A brain bleed stroke — also called a hemorrhagic stroke — can change your life in an instant.
One moment you’re functioning normally, the next you’re fighting to stay alive.

But while the physical trauma is visible, the emotional and psychological impact runs just as deep, and often goes unspoken.

In this article, we’ll explore what stroke survivors often discover in the wake of such a devastating event — and how healing doesn’t always look like recovery. Sometimes, it looks like rediscovering who you are.

A brain bleed stroke occurs when a blood vessel ruptures and bleeds into the brain. This can cause sudden loss of consciousness, neurological deficits, or even death if not treated urgently.

It’s often caused by:

• High blood pressure
• Aneurysms
• Arteriovenous malformations (AVMs)
• Cavernous malformations
• Head trauma

Recovery depends on many factors: the location of the bleed, how quickly treatment is provided, and the support systems in place afterward.

But even after the medical emergency ends, the journey is far from over.

For many survivors, the road ahead includes:

• Right or left side weakness
• Paralysis or limited mobility
• Vision loss (often tunnel vision or loss of peripheral vision)
• Fine motor skill impairment

• Memory loss
• Brain fog and confusion
• Loss of speech or difficulty forming sentences
• Emotional lability, frustration, or depression

• Loss of independence
• Shifts in relationships and roles
• A grieving process for the “old self”

Recovery is rarely linear. But survivors often speak of unexpected insights that emerge through the struggle:

Being vulnerable during recovery often deepens relationships.
Survivors frequently report a renewed closeness with family and caregivers.

When survival isn’t guaranteed, every moment becomes sacred.
Small wins — standing, eating, smiling — take on profound meaning.

A stroke strips away distractions.
It forces stillness.
Many survivors describe it as the first time they were truly present in their own lives.

Whether you’re weeks out of the hospital or years into recovery…

• You are not broken.
• You are rebuilding.
• There’s no timeline for healing.

And you don’t have to do this alone.

A brain bleed stroke can destroy plans, routines, and even parts of your body. But it doesn’t have to destroy your future.

Presence. Connection. Growth.
These are things that can emerge because of your stroke, not just in spite of it.

Take this moment to breathe.
To reflect.
And to remember: recovery isn’t just possible — it’s already happening, one moment at a time.

Jen’s brain bleed stroke nearly ended her life. This is how she and her mother turned trauma into connection, healing, and post-stroke growth.

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Highlights:

00:00 Introduction
01:43 The Beginning of Jen’s Stroke Recovery Journey
08:32 The Initial Emergency Room Treatment
12:35 The Cavernous Malformation
19:58 Constantly In and Out of Consciousness
23:06 Jen’s Initial Deficits
29:21 Difficulties of having Cognitive Issues
32:10 Communicating After a Stroke
43:19 Writing the book “In the Face of Catastrophe”
50:54 Life Appreciation After a Stroke
56:51 The Power of Family and Writing

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hi everyone. Before we begin today, I want to say thank you to everyone who’s left a comment, written a review, supported the show on Patreon, clicked the YouTube super thanks button, brought a copy of my book, or just chose not to skip the ads.

Bill Gasiamis 0:16
You’re the reason this podcast reaches people in their hospital bed, sometimes only days after they’ve experienced a stroke, you’re helping them feel less alone, and you’re helping me keep this going. Today’s episode is one of those conversation that gets under your skin in the best way.

Bill Gasiamis 0:35
Jen Goldman was just days away from her 31st birthday when a sudden brain bleed. Stroke changed everything. She was healthy, vibrant and thriving, until the moment her brain hemorrhaged at work, unconscious, unresponsive, rushed to surgery. Her mother, Karen Karen Hersh Lifer, arrived to find her daughter on the brink, and what followed was a long, uncertain road through ICU craniotomy, months without memory and years of rehabilitation.

Bill Gasiamis 1:09
But it’s also a story about connection, gratitude, and how even in trauma, there can be gifts together. Jen and Karen wrote a book in the face of catastrophe, about what it means to hold on to each other when everything else is falling apart. If you’re tuning in from a hospital bed or from the quiet of a tough recovery day, this episode is for you. Let’s get into it. Karen Hersh Lifer and Jen Goldman, welcome to the podcast.

Jen And Karen 1:41
Thank you.

Bill Gasiamis 1:43
Thank you for your patience in waiting for me. We are 20 minutes late because I had computer problems. And these things happen sometimes, and in the scheme of things, computer problems are not a big deal. Jen, tell me a little bit about what happened to you.

Jen Goldman 2:00
I was 30 years old at the time, and out of the blue. I have been in perfect health. I suffered a massive brain leaving my left envelope. I was turning 31 in three days, with two days before 31st birthday, and it was completely out of the blue. I’ve been in perfect health. I had been running, walking, in perfect physical shape, eating, healthy, exercising, just doing all the things that I did, that I was doing in my life.

Jen Goldman 2:37
I run a business, I had essential oils and an aromatherapy company called Sensual Rose. I was very spiritual and into positive psychology and practice meditation, visualization, and I love positive psychology. And, yeah, this just struck me out of the blue, completely out of the blue. And it really was devastating my whole life.

Bill Gasiamis 3:02
Where were you at the time?

Jen Goldman 3:05
I was at work, my mom’s store.

Bill Gasiamis 3:07
Was mom there?

Jen Goldman 3:09
Yeah, yes, she came but off work that day.

