Instrumental music playing
Hi, I'm Carrie, a stroke survivor, and a member of BIND.
And I'm Kezia a stroke survivor and a member of BIND as well. And today you're going to be hearing Carrie. And I, and we're giving something like similar, at least I say this it's something similar, or this is my aim. Something similar to State of the Union. Last in the last week's episode, you got to listen to Brian White, who is at director of BIND. And today he just basically gave us a recap of 2023 and our successes, our challenges.
And now we're going to listen to us and our perspective, not only as co-hosts because we talk all the time. But also as stroke survivors, members of BIND and how we're doing this and why we're doing this. So I hope that you guys like this and it's helpful for you. And also that you get to hear. Brain injury survivors on how we think and how we work.
Okay. And just to kind of start off to recap us, um, we just want to again, share a little history about why we actually started the podcast and how we started the podcast. So some of you may have heard this before and some may not, but in 2021, For North Texas Giving day, which if you don't know what North Texas Giving day is, it is. Uh, one day funding for all nonprofits in North Texas. Just exactly what it says. And in 2021, we had the opportunity to do a little zoom video.
To enter into a competition and to explain why we felt we deserved a podcast as the Brain Injury Network. Um, Nonprofit. And basically we all agreed in our testimonial that there needs to be a platform for brain injury survivors. To share their stories and not just share our stories, but also to provide awareness about brain injury to everyone that maybe isn't familiar with. What happens to someone after they've had a brain injury? So our first episode again was in March of 2022.
And I just want to say again, it's very crucial that survivors, I like us, have this platform to share our story in a breakdown, our experiences, because we're all a little bit different and we want to help the general public understand and break down the walls of silence surrounding brain injuries.
And yeah, of course, like Carrie just said we had the first 12 episodes kind of given to us. It was kind of like a great gift and they were great. Like you guys won like, yes. That was great. Um, but. We really thought it was really important for the first 12 episode that Brain Injury Network shared to be directed and to be specifically from brain injury survivors. And also you're going to hear us say a lot as members of BIND because that's what we all are.
We all participate in this clubhouse and we are all brain injury survivors. So they're basically the first voices that you heard. And we just thought it was so important to be sharing. Each one of our stories and our, each one of our perspectives, because we all have a similar struggle of having had a stroke or brain cancer. You know, whatever it was, we all brain injury survivors, but our path just was so different from one another.
And we ended up also getting stuck into the stigma of like, you know, how our family saw us, how our friends saw us. Our ex coworkers also saw us. Right. And how we. Changed a lot or didn't change at all. And we look so normal. Like, what do you mean? So we, we all try to go through that and that was important for us. So, you know, like I said, it's like something that people sometimes, especially like in my perspective, It's like an invisible, um, struggle that I deal with.
It doesn't look like I have a struggle, but I do. So. I hope that these podcasts are also creating empathy around people like that. All also brain injury survivors, hopefully our allies itself. And for you guys to understand what's going on. Um, so I hope that it also helps our family, our friends to understand. You know what we're all going through. And I also hope it's educating the really smart people.
The doctors, therapists, like all the people that are around, like, you know, you don't see us after, you know, after you saw us as your patient. So I hope this is doing this education as well. Um, and seeing our process in the long term, long term. Um, Therapy. I mean, long-term. Recovery than never ends. So I hope this, this is what it's going on.
Okay. Yeah. And as Kezia I said, you know, we were lucky enough to win the first 12 episodes, which she didn't mention. Or I failed to mention in the beginning is with those first free 12 episodes, they were actually professionally done. A company On Air Media, came into the clubhouse and set up the studio in our conference room. And we had professionals setting up the cameras setting up the mics. They had amazing, it looked like a TV studio, basically. It was pretty cool.
But so as we moved into 2023, we had the opportunity from the Executive Director. He asked. Not just those of us, not just Kezia and I. As cohost, but everyone in the Brain Injury Network Clubhouse. Arena. And do we think it's smart? Do we want to continue with the podcast? And it was an overwhelming vote of yes. So we, here we are. And that gave us new struggles for 2023, because. Now. We needed to start learning how to do the cameras and the recording.
And setting up the mics cause and all that stuff that you don't think about when you're just having someone do it for you. That became our new struggle was to figure out how to do that. And we'll kind of get into that as well, but we started decided to focus the next year, the next season on professionals. So we had a lot of the therapists that worked with us in our initial recovery, from physical to occupational to speech.
