In this darkly comic memoir, a young woman recounts the steps she took to rebuild her sense of self in the aftermath of two devastating strokes that robbed her of her ability to communicate.
Nina Mitchell was an accomplished Harvard graduate whose world changed forever when her facility with language-and much of her personality-disappeared. Lacking the tools to navigate her old life, Nina was forced to create another one. In After Words, she shares her remarkable journey as she slowly reclaims the power to converse, write, assert her identity, and to be herself-with words.
Nina Mitchell's After Words is part of Missing, a collection of six true stories about finding, restoring, or accepting the losses that define our lives-from the mysterious to the inspiring. Each story can be read-or listened to-in a single sitting.
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[My second strokeswept over me as I lay on my ex-boyfriend's couch]***
(Amazon Original Stories, 31 July 2018, ebook, 36pages, Prime Reading)
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AfterWords fits in much better with the Missing collection than The Button I'm glad to say. I found this short read incredibly sad. I can only imagine the devastation Mitchell must have felt having two serious strokes in her twenties. After Words has some funny, tender and poignant moments as Mitchell learns to live again. Before the strokes, she was highly intelligent, a Harvard graduate but after the strokes, she needs to learn to communicate again. She is someone new and needs to get to know the person she's become and accept she may never be the person she was before the strokes. AfterWords is heart-breaking at times.