Karen Hersh Lifer 3:14
I actually got there. The general manager called we have a a business and about 10-12, minutes from where we live. And so I got a call that morning at 9:15 the general manager saying there’s something very wrong with Jen. She’s not comprehending. She’s walking weird. She’s banging into things. She’s speaking in gibberish.

Karen Hersh Lifer 3:46
And so it just seemed to me that this what, what is going on here? And my husband, Jen’s Father, is an he’s board certified in emergency medicine. He’s a physician. He was off that day, and he said, You know what? This sounds really weird. And he went over to check in. And before he arrived, I got another call from the general manager who and she was with Jen, and it was during that call that Jen was having the bleed. You could actually hear it, and hear her.

Bill Gasiamis 4:31
Say that again, you could hear the bleed?

Karen Hersh Lifer 4:35
Yes, when the bleed happened, when the vessel in her brain burst, blood rushed into this closed surface her brain, and it was an agonizing, agonizing, terrifying event, and she was screaming in agony.

Jen Goldman 5:04
At that point. I had been unconscious, of course.

Bill Gasiamis 5:08
You have been conscious for a little while beforehand. And were you in and out of consciousness?

Jen Goldman 5:13
No, I was completely unconscious at the time.

Karen Hersh Lifer 5:19
When she had the bleed, she became unconscious and remained unconscious for a significant period of time thereafter. You know, turned out where I work is about 10 minutes from a major hospital Trauma Center, and it turned out that they have a really excellent neurosurgery department, which I didn’t really know about, because I had really no reason to know about neurosurgery, thankfully.

Karen Hersh Lifer 5:57
And so we got over there, and, you know, initially, Jen was not supposed to survive, she was not supposed to live, and actually was able to survive. And was in the ICU, there for three weeks, on the floor there for a week, and then went over to acute inpatient rehab for seven weeks. And from the day she got home, she’s been working on her recovery. It’s almost four years.

Bill Gasiamis 6:36
So did you arrive there Karen? Did you see your daughter in that unconscious state?

Karen Hersh Lifer 6:50
I did. I got there and the other thing that is sort of important to know is that our business is a family, run and owned business. We have 150 employees, all of whom know us very intimately. Knew Jen very intimately. Some of them have watched Jen grow up and so when I got to the store, because it’s a retail store, it was extraordinary, people were crying, and I was just really, really emotional.

Karen Hersh Lifer 7:37
And when I walked in the ambulance, the EMS were taking her out in a stretcher, and she looked like she had left her body. It was just, Oh, my God. She looked dead. I mean, it was just like she was not there. And I didn’t know it at the time, but my husband told me afterwards that she actually was very close to death because she was her posture was decorticate, which means that her legs were turning in, her feet were turning in, and her arms were turning in, and that happens sort of right before your brain herniates and drops out of your skull.

Karen Hersh Lifer 8:32
And so, yeah, so they got her into the ambulance. They got her to the hospital. I mean, I knew things were bad when they wouldn’t permit my husband or I to stay in the ambulance with her and got to the hospital. And for the next three weeks, for as long as she was in the ICU, we were just not certain if she was going to live or not.

Karen Hersh Lifer 9:03
I mean, initially, the neurosurgeon came to us and said, I think there’s multiple bleeds in her brain, and if that’s the case, I can’t save her. I’m going to go in and do an angiography. Now it should be 45 minutes, and we just sat there. It was just like impossible to process. And in about 10 minutes, he comes bounding back in to the waiting room. And, you know, I thought she’s gone, she’s died. And he comes in and he said, so I have good news, and maybe not so good news.

Bill Gasiamis 9:52
Wow let’s take a moment to breathe. You’ve just heard Jen’s story of collapsing at work, slipping into a coma and waking up months later without speech memory or control on her right side. If you’re in the early stages of recovery, still learning how to move, to speak, to be again, know that you’re not broken. You’re rebuilding. And to everyone who supports this podcast, thank you again.

Bill Gasiamis 10:17
Your comments and reviews, your super thanks, and your Patreon pledges, your purchase of my book, even watching without skipping the ads helps this reach someone else to find out more about supporting the show on Patreon, go to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke, now back to Jen and Karen and the healing that came not just through rehab, but through presence, writing and love.

Karen Hersh Lifer 10:46
The good news is it’s not what I thought it was. It’s not multiple bleeds. I think what it is is a cavernous malformation, and what that is is like a little berry, if you will, a raspberry that was sitting on an artery in her brain, and that, for whatever reason, burst, and it ruptured the artery.

Karen Hersh Lifer 11:17
So he said, So, I think that’s what it is. The problem is that if we don’t get the blood out soon, she’s not going to live, and if she rebleeds, she’s not going to live. And so what then became, what that then turned into was a rush, a race to try to get the blood out of Jen’s brain so that her skull actually so that the neurosurgeon could do the procedure. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 11:58
Wow, Jen, before the actual unconscious state, any were there any signs? Did you have any idea that there was stuff going wrong? Did you feel a weird headache, or in the days leading up to it? Anything at all?

Jen Goldman 12:15
No, because I’d had headaches every day for since I was like little so it was very common for me to, like have that feeling. But other than that, there’s nothing that could indicate to me that this was going to happen, it was completely out of the blue, I was in perfect health.

Karen Hersh Lifer 12:35
And what’s sort of interesting or scary, or whatever the adjective is, if so, I’ve always had migraines. My mom’s had, has had migraines. So headaches are, I mean, you do a scan, maybe, but you know, even if they had done a scan and they found this cavernous malformation.

