family vacation in Tennessee, a woman flew through an intersection at 55 miles per hour and T-boned the rental car, throwing it 20 feet off the road.
Two accidents, only three weeks apart resulting in a  traumatic brain injury diagnosis four months later.
What makes Danielle's story different is that she walks, talks, runs a business, hosts a podcast, and from the outside looks completely fine. And that invisibility, that gap between what people see and what is actually happening inside,  is something TBI wives know deeply. Because they live it every day with their husbands.
In this episode, Danielle shares what it looked like to hustle through the symptoms because she had things to do, to watch her income disappear faster than she could hand off clients, to navigate memory loss and visual overstimulation and rage that made no sense, and to slowly surrender a life she had built at full speed. She also shares the unexpected gift that came from stepping into Erika's home to care for Shelby and what showering a man who used to shower twice a day taught her about gratitude, dignity, and what it means to serve from a full cup.
Danielle gives us all the reminder through this episode that we all are created worthy!
 
Be sure to tune into the Created Worthy Podcast to hear all the amazing interviews, sharing many amazing women's life stories
 
As always join us at Reclaim to continue the conversation!

Years of quietly filling in his sentences, moving things into his path before he could lose them, learning to read the overstimulation before it became a storm. She was setting him up for success without him knowing and giving him his dignity while absorbing everything he couldn't carry until she couldn't sustain it anymore.
Then came the brain scan and the moment Robert laughed because he finally had a reason 'I'm not crazy' 
This episode covers the brain scan that made it real,  Robert finding Marcus and Amber Capone, the four days in Mexico with a group of veterans, and the moment Becca flew to San Diego to pick him up and saw his bright blue eyes again for the first time in years.
It also covers what Robert built after, Athletes for Care, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit co-founded to support athletes at every level dealing with the mental and physical aftermath of their careers, and the work being done to bring Ibogaine treatment to the United States.
Check out what is happening over at Athletes for Care 
And, as always, continue the conversation over at Reclaim

Ep. 54 |
This episode has been in the making since the moment Erika hit record on this podcast.
Jeff Faldalen has been her coach for the last year and a half. He is the person on the other end of the phone calls when the ruts got hard. The one who told her to keep going when she couldn't see past today. The one who asked her the questions she didn't want to answer and waited while she found the answers anyway.
In this episode, Erika and Jeff pull back the curtain on what that journey actually looked like. Jeff shares his own story, a car accident at 19 that nearly killed his sister, a jewelry career that collapsed overnight, seasons of being suicidal, and three and a half decades of doing the inner work that eventually became his life's mission. He walks through his core frameworks, the V, the hero's journey, the four archetypes, the identity codex in plain language that meets a TBI wife exactly where she is.
This is the episode for the woman who has done the therapy, tried the support groups, and still feels stuck in a narrative she cannot seem to break out of. This episode is for the woman who is one straw away from the one that breaks the camel's back. This episode is for the woman who has been in survival so long she has forgotten what it feels like to be in creation.
You are one conversation away from changing the rest of your life and this might be it!
 
You can purchase The Identity Codex by Jeff Faldalen and join his community at  theidentitycodexbook.com - $27
Hear his podcast at The Potential Zone
 
And continue the conversation @ Reclaim with other women who get it!

Ep. 53 |
Nine days before Christmas, Meg Payne got a call from the police while she was at work. Her husband Alan had been T-boned by a truck on his bike.
She was 34 weeks pregnant.
What followed was two months in the ICU and rehab, an insurance company that tried to deny his placement, a baby born without her husband in the room, and a newborn brought to Craig Hospital two days later to meet his dad, who was sitting in a wheelchair and doesn't remember the visit at all.
Alan is now what the medical world calls high functioning. He walks, talks, and on a good day you wouldn't know anything happened. He also has bilateral frontal lobe diffuse axonal injuries, significant memory impairment, and an emotional regulation piece that has required Ring alarm systems, hidden car keys, a zen den built in the backyard, and strict boundaries that both Meg and Alan have agreed to honor.
Silas is four and a half now. And Meg is still figuring out who she is inside all of it - the wife, the mom, the physical therapist, the one holding every plate in the air.
This episode is for the TBI wife who is somewhere in the middle of that figuring out too.

