My sister lost everything--her memory, her mobility, her marriage, her child, her home.
My mother sacrificed everything to heal her. It couldn't be done.
I wanted redemption I never received.
This is not an inspiring story of overcoming handicaps; it is a story of survivorsâ guilt coupled with resentment tempered by love. Although it is about my family, the story touches on widespread concerns: the role of caregivers, the changing dynamics of a family after a catastrophic injury, and, in my case, the long term effects of a childhood trauma.
This book is for every woman who has ever been blamed for something a man did to her, for every girl who grew up feeling ashamed. It is for every mother who gave herself so completely to one childâs needs, she lost sight of everyone else, including herself. It is for every daughter who wanted to rescue her mother, and failed. It is for all the forgotten family members.
My sister lost everything--her memory, her mobility, her marriage, her child, her home.
My mother sacrificed everything to heal her. It couldn't be done.
I wanted redemption I never received.
This is not an inspiring story of overcoming handicaps; it is a story of survivorsâ guilt coupled with resentment tempered by love. Although it is about my family, the story touches on widespread concerns: the role of caregivers, the changing dynamics of a family after a catastrophic injury, and, in my case, the long term effects of a childhood trauma.
This book is for every woman who has ever been blamed for something a man did to her, for every girl who grew up feeling ashamed. It is for every mother who gave herself so completely to one childâs needs, she lost sight of everyone else, including herself. It is for every daughter who wanted to rescue her mother, and failed. It is for all the forgotten family members.
There is a photograph that haunts me. It is a newspaper picture of my parents in court. Next to them is Marty. Back then, he was my sisterâs husband.
I am not in this picture. I spent time in the hospital with my sister, and in her home to look after her small child, but I did not go to court. I had my own home, husband, and children to look afterâand a job. And it took me two hours each way to drive from my home to be with her.
My sister is not in this picture. Unable to speak, unable to move, unaware of the battle being waged for her life and her health, she could not fight for herself. Her family had to fight for her.
Her antagonists are not in this picture. Those self-righteous defenders of the unborn, who claimed to be my sisterâs friends, who said they were there to âhelpâ her, who had never met her and would never bear the burden of her childâs care, who meddled in our familyâs tragedy and neither cared nor understood what damage they did. What is in the picture, clearly visible on the faces of my parents, engraved like masks of tragedy, is the pain those men chose not to see.
I would have hurt those strangers in return. But I wasnât in court, and I never met them.
They wanted to save Nancyâs unborn baby. My parents were there to save my sister, their baby. Nancyâs condition was grave, her prognosis uncertain. All Mom and Dad wanted was the best possible treatment for her. All they wanted was hope. All they wanted was to have their daughter back again.
Every hour that Mom and Dad spent in court was an hour they couldnât be at her side, talking to her, massaging her immobile arms and legs, monitoring her condition for signs of life. Once, Mom thought a finger moved.
I have never hated anyone the way I hated those two right-to-life advocates. They claimed they wanted to help, but they approached us as adversaries. Every time I saw one of them on TV or in a newspaper, I felt rage. In my aerobics class, when we swung punches, I imagined I was hitting them. Twice a week I entered my gym rigid with tension and left completely relaxed.
Years later, in a workshop, I had to think of someone I hated; for a moment, I drew a blank, and then I remembered Broderick and Short, and the emotion gripped me.
If I were truly enlightened, I would forgive them.
âThere but for the grace of God, go Iâ is a common expression when we learn about someone elseâs misfortune. In those instances, we realize how vulnerable to the whims of fate we all are, no matter how invincible, how prosperous, or how full of life and promise we appear to be at any given moment. In Damaged, Janet Smuga tells, with great honesty and eloquence, the story of what happens when her family faces one such adverse turn of events.
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In late 1988, Janetâs younger sister, Nancy, was driving home from a business meeting when she lost control of her car and had an accident that left her in a coma. At only thirty-two, Nancy had already achieved remarkable things: she was a talented designer educated in the best schools and owned a thriving business; she had a beautiful house; she was married to a handsome, successful man and had a three-year-old daughter with him. Everything seemed to go well for Nancy until the accident that shattered her life and that brought her family togetherâher sister, her brother, her father and, above all, her motherâto assume the arduous task of taking care of a person with irreversible brain damage.Â
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At the time of her ordeal, Nancy was pregnant and her condition was at the center of a well-publicized right-to-an-abortion dispute. However, this is not a book about the legal battle her family had to fight in her name, or about the abortion controversy in the USA.
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At its core, this is a book about family. It is also about different approaches to dealing with trauma, the unforeseen, and the challenges and disappointments life throws at us. Â
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As part of her memoir, Janet Smuga tells us the story of her parents. She describes how they met in the years after WWIIâhe, a veteran of the war, and she, a big city girlâ and how they started a family and raised their three children at a time when parenting was very different from how people conceive and practice it today.Â
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The author also recounts a traumatic event she experienced as a child and how she suffered in its aftermath, not so much as a result of the incident but of her parentsâ reaction to it. Janetâs difficult experiencesâovercoming her PTSD, moving so often during her early years, and the fact that she seemed to be her motherâs least favorite childâultimately strengthened her and gave her a wisdom that would be crucial in addressing Nancyâs care, and in raising a happy, healthy family of her own.Â
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Although Damaged can be of particular interest to those who are caring for survivors of brain trauma, I believe that it also offers valuable insights for all of us, as we go through life. Like its author says, there are no happy endings here. However, through Janetâs account, we can learn some lessons about letting go, about acceptance and endurance, and about caring for someone else who completely depends on us, without neglecting our own needs and wants, and those of our other loved ones.