Karen Hersh Lifer 13:04
A cavernous malformation in and of itself, is not so uncommon. And if it’s not presenting you with any difficulties, in many cases, you watch it. And so even if we knew that she had this, we probably wouldn’t have done anything about it so, and it’s very rare for the cavernous malformation to burst. That was an unusual event.

Bill Gasiamis 13:39
They are really benign. Most of the time, they just sit there, similar to what happened to me, an arteriovenous malformation. They just sit there. They don’t do anything. And then, very commonly, you hear about them bursting at around middle age, between 30 and 45 for some reason. I’m not sure why. And even if they had found mine, they probably wouldn’t have suggested anything, because it was benign at the time.

Bill Gasiamis 14:09
It wasn’t doing anything, and it was probably very deeply into the brain and in the position that it was, it was hard to get to and hard to extract, so they kind of left it there. So, so Jen, you’re everything’s fine, and then it’s not, and then you’re going to hospital. Do you recall coming around, waking up? Do you recall any of that part of the hospitalization?

Jen Goldman 14:39
My memory is really like, I don’t really remember actually coming back to myself fully. It’s very hazy. When I got my memory back, there was like a moment where I was like, Oh, I remember this now. It was very like, it was hazy. So like, there was like. Okay, um, how do I not explain it honestly.

Bill Gasiamis 15:09
Yeah, I get it. It’s difficult to explain because you’re in another realm. I imagine it’s like the only way to describe it. You’re in a completely different experiencing things in a completely different way.

Karen Hersh Lifer 15:22
You know, it was interesting to me, because when Jen was in rehab, and so she got to rehab exactly 30 days after her her stroke. And so, you know, I would sort of try to inquire, to sort of see where she was at, you know, cognitively, you know, because Jen used to be a motivational speaker. I mean, Jen was an entrepreneur. She started a company in her college dorm, you know, she traveled all over the country.

Karen Hersh Lifer 16:04
She would go to workshops. She was certified in three types of yoga and Reiki. And did you know, meditation, and I mean, she was very active and spiritual, unconscious, right? She was very much engaged in the world around her. Yeah, nature loved, you know, loves nature, loves the beach, loves, you know, very adventurous, ethereal and and, you know, I used to always call her a badass, because she would just get in the car and go.

Karen Hersh Lifer 16:41
We have a place in Colorado, and during COVID, Jen actually moved home because she had had a breakup with a boyfriend, and so we’re all living at home, and Jen is, like, very ornery and difficult because she’s unhappy about this breakup. And so my husband, David said, listen, you’ve got two choices. There’s two things. One of two things is going to happen, either I am going to move to Colorado or you’re going to Colorado and you’re going to live there. And so Jen.

Jen Goldman 17:21
I packed up myself, my car.

Karen Hersh Lifer 17:23
And drove by herself, for 30 hours to Colorado. Which is two thirds of the way across this, you know, the country, without a care in the world, without a care. And, you know, Jen was, like, super independent and really creative, like, I used to call her a spider. I called her a lady, arachnida, because when she would weave, she was weaving her web all the time.

Karen Hersh Lifer 18:02
And if someone would come along and and knock get out of the park, she wouldn’t come to me and say, oh, whoa, it’s me. She would, without a peep, just figure out a way to reweave it. And it was just this incredible determination and energy and focus and an absence of fear.

Jen Goldman 18:31
I was fearless. That’s good way to describe me.

Karen Hersh Lifer 18:36
And so for me, I was absolutely terrified about losing that Gen, and losing her wit, you know, and her snarky sense of humor. And so it was absolutely terrifying. And so I would basically try to, sort of, you know, engage, to figure out a little bit about where things were. And, you know, I asked her, I said, Do you so I brought in calendars, we had photos, trying to see what she could connect with.

Karen Hersh Lifer 19:17
And there was a the employees that work had put together a board where they all put their photos and and I asked Jen, you know, do you remember any of this? And she said, Well, that was 10 years ago. I said, No, that was, that was two weeks ago, 30 days ago. That was 30 days ago. And she was like, What do you mean? Like, her sense of time, everything.

Bill Gasiamis 19:49
I was going to ask Karen, how long after hospitalization, did Jen wake up?

Karen Hersh Lifer 19:58
Well, I mean, she was in and out of consciousness, and then, so it was definitely a good couple of, like, 10 days. But she, what would happen would be, she would storm. Okay, I don’t know if you ever stormed.

Bill Gasiamis 20:20
Tell me about that. What is a storm?

Karen Hersh Lifer 20:22
So storming is when your autonomic nervous system, which you’ve lost, okay, goes crazy. And so what happens is when you storm, and after a stroke, it’s pretty common.

Karen Hersh Lifer 20:41
When you storm, your blood pressure drops, you get a fever, you shiver, and your cognition drops to a lower level of consciousness. And storming, there’s another word for it, a medical term, but it we you know, it’s called storming, and during the period where she was in the ICU, she would storm daily.

Karen Hersh Lifer 21:07
And the problem with storming at you know, when you’re in the ICU and you storm, it’s one thing, because you’re hooked up to so many different machines and monitors that they will know it’s not an infection. It’s not a heart attack, okay, it’s just a storm.

Karen Hersh Lifer 21:29
But when she actually came out of the ICU and went to the neuro floor at that hospital, and when she was subsequently at the at rehab. They every time she would storm, they would have to rule out all of these other potential causes of storm, and every one of them is really potentially problematic.

