Healing Ground

After a childhood of compensating for a laundry list of invisible disabilities, Carly Hudson finds herself at the precipice of suicidal depression and a choice to make about her future and her health. Upon pulling herself back from the edge of destruction, Carly finds herself fueled with a desire to continue on the path of wellness and to heal herself. This determined young woman at the brink of adulthood reckons with the opposing forces of chronic frustration within her own body and the possibility of learning her way to wellness with the loving support of family, friends, doctors, and healers. Carly Hudson's life began with a heroic rescue from death's door. A case of bacterial meningitis threatened to suffocate and destroy her brain and spinal cord as an infant. Carly defied the odds and escaped with her life, but this near-fatal illness resulted in a traumatic brain injury and the physical, mental, and spiritual damage that snowballed year upon year. Though told repeatedly by the medical community that her debilitating ailments of hearing loss, movement disorders, chronic pain, and mental impairment were incurable limitations on her life, Carly became relentless in her quest to break the barriers set out for her life. The boundaries placed around her ignited her curiosity to understand not just the body but the human condition. Family values surrounding personal responsibility for one's health are the unexpected foundation of what is ultimately an intergenerational story and struggle. Carly is helped along the way by the unconventional support and wisdom of her father, who wrestles with his recovery from opioid addiction, adding a spiritual and emotional depth to the body's recovery. In poignant, parallel journeys, Carly and her father experience both the trauma of relapse and the triumph of wisdom gained in the pursuit of well-being. Amid a demanding doctoral program, Carly comes to terms with failing physical and cognitive control. Previously, mild movement disorders take hold and leave half her body nearly unresponsive and useless in the tasks necessary to complete her training. As her brain struggles with the ever-present damage from her childhood illness, Carly confronts the prospect of dashed dreams and a life out of her control. Requiring a leap of faith, Carly ultimately places all her hopes for recovery in the hands of one doctor trained in the little-known discipline of Functional Neurology. Having found success in healing her mind and body, the now young doctor and new mother faces one more undertaking of recovery: learning to embody and recognize the person she has become. Reconciling old injuries against the new demands of motherhood, Carly dives once more into the work of healing. What emerges is a person so foreign and new, with hope and possibility, that Carly ceases to recognize her own reflection. She must greet herself as a stranger and learn to love herself more dearly than she ever had before. Carly's story paints a nuanced and compassionate picture of how a life defined by disease and its debilitating aftermath becomes death by a thousand papercuts. And how that morbid existence can be transformed with the courage to question medical authority, the discipline to engage in rehabilitation, a range of healthy practices, and the vulnerability to seek help from family, friends, and healers, both traditional and unconventional. From her fraught infancy to her successful career and experience as a young mother, Carly brings the reader along on a journey to learn wellness and a personal reckoning of what makes life worth living. Healing Ground blends Carly's story with short sidebars on clinical and historical matters, shining light on questions of "what is left when conventional wisdom is no longer deemed wise." Carly's vulnerable and provocative writing invites us all to ask what we are willing to do to find the key to our own happiness.