And we did a couple of series on Aphasia and then we had different professionals come in. We had a lawyer, neurologist. So we really focused more on professionals with a few stories. In and out of the season. So that's really, you know, we're trying to make it, we're working towards, having more healthcare providers and resources so that the brain injury survivors can learn more.
About what's out there because not everyone goes through the same recovery process has the same options or hears about the same options. So we're hoping to not just be a platform for brain injury survivors to share their story, but to help brain injury survivors and their advocates, their caregivers learn about resources that might be available to them.
Right. And I think that's what we focused on, like the second season. Right? Like as professionals coming in and teaching us, like, while we're talking to them, like, wow, I didn't even know that. Like, that's kind of like our focus on, on the second season, but, you know, Last year 2023, we went into our third and fourth season. Um, and really, I think it was so important. For us to continue sharing that. Starting and maintaining the podcast.
It's kind of like, it gave us like a second life and opportunity. For like our second chance. Um, and that's like, I, I think that most of members of BIND that were sharing their stories was trying to give, right. Like, I didn't know I was going to do this. And now I'm here and I'm doing this, you know, it's not like our first life. It's, it's our second chance of living. And that's what we would like to talk about today.
So why is it so important that brain injury survivors are running a brain injury awareness podcast? Um, It's run by us. Right. And that's not just Carrie that we have. Other members that are doing bits and pieces to make it happen every Thursday. So. Like Carrie. And I have said multiple times in our episodes, recovery is not a one size fits all. It's not the same for me. It's not the same for Carrie. We've been in two different paths. But we're all brain injury.
Uh, survivors and especially for strokes. Um, and we were pretty young. So everyone's brain is unique. Everyone is different. And so is that process and how we get better. And what step are we in to recovery? And it never ends. So, you know, everyone's in a different, it's in a different like step and the podcast being run by survivors allows us to really explore our abilities. are, and it's very diverse. Like here I am speaking and I had Aphasia and like, how did I get here?
I don't know, but I'm getting better every day. Right? So like everyone's needs are so diverse. And the podcast is allowing us to do that. Like, just do some curiosity, like, can I handle a camera? I don't know, but try it out. Um, so it's, you know, it's just letting us have that. Curiosity and also control it. So it's really fun.
Yeah. As Kezia was mentioning, a therapy is a different, once you've seen a brain injury, you've seen one brain injury. I think you've heard us. And some of our other guests say that. But all brain injury recovery is different and recovery, isn't just physical recovery. It's not just physical therapy or occupational therapy or things like that. There's also emotional and mental aspects that go into, um, Into recovery. So like different strokes, different brain injuries.
Require different challenges like Kezia and I had very similar strokes on opposite sides of our body. So the way we are affected is different. I was a little more physically effected and she's a little bit more, she didn't, like she said, she had Aphasia, so there's, you know, there's a common thread of resilience and wanting to continue non-traditional traditional recovery. Again, like we say, in the clubhouse it's therapy by doing not physical therapy. So that's kind of where we are with that.
And before I jumped back over to I'm going to ask our listeners to go ahead and click that like button. Click that subscribe button and click that share button. Especially in click notify. If you're on YouTube, just if you see a button that looks good. Just don't click the one that goes like this click, all the positive buttons. And thanks for listening.
Yeah. Um, I think right now it's like really important to go back into what Carrie said like, You know, we all go through different types of therapy and the podcast making it happen is our therapy. It's part of our continuing growing. And when we first started and that it was getting paid for it to be professionally done, all nice and pretty. Um, Carrie and I were just like, yeah, we'll do it. And we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. And I don't think, I don't know.
Did you imagine we would get to here?
No. Yeah,
no, neither did I. I had no idea. I had no idea what I said yes to. Um, right. I don't think I even knew it until like, I don't know. December. Like I really didn't know. Um, and then we actually, I don't know if like I'm like you listeners are realizing it, but last year, Carrie and I actually attended the podcast movement conference in Las Vegas. And thanks to Carrie. We got sponsored. They P they paid our presence, which was really nice and exciting. Um, but it was a really great experience.
Um, It was, it was awesome. I feel like I learned a lot, but to be honest, it was exhausting. A lot. The first day I was like, so ready to nap, like halfway through the day, it was a lot of information to gather. And I was like, I don't know this vocabulary about podcasters. And like, I, it was just a lot, it was a lot. And I feel like I had to go backwards on what we accomplished already. Like we have 12 episodes, but I don't know how it got there.