Karen Hersh Lifer 22:00
You know, infection, heart issue, and so her cognition would rise and fall. And it wasn’t really until she got home three months later. Where she was more consistently awake. Uptunded. That’s how she was in the hospital, constantly.

Bill Gasiamis 22:35
So the time frame between hospitalization and then coming into consciousness. How long did that take?

Jen Goldman 22:47
Three months at least. By the way, when I came back into consciousness, it was not like being aware of anything at all. I still had a lot of work to do because I was not conscious of, like, what I was conscious of?

Bill Gasiamis 23:06
What were your deficits? What did you wake up with that you had to overcome or you had to work on rehabilitating?

Jen Goldman 23:14
My whole right side, I currently have no peripheral vision at all.

Bill Gasiamis 23:20
You currently still have no peripheral vision?

Karen Hersh Lifer 23:23
Her vision is limited.

Bill Gasiamis 23:29
Your whole right side is, how do you how would you describe your whole right side?

Jen Goldman 23:35
It’s impacted. It’s been impacted. I use a walker, and my right arm is a work in progress. It’s so tight, though.

Karen Hersh Lifer 23:47
Spasticity of the muscles?

Jen Goldman 23:49
Yes, and tone. No pain thankfully, I’m so lucky that I don’t have any pain.

Bill Gasiamis 23:59
Sensory neurons. What about the skin? Does it feel like it’s itchy, burning, or anything like that?

Jen Goldman 24:06
Thank god no.

Bill Gasiamis 24:08
Okay, so it’s kind of like it’s not activated to the fullest extent the way that your other side was, or it was previously your your right side.

Jen Goldman 24:22
The sensation is dulled on the right side.

Bill Gasiamis 24:26
Does it kind of feel numb?

Jen Goldman 24:29
Not numb, but it’s much harder to like, to feel it.

Bill Gasiamis 24:33
Yeah, to get like feedback to the brain.

Jen Goldman 24:37
Like, I’m much more sensitive on my left side and right side, not so much so sensitive anymore.

Bill Gasiamis 24:41
Yeah, I’m wondering, guys, what was the procedure? Was there a procedure that was used to deal with the cavernous malformation?

Karen Hersh Lifer 24:55
So they finally were able to get the blood out. Which was an odyssey. They inserted three or four different drains. The drains kept getting clogged, um, her intracranial pressure was going up, and if it hits 20, okay, that I would come to think of that as brain meltdown, okay, because there’s just too much pressure, and her, her good brain cells were being destroyed. And so there were days where I would sit in her ICU room, staring at the the intercranial pressure monitor, willing it down. And it was just, it was unbelievable. So, so basically, what was I saying?

Bill Gasiamis 25:52
About how they dealt with it.

Karen Hersh Lifer 25:55
Yes, so what they then did was they got it down, and the neurosurgeon went in, and in order to also there were drains, they also did a craniectomy. Yeah, they had to remove a part of her skull to give her the brain, and so between, that’s really what ended the bleeding and enabled them to get all the blood out. And then what they did was he went in and did a procedure where he removed the cavernous malformation, which was enmeshed with some, you know, some clots in, you know, removed that, and then restored her skull. And so that happened about 10-12, days after.

Bill Gasiamis 26:57
Initial visit of the to the hospital. Okay. And then rehabilitation started. I imagine after that, what was it like to experience your body not working the way that it was before?

Jen Goldman 27:12
I’m still in rehab to this day, very frustrating for me. I used to be so athletic. I used to ski and go to the gym every day. I was very active physically, and now I have to, like, work on that, and I can’t express my body and I can’t activate it if I want to, and it’s very frustrating because I can’t just, like, go on a run, or, like, go to the gym and workout.

Karen Hersh Lifer 27:38
Or even go into the kitchen and make yourself some tea. You know it’s, I mean, the one area where Jen is almost completely back is the area of cognition. I mean, initially things were so jumbled in her head. I mean, she didn’t how to play tic tac toe. She did not know what a comb or brush was or a toothbrush, what to do with them.

Karen Hersh Lifer 28:09
She had like, I mean, she recognized certain things, and that was sort of weird as to what she did remember and what she didn’t remember, but there were, like, glaring gaps in her memory, some of which, much of which returned once we would talk about something and but like, how she met her boyfriend, where she met her boyfriend.

Karen Hersh Lifer 28:38
The fact that Mikey was her boyfriend, that they were living together, you know, and these things were absolutely terrifying, and, you know, just and she, Jen, couldn’t speak. She didn’t speak for a while, and she, she was intubated, she was intubated, and then she had a trach.

Bill Gasiamis 29:10
And that was because they were afraid of your swallowing or something was going to go wrong in the throat, and therefore they want to keep that airway clear.

Karen Hersh Lifer 29:21
Yeah. And so Jen had no working memory, and so she could not tell a sense, tell a story. She couldn’t really put a sentence together. So for example, whereas in the past, if you said to her, hey, you know, what do you like about the woods? You know, she’d go off on, you know, the five senses, the smell, the you know, how it makes her feel the connection with nature.

Karen Hersh Lifer 29:55
You know, she would go on and on. Whereas, when. At immediately after her stroke, when she was home, I’d say, How do you feel about the woods? And she’d say, I like them. End of conversation, nice. They’re nice. Whereas then I would say, tell me why, and it would be a one word answer, and eventually, over time, it became, I like them because they make me feel good, because I love nature, because it’s a connection.