Ep. 52 | You have done everything the doctors told you to do. You have been to the appointments, followed the protocols, managed the medications, and sat across from specialists who looked at your husband and said some version of "this is just how it is now."
What if there were treatments they simply didn't know about yet?
Simone Fortier has had over 50 concussions as a child and six as an adult. She lost her hearing for two years. She experienced suicidal ideation for most of her life without knowing it wasn't normal. And after seeing every top sports medicine doctor in North America and leaving each appointment with a 1% maybe, she did something radical — she built the treatment herself.
In this episode, Simone breaks down the two interventions she developed that are changing outcomes for brain injury survivors and their families: a precision brain nutrition program that replenishes the specific amino acids the neurodivergent brain cannot produce on its own, and a fascia-based manual therapy protocol that reduces compression forces on the brain — decreasing symptoms like chronic migraines, tinnitus, memory loss, and suicidal ideation, often within one to two sessions.
This episode is for the TBI wife who is done accepting "wait and see" as an answer. For the woman whose husband has been to every appointment and still isn't recovering the way the textbooks said he should. For the caregiver who has been quietly wondering if there is something else out there — and just hasn't found it yet.
What I love about conversations like this one is that they open doors. This may not be the right fit for every situation but it might be exactly what someone in your circle has been searching for. Share it. You never know whose life it could reach.
Brain Health Assessment: Email Simone to receive her free brain health assessment — info@simonefortier.com
https://www.instagram.com/fasciatraininginstitute/ https://www.facebook.com/FasciaTrainingInstitute/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonefortier/
and be sure to join us in Reclaim to continue the conversation

Ep. 51 | Before his brain injury, Rob Baugh's life revolved around two things: playing piano at church and making elaborate cakes inspired by Cake Boss — a hobby that started as a dare from his wife Sheila and turned into a thriving side business. Then, six years ago, a bee flew past his head while he was coming in from feeding the fish. He ducked and hit a metal screen door and in less than a minute, everything changed.
In this episode, Rob shares the full story — getting staples in his head with no numbing because the burn hurt worse, the first neurologist who slammed his pen on the desk and brought him to tears, and when he drove to a job he hadn't worked in years because his brain sent him to the wrong side of town entirely. He talks about the daily, six-years-and-counting migraine that gets worse with the rain, the short-term memory loss, the strange aphasia-like symptom that turns "38" into "three, eight," and the unexpected blessing of suddenly being able to play piano in three keys instead of one.
Rob also opens up about what it actually took to go from isolated and sleepless to building a podcast, writing a book, and creating a free resource hub for brain injury survivors and caregivers — all because he couldn't find anyone online talking about brain injury from lived experience instead of a clinical chart.
This is a story about persistence, about a wife who became the planner, the advocate, and the protector all at once, and about what's possible when you decide your pain might actually help somebody else.
Be sure to check out Rob's website to access tons of free resources, as well as purchase his book.
And subscribe to Rob's podcast to stay in the know.
Donate to Brain Injury Alliance and get Rob and Ashley shave thier heads - last day is June 30th!
As always, join us at Reclaim to join other TBI wives in reclaiming themselves after their husbands traumatic brain injury!
 

Fifty episodes. In this solo episode, Erika takes you back to where it all started — the woman who had never shared her story publicly, who hit record scared and unpolished because she knew someone needed to hear it. She walks through what fifty episodes has taught her about TBI wives, identity loss, and what it really means to disappear inside the role of caregiver.
And then she shares the wall she hit this past year, he isolation, the weight. The moment she was one straw away and what she chose to do instead.
This episode is for the woman who is done surviving but does not quite know how to come back yet. The one who downloads every episode and still puts herself last. The one who is waiting for the right moment to matter.
Erika has a message for her 
Come join the Reclaim community for a group of women who get it!

Ep. 49 | You have been performing strength in public while quietly disappearing in private. And if you are honest with yourself, the exhaustion you are carrying as a TBI wife goes deeper than the caregiving itself. It goes all the way back.
In this episode, Erika Brouillette gets honest about the worthiness wound, the deep, quiet belief that your needs come last, that your worth lives in your usefulness, and that wanting more makes you selfish. This is the belief that started in childhood, long before your husband's brain injury ever happened. And caregiving, the relentless, identity-swallowing reality of life as a traumatic brain injury spouse, has a way of making it louder. Of making self-abandonment sound like strength.
Erika walks you through where that belief started, how it gets amplified after a TBI, and what it actually looks like to question the programming you inherited. Because caregiver identity loss is real. Caregiver burnout is real. And the ambiguous grief of loving someone whose brain injury has changed everything,  including who you are inside of it, deserves more than survival advice and self care checklists.
This episode is for the TBI wife who has stopped dreaming. Who says she's fine when she's drowning. Who cannot remember the last time she wanted something just for herself and felt okay about it. Who has been told, by the world or by her faith community, that wanting more is ungrateful. That good wives give everything. That strong women don't need much.
It's time to question that story.
If you are ready to stop disappearing inside the caregiving and start reclaiming your identity, your selfworth, and the life that still belongs to you, this episode is your starting point. Join us at Reclaim to start putting this all into action!
 
Reflection Questions From This Episode
Pause the episode and sit with these, or grab your journal.
What did you learn about your worth when you were little?
What did love require of you growing up?
What version of you felt the safest to be?
Where did you learn that your needs come last?
Where did you learn that asking for help means weakness?
What would actually happen if you let something fall?
Where did you learn that wanting more is selfish and was that actually true?