Aphasia Awareness | Friendship, and Finding Community
Aphasia on the Road: Two Roads Meet
Aphasia Awareness was more than traveling.
Two roads had been running alongside each other for a long time.
Then one day, they were parked together.
Keith and I went to Pennsylvania for old-time music and steam trains. They were wonderful. Keith played fiddle for eight hours.
But for me, meeting Mike Jankowski may have been the real destination of Aphasia on the Road.
Mike and I have talked often on Zoom. We are both National Aphasia Association Ambassadors.
I appeared on Mike’s YouTube channel, Beyond Words. We talked about stroke, aphasia, recovery, and life after aphasia.
Mike also encouraged our Aphasia Awareness event in Connecticut on June 16.
A month ago, I told him I was afraid we wouldn’t meet a single person with aphasia on the Connecticut shoreline.
Mike said, “One person will make the effort worthwhile.”
He was right.
Then Mike and his wife Ana and my husband Keith and I met together … in person.
We already knew we were friends.
Now we knew it for sure.
We talked about:
- Aphasia at Home, my website and blog.
- EMTs, firefighters, and police officers needing to understand aphasia.
- Finding ways for people with aphasia to communicate that they have aphasia and are not drunk, confused, or uncooperative.
- Aphasia and AI.
- Connecting people who go home and feel alone.
- Building awareness in Connecticut and beyond.
We also discovered something funny.
Mike is about 6 foot 5.
I am 5 foot 1.
Zoom never mentioned that.
We are both determined to keep moving forward and helping people with aphasia.
Keith and Ana were there too.
All four of us understood why these conversations matter.
We realized we are not changing the world.
That wasn’t the important thing.
The important thing was realizing that we are not alone.
In our own small way, we are working together from far away, but together.
Keith’s destination was music.
Mine was meeting Mike.
Now we are home again, and I am writing this.
A memory moment for all of us.
Next week I will tell you about our June 16 Aphasia Awareness event in Connecticut.
It was remarkable.
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