From Tragedy to Triumph: Journey Back From The Edge - Softcover

Jessica Elizabeth Taylor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1419698699 ISBN 13: 9781419698699

Publisher: BookSurge Publishing & New Beginnings Foundation, 2008

Synopsis

This is a truly remarkable story about Jessica Taylor, a young businesswoman who migrated to Canada from Ireland and whose life was abruptly halted by a near fatal fall at work. As she struggles to recall memories of her life as a loving wife and mother of two beautiful, young daughters, she also wages an inner war with depression and despair. Her triumphant recovery against all odds has been the subject of media coverage including TV appearances. Jessica's book and campaign work has attracted interest of many prominent people, including Royalty. With brutal honesty, she pens a series of tragic events, culminating in one of the longest court battles in Canadian history, exposing a legal system fraught with collusion and fraud. Written without self-pity, Jessica injects her narrative with wit, insight, spirituality and her own brand of hilarity. Unforgettable, all-too-human, she is a shining example of the potent force of doggedness and determination.Jessica is the daughter of the late Gordie Taylor, a Scottish actor and musician. She was a professional actress and Irish dancer during her childhood years.

About this title

About the Author:

Jessica Elizabeth Taylor is the daughter of the late Gordie Taylor, a Scottish actor and musician. She was a professional actress and an award winning Irish dancer during her childhood years. Devoid of self-pity and loaded with determination, Jessica is a warm and lovable character with whom any reader will find it easy to identify. Her story is a fantastic personal journey, as well as a journey of rehabilitation against all odds, told through her laughter and tears. Gently, not forcibly, she will change the way we view brain-injury but also the way we think about and view our own lives. A determined, focused individual, Jessica is always constantly aware of the limitations of her brain injury but merely laughs, muddles through and emerges on the other side stronger, happier and with more to share with those she tirelessly aids. She has taught others to “never limit yourself and never allow others to limit you. Focus on each new challenge and allow your spirit to clear each hurdle". 'Nothing stops this tireless woman. Leaving the dark cave of her horrific experience, she could have gone into the Light and moved on. But she stopped, turned around, saw the suffering of others then ran back into their darkness. She suffuses them with determination and with gentling hands, leads them steadily and surely into the light of a new, healing day.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

I don't recall the precise moment when I regained consciousness. I do know that I became aware of deep discomfort, of something that went far beyond the physical pain in my head, the deep throbbing headache that was my constant companion for many weeks. What I felt was something so strange and unknown that it terrified me. There was a strange feeling of dislocation and isolation, of being outside. But outside of what? Everything and everyone was alien to me.

Try, for a moment, to imagine my situation. I was out of intensive care and in a ward of six to eight people. Of course, I wasn't aware of this. I was cocooned in a little world of my own, the curtains around me creating a protective screen between myself and the noisy, but unknown, world outside. Those curtains seemed to offer me the same protective comfort as a mother's womb offers her unborn baby.

I was aware, vaguely, of other things in my world, of people moving in and out. I'm not sure I actually thought of them in human terms, but rather as disturbances, the cause of comfort or discomfort, the source of sounds and alarming visual images, none of which made any kind of sense at that very early stage. The one overriding impression that emerges from all this confusion was what I later realized to be the sound of the curtain as it was pulled back and forth. As the light had been soft and welcoming, this noise was loud and searing, causing the most unbearable sensations in my mind. It was as though all the harsh sounds became physical, as if the coarse grating edges of the rattling curtain rings actually abraded my mind.

Then my protective "womb" was ruthlessly removed. A white-clad figure appeared beside me, muttering words that were totally alien. After a moment, she began to tear back the curtain surrounding me. The noise was unbearable and seemed to last forever, blotting out everything else. Imagine the sound of hundreds of knives scraping across the surface of a hundred saucepans, and you will have some idea of what an excruciating sensory experience it was. When the noise finally released its hooked tentacles from my mind, I realized that I was now exposed! The terror that swept through me must have been reflected in my face. To this day, I can recall the intense feeling of shock and devastation. It was as though I was being forcibly dragged from one world to another, from a safe, secure one to one that was ghastly and forbidding. There was a feeling of total nakedness, absolute defenselessness.

As if my nerves had not been sufficiently jarred, I was then confronted by a vision that, in my state, filled my whole being with fear. Faces, their expressions avid and ugly, peered at me from across the room. They seemed demon-like, repulsive, and unfamiliar, yet human creatures, resembling the sort of bloodthirsty monstrosities that haunt the nightmares of restless children. Of course, I know now that these were just my fellow patients, elderly, and only interested to see who had been hiding behind the curtain. But their oldness was a concept that I could no longer grasp intellectually. It filled me with dread, a feeling that was to persist for several years after this event.

I now think of this experience as my rebirth. It was horrendous. Afterwords, I must have withdrawn into my safe world. Certainly, I cannot recall anything else, other than someone gently slapping my face and muttering yet more alien words.

To my distorted sense of passing time, the second horrific experience seemed to follow immediately, yet it was, in fact, some weeks later. Perhaps it is some measure of the trauma that these seemingly innocuous events inflicted on me that, after the first incident, it took another awful shock before I began to register .............

About this edition

• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing & New Beginnings Foundation
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1419698699
• ISBN 13: 9781419698699
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268
• Editor: Liz Roy