I started feeling the decline in my memory, and my sporting ability – something that had great meaning to me personally and professionally – was impacted.

Even years after my concussions, I had constant headaches, didn’t sleep well and couldn’t focus. I went from being a law student that could read a book cover to cover to barely being able to sit and read one page.

Although the physical piece was hard, the social and emotional part was much worse. I felt very isolated and alone.

Waking up a completely different person has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I also notice joy in things I never would’ve paid attention to before.

Having an invisible injury is difficult because others can’t see it which can lead to dismissal and them not believing you.

Now I live my new life healthy and grateful despite the long-term effects. With time and patience my injuries have become part of who I am, listening to my body and gained my mobility back.

Having an invisible injury has been difficult to say the least, having others trying to relate to my migraines and memory loss or tell me how to treat them has been frustrating.

I now can’t fulfill my dreams of becoming a dental hygienist because of memory issues that come with my traumatic brain injury and the double vision I now suffer with as well. This wreck has changed my life forever.

I began to notice it wasn't just my mental health that was affected. Something more profound was at play.

I’ve had 5 nasty concussions from sports between 2014 and 2023. I healed and felt different after every single one, when they say no two concussions are the same, they mean it.

All this time I have learned to cover up and hide what I lived through, but that shouldn’t be the case. I am not at all ashamed of any of it if anything it’s my proudest accomplishment.

I had to miss out on the fun teen years because of this illness that no one could see or understand. If you have a friend or family member who suffers from PCS please understand that this illness is no picnic.

No one understood what I was going through, but I was focusing much of my energy on my daughter's recovery and healing my family.

This experience has been one of the most challenging of my life because it was not an injury that healed in 4 or 6 weeks.

What I did not realize at the time, was that I was only at the start of what would be months of rehab and finding my way in a world that was no longer familiar to me and in a body that I was no longer able to predict. I started to lose myself along the way.

No neurologist in Hawai‘i seemed to know what to do with Post Concussion Syndrome. I started to think that I was exaggerating all my problems, and that I didn’t have it that bad. I even had people around me degrade me for not being a real adult because I couldn’t hold a job or go full time at school or think that I was just being dramatic.

I was so depressed because I wanted nothing more than to be the ambitious, adventurous, active woman that I am - but I was stuck in a bed for two years. Plus, no one in my life understood me because I looked normal on the outside.

I have struggled a lot with having to justify my condition, people try to relate, especially to the triedness but it just leaves me feeling even more isolated.

I’ve had a few mild concussions from playing sports. However, I never thought that one could change my life forever.

I never felt so alone, and people just do not get it unless they’ve been through it.