Today I AM OK

In his journals and poetry, Allan Bradley has recorded the hard and at times heartbreaking work of finding joy in an often harsh and punishing world. This compilation of writings is taken from notebooks and letters composed over a 10 year period, recording highs and lows, sorrows and triumphs in his struggles with clinical depression, anxiety, and mental illness. His journey is an intensely personal story of survival and spirit, and the search for wisdom. His writing gives eloquent voice to the experience of every person who longs to find meaning and grace in human suffering. Allan Bradley's message is one of hope and inspiration, and the conviction that even out of great devastation great good can come if we are willing to open our hearts and search for that goodness.

Allan Bradley is a 39 year-old man of extraordinary will and determination, broad intellectual curiosity, and a deep spiritual calling. These qualities alone make him not unlike many other young people of his generation, growing up in the America of the 1980s and 90s: shopping malls, video games, TV culture, fast food, new standards for social and financial success, new age spirituality, old-school political conservatism. The 1980s also saw a drastic reduction in the federal budget for social programs to support and care for those who were different, who could not fit the new profile of success and accomplishment. And Allan Bradley was different, born with traumatic brain injury affecting his prefrontal cortex. Damage to this part of the brain affects emotional responsiveness, including controlling impulsive, aggressive, and socially inappropriate behaviors, as well as contributing to acute episodes of clinical depression and anxiety. Conventional IQ tests of individuals with prefrontal damage and severe defects in decision making and emotional regulation often show no evidence of intellectual impairment. Allan Bradley's life has been one dominated by intense struggle, pain, and profound loss. He has survived physical and psychological abuse, juvenal group homes, homelessness, incarceration, institutionalization, and the pervasive social discrimination and isolation experienced by those who suffer from mental illness. It is in his personal journals that he has been able to express his natural thoughtfulness and intellectual insight, his honesty, humor, and creativity. It is in his writing that Allan defines and cultivates a much different life for himself, an inner life of his choosing: a life of hope, generosity, compassion, and gratitude. Through the devastation of his circumstances Allan Bradley has found a path of joy and purpose, and made a commitment to share what he has learned.