Welcome to the Stroke Awareness archive, where I provide information, personal insights, and practical advice for understanding, preventing, and recovering from strokes. This is a space for education, support, and awareness.
Here, I cover warning signs, treatment options, recovery stories, and strategies for caregivers. My goal is to make the often overwhelming experience of stroke more navigable and empower readers with knowledge and hope.
I’ve lived most of my adult life with the sense that I won’t grow old. At least not in the average sense we’re led to expect. Chronic illness taught me early that bodies fail quietly and often without warning. This isn’t an essay about dying. It’s about surviving, mistrusting the future, and refusing to lie about it.
About 4 years ago, I survived two strokes. But I’m fine—on the outside. Sometimes this survival feels like a burden, a quiet accusation whispered over years, trauma tinnitus. This poem explores what it’s like to live after trauma that leaves no marks, my resistance to gratitude, and the ungrieved self I lost along the way.
A stroke can happen to anyone at any age, regardless of race, gender, previous history, or other common risk factors like obesity and high blood pressure. Stroke in young adults, those between the ages of…