Karen Hersh Lifer 30:34
Um, so, but all of that has taken tremendous amount of work, yeah, and so. But what started to happen, what I think, facilitated it and accelerated it, was that, you know, basically when Jen came back from the hospital, she wanted to know what was going on, what had happened to her, and I had taken notes in the hospital, just because there was so much that went on that needed to be processed.

Karen Hersh Lifer 31:15
And I knew it, it had to be processed at some point. And so I said, Well, I have notes. And she said, I want to understand, because everyone here is so traumatized. And so I started to go through the notes, and some of them, I said, you know, maybe I’ll just, you know, edit this here. This is, this is tough. This. I don’t know if, if we and Jenna said, No, I want to know everything.

Karen Hersh Lifer 31:44
And as we started to read, she said, I want to write a book with you about this, and we’re going to call it the gift, because this stroke has given me the gift of time with you and with the family that I didn’t even know I needed. And we wrote the book.

Bill Gasiamis 32:10
Yeah, we’ll talk about the book in a minute. I want to try and get a sense from Jen what it was like to experience trying to communicate with people who are trying to help you get through all that stuff. And A, you’ve got a trach, and B, you’ve experienced a stroke. What was that whole experience like?

Jen Goldman 32:35
It was so frustrating. Honestly, it was so frustrating to be able to express myself, to be able to get the words out. I’m telling you know what the words were. It’s like have that gap that cognition was really frustrating for me, because I’ve been so intelligent before, and I want to get back to that place. I want to be smart again, obviously. And I felt really stupid, and that was really frustrating to me to feel that way.

Bill Gasiamis 33:04
You felt stupid because your brain wasn’t working, probably not because you lost your intelligence.

Karen Hersh Lifer 33:15
She couldn’t access her intelligence.

Karen Hersh Lifer 33:18
Yeah.

Jen Goldman 33:19
I’m I’m not sure what I thought. Honestly, I felt stupid. That’s how I felt. It was so frustrating to not be able to access what I wanted to say and to access the thoughts that I want to think and to have the depth of the thoughts that I want to think.

Bill Gasiamis 33:37
Now with your voice, your voice seems a little bit soft, or is it different than what it was before?

Jen Goldman 33:47
Yes, much different. I think it is different. Yeah, I don’t know if it’s much different, but it’s definitely different.

Karen Hersh Lifer 33:54
And it’s different.

Bill Gasiamis 33:58
How difficult was it to regain your voice and to start talking again? Because I know the the trach in for a long time does cause interference with the vocal cords. What was it like to start talking, and was that a difficult experience? Was that draining, physically?

Jen Goldman 34:17
Yes, it’s still difficult. Honestly, you hear my voice now you just said it’s low, it’s difficult all the time. It’s much better than it was, but it’s still a work in progress.

Bill Gasiamis 34:31
And do you still experience fatigue, the general kind of neurological fatigue that comes after stroke, where people describe and is that with you as much as it was?

Jen Goldman 34:49
Not that, not as much it was, but still there definitely,

Bill Gasiamis 34:54
So you have good days and you have bad days.

Jen Goldman 34:57
Yeah, definitely.

Bill Gasiamis 34:59
And are those bad days sort of starting to get shorter and shorter? Have you become more resilient to the fatigue as time has moved?

Jen Goldman 35:11
I think, yeah. I have definitely, I think so.

Bill Gasiamis 35:15
So your mum has taken notes. She’s diarised this event, and she’s reading back that stuff to you. What? What’s it like hearing that information back from her? How do you How are you taking it?

Jen Goldman 35:31
I was so disturbed by what my family had experienced, and the fact they were so traumatized was really upsetting for me. I could not understand how they’ve been so traumatized, and I wanted to turn it into a book, and so we did.

Bill Gasiamis 35:51
But she’s reading it back to you in stages, like, in the whole savings, in sessions, like, how are you receiving it? How does it make you feel when you hear that they’ve been traumatized. How are you responding?

Jen Goldman 36:04
I was very upset. I was crying. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was so painful to me to be able to hear that. I also, like, didn’t really believe it, like, I didn’t really it was so like, hard for me to comprehend that had actually been real. And I had been like conscious for that understand that that had happened, and I had experienced that, and that they had experienced it all.

Bill Gasiamis 36:32
And it’s you, Mom and Dad, your sister is this, others in the family, in the direct family?

Jen Goldman 36:41
My boyfriend at the time Mikey.

Bill Gasiamis 36:48
And Karen, are you at just a general note taker? Is it something that you did to help you process what was going on, what was the purpose of this?

Karen Hersh Lifer 37:04
So, I mean, I’ve always, I love to write. I’m not leaving my day job, but I actually did write a book before this. And so for me, writing helps me process. And I knew that this was so traumatic I was going to have to figure out what, what happened here. And so I just, you know, just taking notes from of all sorts of different things, sitting in the waiting room and hearing there’s like a family room, and hearing the remarks of other families dealing with this crisis.

Karen Hersh Lifer 38:04
And you know one woman, you know a mom with her kids and saying, oh my god, who’s going to run the business? And so it was the kinds of issues that people around us were dealing with were, they were just so profound and so things like that. Here I am, and I’m dealing with my own issues, and yet it’s like almost being in like some kind of, like holy space, like taking in this information and being respectful of what each of the families, you know, was was going through, so stuff like that.