So it was a lot, um, But that's, you know, that's by learning that, um, and being in these, um, sessions. A lot of the information that was being. Sold to us, right? It's like, How do we make the podcast easier to make? How do we make it easier? Like a lot of the presentations were things like, you know, like chat, GBT that, you know, you put in your thoughts and it creates sentences for it.
Um, And I think that's great, you know, like for creators and podcasters, but it didn't really fit what we needed to make out of these podcasts. It didn't really fit what we needed for Brain Injury Network and for members, all brain injury survivors to get, because we kind of need it to be hard and to challenge us and. We need that to work on. And rewire our brains to do better work. Like we kind of needed the hard work. Um, so.
So basically, um, we had to like figure it out and we're still figuring it out. We're not perfect at this, but we're trying to figure it out how we can use the podcast. As part of the Brain Injury Network, clubhouses, both in Plano and in Fort Worth. And like its model that it runs, which is self sustaining. With brain injury survivors, and that's basically allowing the podcast. I mean, bindwaves, BIND members work and run all the activities.
And I think the best one to share this is Carrie, because she's been here since the very beginning. Um, and she probably be the best to explain about that.
Um, maybe, maybe not, maybe, maybe I'm just glad she didn't say since she's the oldest. Make me feel bad. I've been here. I mean, I've been here a long time. So y'all hear us talk a lot here at BIND at the clubhouse, um, about Work Order Day, the daily activity of the clubhouse is based around a structured system called the work order day, but really what does that mean? So basically I Googled it to make sure I'm saying it properly. So it makes sense to the general public.
So the work order day is for us, it's a modified. Six hour day, typically Monday through Friday, which parallels the typical business hours of the working community. Where the clubhouses are located again, we say modified six hours cause it's brain injured. We have to work back up to that eight hour day, a lot of members and, you know, And like we mentioned the mental and physical.
So we have members that, you know, like even Kezia has said at the conference, she'd been overwhelmed halfway through the first day and he needed a nap. Well, that happens to most survivors throughout their recovery. They get very tired and need a break. So we actually have what we call a relaxation room in each clubhouse where members can take a break. Some of it may be, you know, they have.
light sensitivity or noise issues that they need to get, go sit in a dark room for five minutes and get that all back together. But so we were trying part of bindwaves and having the members participate in this is to go back through the work order day. Because if you think about it, for example, the following roles that we have. Which are needed to produce one episode a week. So we have a producer who has to find the guests at setup the schedule. We have Kezia and I the cohost.
We have a sound engineer, two. We have a couple and everything. We're trying to build more than set up the cameras so that hopefully we're in frame and you can see us nice and pretty. And then someone running the machine, that's actually recording our voices so that we can then have the editors come in and edit what we said to make sure. When you're reading the transcribed, the transcription, it we're saying the right words are showing up when we're saying them, because. AI is only so good.
Like Kezia gets a different name, every time she introduces herself as Kezia and every time I say it, it's a different name because AI doesn't understand Kezia.
Siri doesn't understand me either.
That's so rude. But so it's just kind of shows you that. There's all kinds of things. You know, those are. If you had a job working in a company that produced podcasts there, these are also life skills that help you. Maybe you're not going to go work at a company where you do podcasts, but by some of the things that you're doing, you're learning new life skills to get back on track, to help you with that second life. If getting back to work is what you want to do.
Right. And. I mean. Carrie just listed some of the jobs, right. That we have some of the positions that we have. And I'm sure that if you check out our website or even look into our Instagram page, you're going to see those people that are making it possible to create an episode every week. So, you know, I think that just explaining what we've been doing right now is really like how our purpose of the episodes in the podcast has totally changed.
Like. We're like at a higher purpose of creating this and making it happen. Um, It's, you know, like I said earlier, it's not supposed to be easier to make, it's supposed to be challenging us and like, It's part of our never ending non-traditional. Like journey. So. like, for example, for me, um, Because of the stroke. I was diagnosed with Aphasia. So I had to basically. It basically affected my ability to talk. So I couldn't talk like this. I definitely couldn't read.
And I, I had a hard time, like understanding. People, right. It was just hard. So yeah, like now you're probably questioning yourself, like how did she do that? And we're. You know, how can she talk like this? And a lot of the times, because being a co-host makes me rewire my whole brain. Well now, like I'm getting better at it. So I don't need to talk like this forever, but really just managing and creating the podcast team is really what's helping me because.
