Dr. Taylor’s story really is remarkable. I don’t think she has retained the ability to wander about in her right brain at will but she holds the incredible memory of experiencing pure R brain function. Her most amazing contribution is just knowing what’s in there and how more of it would be available to more of us if we suppressed the busy-busy thing instead of the silent-silent thing.

I keep thinking about how all this would never have become known if her bleed had been in a different place. If her R brain were being sprayed with blood, the L brain would be doing its normal duties of searching for patterns from the R brain’s catalog of perceptions and would find nothing. It would be frantic.

I wonder too if the experience of stroke is different in women who have so many more R-L brain connections. We find the rhyme and reason in the ordinary so exceptionally well. Having said that, is there a difference between R-brain thoughts and no-brain thoughts? Men can keep a truly blank brain for a sustained time. I don’t know many women who can do that. I have a friend who sits in a church, the quietest place she can find, and she tries. Maybe this is also because of our thicker R-L network.

I’m working on consciously allowing my R brain when things bug me. Since things bug me a lot, I have a lot of opportunity to think about stuff that seems crazy, like how my hair feels or how the chair is supporting my back and it feels pretty good. Oddly enough, I settle right down.

Thanks for the recommendation for Schulz’s books. They’ve gone on my Search list.

The book is better in some ways, because in addition to telling her story, it gives many valuable tools to the reader for helping survivors and finding the happiness we all look for in our own lives.

But I agree, the video was riveting. She really gives of herself in a very humbling way.