Karen Hersh Lifer 38:53
Or, you know, one day we come in, and every night when Jen was in the ICU, was a bad night, because we didn’t know if she was going to survive the night. And we come in in the morning, and the the head resident, the head attending of the ICU, said we had some excitement last night. And I, I said, Oh, wow, something good happened.

Karen Hersh Lifer 39:22
And he all of a sudden, looked, he had this horrific look crossed his face, and he said, excitement is never good in ICU, but, you know, but So again, going to how doctors, you know, interact. How do they navigate these types of medical issues where a 31 year old could be dead? You know, they’re like, she’s hanging on by a thread.

Bill Gasiamis 39:53
It’s exciting to them, but it’s probably not the type of information they need to pass on to the family. They could maybe keep to themselves.

Karen Hersh Lifer 40:01
So there were things like that in the waiting room. You know? There was the sign that basically said, miracles happen every day. And I looked at that sign and it terrified me, because it’s like, is that where we are at we need a miracle. And it was just like, you know, I mean, the sign is benign, okay, but when you’re in that space.

Bill Gasiamis 40:32
You create a context for it. And then it could mean whatever your experience is. At that time, we were in a waiting room a few months ago last year when my father in law was passed away. He was in an induced COVID For seven days, and then we’re in the we know that he’s going to go and we are there with him every day, and in that family room, it’s the same thing for every other family that’s in there.

Bill Gasiamis 41:05
And that was a really strange experience to be in another room with whole bunch of strangers who are waiting for their loved one in the next bed, or they’ll bed down the thing to to pass, and the interactions we were having about stuff, and it’s so strange. And everyone’s trying to go about business as normal or usual, or some kind of trying to kind of get through it. And then there’s a guy next door, in every bed, just on nearly on the way out. It’s so weird.

Karen Hersh Lifer 41:43
It’s sort of like this tension between, like, the irregularity, the, you know, the act that some of the process that somebody near you is dying and their families near you, but at the same time, what are we going to have to eat from the dining room downstairs, which is like the 10th night we’ve been eating from the dining room. It’s like, Oh my God. And so it’s like, in one moment, you know you’re dealing with this realm of issues. And you’re not alone. The people around you are dealing with this realm of issues.

Bill Gasiamis 42:30
And the mundane at the same time.

Karen Hersh Lifer 42:33
Yeah. And it’s like, how do you deal with it?

Bill Gasiamis 42:41
I don’t know how you deal with it. It’s a weird thing. Doctors are pretty cool for being able to deal with it on a regular basis. So you guys then decided that you’re going to tell the story in a broader scale, and you want you decided that you’re going to write a book. By any chance. Do you have a copy of the book there?

Karen Hersh Lifer 42:58
Yeah, let me grab it.

Bill Gasiamis 43:01
I’d love to have a quick look at it. I’ve got the PDF here, and I’m looking at, I’m looking at the cover. It’s one of the most prettiest covers I’ve ever seen on a book.

Jen Goldman 43:12
Thank you. We created it ourselves. We designed it.

Bill Gasiamis 43:19
It’s beautiful. So tell me a little bit about the book. What it’s intent? What does it tell?

Jen Goldman 43:27
It basically tells my stroke and how we came together as a family, to navigate it, and what we learned along the way, like resilience, and how to have hope, and how to be present, and the power of family and community, and how to adapt to change, and the power of positivity.

Bill Gasiamis 43:55
Yeah, you’ve called it In The Face of Catastrophe: How a Traumatic Brain Injury Became a Blessing. So I know there’s blessings. I’m that guy as well. I’m The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened To Me, guy I wrote that book. What are your thoughts like? Where are the blessings? What are they? Give us a little bit of an insight, because there’s a lot of people going through stroke who I actually received comments on the YouTube channel about who say it’s the worst thing that happened to them.

Bill Gasiamis 44:29
It’s terrible, it is, you know, they want to people say the most amazing and horrific things on the comments on YouTube and I don’t understand, like, I’m not sure how to bring people around, and I don’t know if it’s my job to but this type of sharing, this type of stuff, is kind of a window into our minds, our strange minds, that there’s blessings in all of this. So this is what I want. I want to open the window a little bit and let people see through, where are the blessings? How are they there?

Jen Goldman 45:06
The blessings are that I have become close with my family than I ever was before. I want to talk them now. I love them. I’m I’m aware of how much I love them. I’m really grateful for my connection with them. I’m doing like a hair of my mom, and I really feel connected to her, and I love her, and she means so much to me. That’s the blessing in all this, is recognizing how the gratitude I have for the people in my life.

Jen Goldman 45:35
That’s the first blessing. The second blessing is that it’s a miracle that I’m alive. It’s a miracle that I’m alive. And I really reconnect that miracle every day, every time I take a breath, every time I open my eyes, it’s a miracle that I’m doing that.

Bill Gasiamis 45:56
Yeah, they’re pretty cool blessings in amongst all of that, you’re dealing with, all the other things that we spoke about, that your body not working the way that it was, your cognition, not being the way that it was, your lifestyle, not the way that it was. Doesn’t that cloud those blessings, or are they completely separate and different things? One is something that you have to overcome. It’s a challenge, and the other one is something that’s a gratitude experience or practice.

Jen Goldman 46:28
I practice acceptance for the things I can’t control. I surrender every day. It’s really difficult, but I have to what are my other choice? What’s my other choice? I’m not going to give up. I can’t give up. I never will give up. The only thing you do is push through every day, and I do that every day.

