Discovering a new identity after brain injury

Abstract

Acquired brain injury (ABI) is one example of the chronic conditions that people of varying socioeconomic status must bear. Concerns with identity and self are endemic to surviving brain injury. For this study, a brain tumour survivor injured 17 years earlier, took photographs of her life with brain injury and discussed them with other brain injury survivors and the author. Narrative analysis methods were used to analyse her photographs and interview, and generate a visual illness narrative with four photographs and their accompanying interview text. Her visual illness narrative reveals discovery of a post-brain injury identity whose multiplicity of self-definitions includes chef, brain injury survivor, gardener, and self-advocate. Study findings reveal that identity issues of importance to brain injury survivors can include (1) learning the new, post-brain injury self, and (2) building a new identity whose multiple, partial identities include (a) the new brain injured self, (b) an old self (with its residual strengths), and (c) a self who does meaningful activities (e.g. parenting, partnering, art, gardening, volunteering, helping others, or paid work). Study results suggest that using visual research methods can help to put biographical disruption such as brain injury into perspective as a life lived.