Sharon M Katzman

Tearing Down the Wall Sharon M Katzman

What if you had to re-learn completely how to live your life?

After a near-fatal car accident left her with a traumatic brain injury and a multitude of internal injuries, Sharon found - once she came out of her coma - that at the age of twenty-three, she needed to learn to walk, to speak, to listen, even to think...all over again. Already an acknowledged social introvert before her accident, Sharon soon discovered that it was too hard for people to look at her and hear her stumbling speech - reminders of the horrible difficulties she was enduring. As a result, people starting avoiding her. Sharon was never willing, though, to use her accident or its devastating effects on her as a crutch. She continued, for twenty years, with determination and will power, to learn to overcome her difficulties of what was often an exasperating road of rehabilitation and life-learning lessons. She finally was able to earn her master's degree in technical communication, a symbolic end to her decades-long struggle to overcome what for most of us would have been insurmountable cognitive difficulties. Tearing Down the Wall is the moving and remarkable story of Sharon's re-learning every detail of how to live her life from day to day and of her relentless journey to once again find her place in the world, both socially and professionally.