née Gattegno (Legal name change in 1993).
I am disabled, and have been since the 1994. I have a Traumatic Brain Injury, among other things. The other things are the basis of the disability. It happens I had the TBI at the same time. It cost me all my maths, which was a nuisance, as I love physics, and was fairly good at it. I have not been able to hold a 'regular' job -- problems with the lights, the noise, the overstimulation --since 1995.
I do voluntary copywriting for causes I support, and other social/political activism. That's almost as old as I am. Because disabled people are not generally rolling in cash, I do not travel much, which is a shame. I want to visit my dear friend ALFO in Sardinia, and my family in India, but I don't foresee that happening.
In order to get off public assistance, and become a productive member of society again, I am trying my hand at writing fiction. It is more difficult than I expected, given how easily and fluently I write. All that education, and nothing much to show for it, this first near-half-century.
Oh, my last ex left me very abruptly, and I had two choices: live on my Disability in Colorado, which I could have afforded to do, but I would not have been able to pay for broadband, or overseas phone calls. Or, I could up sticks and move to a suburb of Liverpool, UK, where my best friend in the world, and her family, live. If I'd stayed in CO, I'd have had to drop her. I could not do that. So, here I am in unsunny old England.
That's another reason I would like to write my way off Disability and onto the Bestseller Lists! I get wicked homesick, both for NYC, and for the Denver-Boulder area of CO, where I spent the 1985-2005.
I worry about my mother's health, too, and would like to be able to spend time in NYC. I couldn't afford to get there, never mind stay there! I am tired of being broke.
I have never enjoyed good health, myself, and 2009 saw me spending six weeks in hospital, trying to sort out all sorts of metabolic deficiencies. They are not all fixed, but I can get out of bed, and I didn't, particularly, for nearly two years, before that. I'm looking for good dental care (yeah, on the NHS, not happening), and a good psychotherapist.
As I used to be a psychotherapist, my idea of 'good' is not the average CBT shrink. I loathe CBT. It's a cop-out for people living with things like PTS. We need more than a handful of 'coping skills', and we don't ever 'just get over it'. Mental health services in the UK are... shall we say... somewhat under-resourced. Considering how little our returning veterans get, it's not surprising they don't
have resources for ordinary people.