Bill Gasiamis 46:49
What’s interesting as well is you said that you’re more connected to your family. You’re aware of how much you love them, etc. Before were you just going through the motions? Did you not know that you really love them.

Jen Goldman 47:02
I took them for granted. I took things for granted, and the people in my life for granted. I didn’t realize what I had, and now I do.

Karen Hersh Lifer 47:16
You know, it’s also, what is connection and and what is presence? And you know, for, you know, there’s this part. The very last entry in the book is called hineni, which is a word from the Old Testament, and it means I am here. I am present. And the point of that last entry is that through everything, I look back at that first year as a gift and a blessing, because I had the ability to spend time with Jen, especially being completely present with her.

Jen Goldman 48:14
Yeah, and nothing in that time. There was no filters between us. We’re just so raw and real and connects to each other, and you can’t, that’s just really impossible to like to unfabricate that time. You would never get that experience if you didn’t have to.

Karen Hersh Lifer 48:34
You know, it’s interesting, because when my mother in law passed away, we were very close to her, and I spent some time with her, and we all spent time with her when she was in hospice, and we knew she was passing, and the conversation was real, like about life, what a time to be us at that point, right?

Karen Hersh Lifer 49:08
We’re, talking about you know, Papa, her husband, you know, and telling stories about how you know, things that had gone on and but it’s, it’s like, it’s so intense and so connected that is sacred and sacred, right? Time is sacred, yeah, and I agree. We actually so the blessing me was the sanctity of that time that we got to spend with each other.

Bill Gasiamis 49:50
It’s very much a gift. I’m of the same mind with in law, we had Monday to. Saturday with him, and the girls were there pretty much the whole time, in and out, different shifts. We all made sure that we’re in there as much as possible. And that’s the interesting thing. Even though they knew he was passing, they were able to say that the days that they spent with him were really precious, and that it made it I’m not sure if the word’s better. I might be not speaking how they would describe it, but it made it a little better.

Bill Gasiamis 50:26
The whole situation and even the eventual outcome seemed to they were able to give, you know, some thoughts, and they were able to share some things with him, even though he wasn’t responding, and they were able to have a conversation with him. And in the room, we were chatting about past things and all that type of stuff, memories, etcetera. And it was a lovely and difficult time, all at the same time, all the emotions.

Bill Gasiamis 50:54
So I hear what you’re saying, especially now that you’re quite some time out of that acute phase, and you get to experience that blessing more regularly, and you’re able to aware of it more often, and you’re able to really appreciate it and take it to heart. That’s kind of what I get with the kids when I see them, when they pop back into the house after they’ve been busy for two weeks I haven’t seen them, and it’s like, wow, this is really cool. You know, I get to hang out with my boys with their mum at the same time.

Bill Gasiamis 51:32
And it’s really the the thing that I appreciate the most in life. If I’m going to hang out with anybody, I want to hang out with them as much as I can without being too a dad you know, who just over, over, enters their life, you know, all the time, and crowds them and all that type of thing. In the book, you’ve got 10 chapters, it goes through basically the whole event until the end, which is the end of the book, not the end of the journey or the story the Epilog onward and upward, but at chapter eight, you talk about the seizures. Is that something you still experience?

Jen Goldman 52:16
No, thankfully, I’ve had them under control for two and a half years now, thank God I’m on the right combination of medicines, and that was what I had to do to to make them stop.

Bill Gasiamis 52:31
Do they know why the seizures occur? I have an understanding that for some people, it’s because of scar tissue that develops on the brain. Yeah, tell me a little bit about that. What is behind the seizures?

Jen Goldman 52:44
The scar tissue? That’s what the scar tissue.

Bill Gasiamis 52:49
And does it somehow interfere with the way that the neurons fire and the way that the brain communicates to it? Okay, yeah, and medication is just able to settle that down completely, get rid of them. How did how much has it worked?

Jen Goldman 53:06
It’s worked completely. I’ve not had a seizure in two and a half years. Thank God, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 53:11
And what were the seizures like to experience? Were they violent, or were they kind of, sort of, did you know that they were happening and they were coming on?

Jen Goldman 53:19
No, they complicate. Came out of the blue completely. They would come out without any warning. Um, I would be unconscious when it happened, and I would wake back up with a headache.

Bill Gasiamis 53:43
What was it like to re experience, your daughter going into that stage, Karen?

Karen Hersh Lifer 53:50
It was, it was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. And especially because when she came out of it, she you it she her cognition was, again, had decreased, and so she had her seizures came like six months after her stroke, yeah, and it was just, we were just getting to the point where writing together, you know, we’re working on things, things are and it was just, oh my god, you know. Then there’s back down to, you know, and then to try to sort of rebuild that.

Bill Gasiamis 54:35
So you seem to talk about it with quite some ease. I know it’s a difficult conversation. Does it re traumatize you when you discuss it? Or have you been able to reflect on it as an event, as something that’s in the past? How do you you guys experience it when you talk about it? I know some people get triggered, especially by anniversaries and by having the conversation, I’ve been talking about what happened to me for the best part of 13 years now, and I talk about it like it’s a memory in the past, something that happened almost not even to myself. What’s it like for you?

Karen Hersh Lifer 55:16
You know, I actually did some trauma therapy work around it, and I was able to process it in that in that way, through this therapeutic technique called EMDR, mm hmm, which is eye movement desensitization. And so for me, I, you know, I even if I go back and think about the scene in the store when I saw Jen and she, you know, as I tell it to you, now I see it, but it does not trigger me. It does not terrify me. It feels distant.