I used to work and be able to do this without even training. Like it was like the back of my mind. And now it's taken some time to be able to have this team that we lead. It's it's happening now. So I'm more comfortable with myself doing the, having the abilities that I had before the stroke.
Yeah. And the same as Kezia so me for me, like before the stroke, I worked in corporate America. I worked in corporate training. I did soft skills training. I did computer training. So I'm kind of, I've gotten back in again, rewiring my brain to, to get back to being able to be in training mode, to help. People understand, um, how to do the editing portion. So like I've learned editing in. You know, now I'm training the new editors on how to do editing.
So, you know, it's helping us, it's helping us again, relearn. The old skills that we had just in a different way so that we can continue. That lifelong recovery and rebuilding and relearning skills that we need to rewire. So. It's I mean, Not going to say we're perfect. It's but it's coming it getting easier and easier. The more we do, the more we're getting more comfortable in our new skin.
Right. And I just wanted to make sure to, to share that. We are always looking for more people, always looking for people to be involved. You know, I wanted to make sure that there's a lot. Of opportunities here at Brain Injury Network, but especially here on the podcast, you know, we encourage all of our listeners. Our allies, our friends, and obviously people that are in this community to support our journey of having bindwaves, keeping alive.
Um, to just always keeping the ability to continue publishing episodes. So we have so many opportunities and you'll hear more about it right now.
So of course, yeah. Um, for all brain injury survivors are if in D and the DFW area. You know, Dallas or Fort worth, and you want to become a member of BIND. Um, Remember, you can find it as a member of BIND, you can find what you're most interested in to work, to build vocational skills, increase self-esteem and develop competence in the ability to contribute productively. Again, all we ask is that you're 18 years or older. And you have had an acquired brain injury.
We not gonna make you come in and prove that you had an acquired brain injury. No, one's just going to go. Oh, Hey, I had a brain injury. And come on, we know, um, and you have to be independent of course, with eating and toileting. And may not, you cannot be a danger to yourself or others. But we encourage any brain injury survivors that are out there that are in the area.
To reach out to just go to our website, um, and you can find the membership application and find out the locations that we're at in Plano and Fort worth.
Right. And if you're an ally and are in the DFW area or Fort worth, you can definitely become a volunteer. And by being a volunteer, there's so many opportunities here at the clubhouse, but come and be part of bindwaves. I'm sure that there's more opportunities, right? Like, um, being one of, if you're not in DFW or in Fort worth. There's a lot more opportunities, right. But one of them you can definitely donate. Here and become our sponsor.
And if you look on our website, you can find out more information about donating. Um, other opportunities like being on the board of directors, the advisory board, maybe getting involved as a clubhouse partner. To help sponsor some of our events. or again, just to become a sponsor in general. So that's out there. And again, we wouldn't mind if you're. Let's say a high school or college student getting into podcasting and editing and that kind of stuff.
And you just want to volunteer your time and be a part of a great brain injured podcast. We would love for you to come join us and say, hi.
Right. And last but not least, if you're interested in being a guest of our podcast, we have a form on our website and all information will be on the description. But yeah, overall, I just wanted to let you guys know that. We need to continue sharing our voices and creating this community of sponsors and all allies. Uh, together we can voice and just continue to be resilient and break all these barriers of like, what is it? Who are we? And all of that stuff.
And just continued like becoming and being the resource to others.
Again, we want to thank you for your time today and for listening to us. Um, if you want to contact us, you can email us at again, bindwaves@theBIND.org. Um, follow us at Instagram @bindwaves and again, visit our main website. Um, theBIND.org/bindwaves that has all the information involved there will be in the description, but that has the membership application, the volunteer application, all the information about becoming a sponsor. Anything that you might want to know about us?
If you just kind of want to learn more a little bit about us, it's all out there. There's a page on, within the website. That's just on the bindwaves podcast. So again, we encourage you. If you want to be a guest to go and fill out that form. And kind of give us your expertise and what you'd like to help share about brain injury awareness.
Yep. And of course, like Carrie said earlier, don't forget to like all those nice buttons. Uh, like share subscribe to. To us on your favorite platform. And just hit notify and on YouTube because I'm sure you'll always like to see our pretty faces.
And don't forget every Thursday, you can find a new episode on all your favorite platforms. So until next time.
Until next time.
We hope you've enjoyed listening to BIND Waves and continue to support BIND and our non profit mission. We support brain injury survivors as they reconnect into the life, the community, and their workplace. And we couldn't do that without great listeners like you. We appreciate each and every one of you. Continue watching. Until next time. Until next time.