Street Roots • Nov. 20-26, 2015
Commentary
Page T
GREEN, from page 10
The impetus of the film has shifted since
I started.
Q fO E
Sue Zalokar: How SO?
C.G.: My emphasis with the film started
to become more about talking about
isolation in the disability community .as a
whole, but specifically the brain injury
community — and looking at the idea of
transformation.
There’s a lot of rhetoric in the TBI world
that your job after a TBI is to transform - to
regain normalcy or regain your lost skills. A
phrase you hear a lot: “the new you.” I have
come to believe that the more important
transformation is on society’s end.
For me, (the film) is more about
providing a counter narrative to this very
personal hero’s journey. You know, “Golden
boy lost it all in a tragic wreck and now
triumphs over adversity.” That’s very, very,
very common. I want to provide a counter
narrative to that by shining the spotlight on
(the fact that) we as a community are
allowing people with brain injury to become
isolated.
As a society, we refuse to talk about
suicidality and mental illness and what
happens when someone with a brain injury
has no sense of community.
The title (of the film) initially meant:
Don’t stop yourself from expressing your
creative drive. But it really, to me, has
become more about letting (people with
TBI) know they are coming into an ableist,
inaccessible world, and people are going to
try to stop them by telling them they can’t
accomplish anything anymore or by reducing
them down to an inspiration. People with
TBI don’t have to engage with that.
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Cheryl Green is onstage with Brandon Scarth, featured
m the documentary “Who Am I to Stop It.”
country. And so people are not accustomed
to dealing with people with communication
impairment, mental illness or emotional
disturbance.
I think we would have a more tolerant
society if we didn’t have so much
segregation of disabled people into special
ed (classrooms), special Olympics,
segregated special proms, group homes. All
of that makes it harder for non-disabled
people to tolerate a shift in tiie way they do
things to accommodate us. There is the
belief that it’s really our job to be more
normal o r act more normal.
S.Z.: I want to talk about the isolation, It is
S.Z.: It's been almost six years since your
a huge issue. You mentioned that in your own
bike wreck. It seems that you are pretty high on
experience, you don't have a lot of the friends
the spectrum in terms of things you are able to
you had before your injury. That really sticks
do and communicate. You're producing a film,
out to met I have a friend with a TBI, and he
. for instance. Do you have any comments about
is very odd and quirky. It is quite difficult to
the spectrum of traumatic brain injury?
maintain our friendship.
C.G.: I’m thrilled to talk about that.
Everybody just wants to talk about healing.
“Do some yoga, do some meditation, eat
coconut oil, think only positive thoughts,”
and it’s like, Blah! We need to talk about
what’s hard.
In terms of isolation, a lot of people with
TBI and then especially if you have TBI and
addiction or TBI and mental illness, anxiety
- we’re quirky in some ways that are
challenging for some people to tolerate.
What happened to me and what happens
to a lot of people is when people first start
to interact with you and you have
impairments in your communication and
your energy level is really low, you do weird
things like close your eyes a lot or cover
your ears. The big fear (for non-disabled
people) is that this person is going to be
like this forever and they don’t have the
energy to deal with that.
So a lot of people get dumped early on,
and then their impairments get better - not
everyone, but a lot of people. Some of those
things go away or they get muted or people
can override those quirks.
A lot of it comes from the segregation
that our society has always had around
disability. Segregation is universal in this
C.G.: There are a lot of myths
surrounding brain injury and recovery and
impairment. I have a degree in speech
pathology. I have that high-level training in
what this all is, but I also have my personal
experience and I have dozens and dozens
and maybe hundreds of people in my life
with brain injuries. I can tell you from both
the technical perspective and the personal
perspective, you just don’t know (what
recovery will look like).
You can’t make predictions about where
someone will be in one year or IQ years,
whether they’ll go back to work or not. You
just can’t account for how the brain heals. It
also has to do with access to resources* Can
they get Life Flighted to a trauma center, or
were they left to languish for a long time? It
matters the kind of support that you have.
Also, if you are constantly surrounded by
people who are saying you’re faking it, you
need to work harder, act normally - that can
take a toll on your mental health, and that
exacerbates brain injuries symptoms as well.
S.Z.: I'm thinking of Tracy Morgan. He is a
beloved comedian who was quirky and bizarre
before his brain injury. He's pretty transparent
about his current state of mind.
C.G.: Tracy Morgan is an exciting person
to me, in genefal. His recent sketch on
Saturday Night Live, oh my gosh! It’s so
cute* It’s not closed captioned, which I hate,
so I transcribed it and I posted it on my
Facebook page with a transcript that I made
of it because it’s just too funny to not have
access to it.
I don’t know Tracy Morgan. But I will say
- that some of the transparency is a
neurological condition where you cannot
inhibit what you want to say and you just Say
stuff regardless of whether you should be
protecting your own privacy or not. There is
always the possibility that his transparency
comes from his inability to not be
transparent.
Disinhibitiori is something I struggle with
all of the time. I’m getting much better. I
work really hard at i t But sometimes I blurt
out something that I shouldn’t have.
S.Z.: I wonder, what are we, as a society,
getting right?
C.G.: As a society, if you are white and
middle class or higher, you are going to have
a lot of things in "your favor.
If you have a supportive family and or
friend network, people who can drive you to
rehab or help you with rehab exercises
afterward. Or sit and be a friendly,
compassionate ear. If you have access to the
Internet and you can go stream brain injury
radio network, which is live-streaming radio
show where you can access the TBI support
network online forum, which is kind of like a
combination of Facebook and support group
for the TBI community. If you have access,
then our society is doing right by you. Tracy
Morgan is a rare example in that he is a
black person with TBI that we know about
I recently wrote to five speech therapists
who I know in town and I asked where are
the African-American people going for
support? And where are, they going for
medical care? I don’t see them. I got a
mixed response. I find this to be incredibly
troubling.
S.Z.: Captioned films take more
concentration for my brain. How does closed
F R O M V ID E O F O O T A G E B Y PA U L IU S K O N T IIF V A «
captioning help people with TBI?
C.G.: I love that question! I’m a
professional closed captioner and an angry
activist around closed captioning.
1 email people all of the time who I do
and don’t know and I tell them to closed-
caption their stuff. Every once in a while,
someone responds and usually they say,
“Oh, yeah. That’s expensive.”
We know that deaf people and who are
hard of hearing can benefit from closed
captions. It also supports other people. For
people with TBI and also a lot of people on
the autism spectrum, auditory processing is
very difficult.
If there is anything that all people with
brain injury have, it’s slowed cognitive
processing.
Trying to follow a storyline that is
unfamiliar just by listening is too frickin’
hard. It is so helpful to read and listen at the
same time. It really supports your memory.
It supports you being able to pay attention.
It supports you not getting lost in w hat'
they’re saying - especially if they are boring
or they talk too fast
S.Z.: “Who Am I To Stop It” focuses on the
combination of art and disability. What is the
significance of this?
C.G.: In terms of disability, there are a lot
of cases where people are willing to engage
in art made by disabled people in a way that
they are not willing to engage with the
person themselves.
“Who Am I To Stop It” is showing the art
of each person, but also their art-making
(process). It not only gives something for
the community to connect with, but also the
people who are making the art are also
connecting more with themselves.
It’s that moment when they aren’t talking
about self-doubt and internalized stigma.
When they are creating their art, they are
people with agency, and decision-making
(skills) and Creativity and drive. That is
something that we don’t see a lot of in brain <
injury media.
These are people who do things and
make things and connect with themselves
and with other people.