Bill Gasiamis 56:15
Yeah, that’s good. That’s the point of it, right? That’s dealing with it, talking about it makes it feel like an event that happened in the past, and you’re not bringing it to the future and re-traumatizing yourself every time you talk about it. And that’s I asked that, because for people who are watching and listening, who perhaps aren’t at that stage yet and are challenged by that, the thing that got me there was therapy, was counseling, like heaps of counseling, so that I could just express it, and what’s the word like, just get it out.

Bill Gasiamis 56:51
Process it, and then as a result of that, it became a story, rather than another experience that I was having. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And then Jen, your first entries into the book. How did they come about? Well, actually, it was your mom’s writing at the beginning. It was just about whatever she was going through and processing as well. And then how did you start interacting and becoming a part of that kind of first manuscript.

Jen Goldman 57:27
I spoke to her about what I wanted to write, and she would physically write it for me, and we would process it together. And it was actually really beautiful experience having that time with your mom. Yeah, was very joyful. I loved it.

Karen Hersh Lifer 57:43
It was it was so cool. It was really cool.

Bill Gasiamis 57:49
You guys been through a lot. I totally get it right. This is so cool to see you both doing this together and kind of transforming it further from something you wouldn’t wish upon anybody to then becoming, you know, this thing, this beautiful thing, a book that you get to share, hopefully people will be able to pick it up, read it, connect with it, learn from it, grow from it, heal with it.

Bill Gasiamis 58:19
It sounds like it’s going to be that type of book, like, it’ll it’s going to give people, I suppose, what’s the word? It’s going to give them permission to also find the blessings in their own trauma or journey.

Jen Goldman 58:34
We hope it does, yeah, yeah. We hope it’s a guide for people navigating trauma and catastrophes of their own.

Bill Gasiamis 58:41
How long did it take to go from that first manuscript to the book in the end? How long did it take you guys to get it completed?

Karen Hersh Lifer 58:49
It was pretty quick. I mean, we wrote it in maybe six months or so, yeah, and you know, when we wrote it, it was like, I knew this is really a great book, you know? And so try to go the traditional route of finding an agent to get us a publisher.

Karen Hersh Lifer 59:17
And that was tough. And so eventually we found a publisher that does hybrid publishing called Greenleaf. And there, there are handful of publishers that do hybrid publishing. But Greenleaf was, for us, our first choice, just because we thought it would help us produce the best product. And so we submitted the manuscript, and they wrote back and said, we’re going to do this, we accept this.

Bill Gasiamis 59:56
And what’s hybrid Publishing?

Karen Hersh Lifer 59:59
Hybrid publishing. So, literally there’s three types of publishing, really. So there’s, there’s print on demand, self publishing, where you, you know, you basically somebody might buy the book. There’s no hard copies like this sitting around. They’re not going to be in a bookstore or on a a library shelf there.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:27
That’s my version. Yep, that’s how I do mine. Yep.

Karen Hersh Lifer 1:00:31
Okay, so that’s print on demand, and, and, and. So the other extreme is where you get an agent and they find a publisher, and they pick up everything for you, all the costs. And then hybrid publishing is where you find a publisher who will accept your work, your manuscript, and then you contribute to the cost of producing it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:00
Okay, so then there’s a couple of different options. I wanted to mention that so the people watching and listening who are perhaps thinking about writing their own book, which I highly, highly encourage them to do, know the different options. Can you show us the Book One more time, and then can you tell us where people can go and find it. Mention your website. I know it’s available on Amazon. It’s a gorgeous it’s such a gorgeous book cover.

Karen Hersh Lifer 1:01:30
Thank you. We created that ourselves. We designed it ourselves. So basically, the book is available anywhere books are sold. So Amazon, although you guys are in Australia, so you, you might have to, yeah, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, I don’t know if you have access to.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:00
You know what it is, Amazon, have a print facility in Australia, near where I live. So local people who live locally, New Zealand or in the southern hemisphere near us will be able to order it on Amazon, and they’ll get it delivered. And then for people overseas, I know that there is a print facility in the United Kingdom, and there’s one in the United States. I’m not sure if there’s one other in Europe somewhere. So between the four of them, you order one, and the books come printed one at a time, direct from the print facility. It’s fantastic.

Karen Hersh Lifer 1:02:39
And so the website is inthefaceofcatastrophe.com. And Jen’s on a lot of social media.

Jen Goldman 1:02:52
@jenniferrosegoldman.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:53
Yeah. I’ll have all the links in the show notes, I’ll make sure people can find it. I really want to thank you guys for being on the podcast, sharing your story. Congratulations on your journey so far. I mean, it’s just fabulous. You guys have done a tremendous job, and I look forward to hearing about further successes and stories in the future. Reach out anytime. Thank you for being on the show.

Karen Hersh Lifer 1:03:24
Thank you so much, Bill. We really appreciate it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:27
Some episodes sit with you long after the mic turns off. This was one of them for me, Jen’s strength doesn’t shout, it radiates. And Karen’s presence, the way she documented their trauma to help others is a reminder that healing often begins without being seen and being heard. If this conversation moved you or reminded you of someone you love, share it. Let them know they’re not alone.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:53
If you want to go deeper my book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, is at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. You can also support this podcast via YouTube, super thanks, or join the community on Patreon. Thanks again for showing up for this podcast and for your own recovery. We’ll see you in the next one.

Intro 1:04:14
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