TBI Raiders' Group Discussion

Below are three ways to start voicing your thoughts or concerns.  Please share this page.

1. Forum below

2. Go to the What Concerns You Most page

3. Go to the Our Voice Counts page

The time is NOW to stand and lead How long are you able to stand on the sidelines and just watch without deciding you need to step in and make a difference?  For me it doesn’t take much to figure out what I am going to do.  But if you see me watching and waiting, it isn’t because I can’t decide what to do but it is because I’m trying to figure out how I am going to do something that is going to be effective.  That is why since I started college back in the Fall of ‘99 up till a year ago, I had stayed somewhat silent.  I entered college with the goal of finding a way to help others like me who had sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury.  The dream of what I wanted to be changed along the way.  I went from wanting to be a therapist to being someone who wants to help the law makers make better laws to help TBI survivors.

I initially started by writing letters to law makers at the state and congressional level for Oklahoma.  In the beginning when I wrote the letters I would ask my dad to over look the letters.  He would tell me what needed to be changed AND why.  My dad helped me understand about the Armed Forces also.  You see my father is a 36 year veteran of the United States Army.  In those years he spent time in the Army, National Guard then Army Reserves.  So some of my favorite memories growing up were from when dad would come home from summer camp and he would bring home the meals.  My brothers and I would raid the cabinet and pig out on the meals we liked or the Christmas dinners that were held at the 177th Support Battalion when my dad was part of the motor pool unit.  What I took from being able to remember those things was dad and others serving this country needed a lot of respect for what they did.  And after about two years of nagging my dad I finally found out I scored in the Top 1% on the ASVAB test that I took my junior year.  After finding this out, I was fine knowing I would never being able to enlist but somehow learning this showed I was capable of being more than just the average person.  Yes I may have a severe TBI, but I wanted to find a way to be more and prove I was still capable of being something.  In the fifteen years I have been advocating, I wanted to find out more about politics and the process, what was and is being done to help TBI survivors around the nation, and what still was needing to be done.  Because I was determined to fill in the missing pieces to do what needed to be done.

Well have done all of what I needed to do.  But the missing piece of the puzzle is I need help with getting everything going!  It has been suggested to me that I should let someone take over what I’m doing so I don’t get sick so often and because I can’t do it like a non-disabled person.  Want to find a way to get on my bad side?  Tell me that.  I may need to do things different but TBI Raiders is my baby.  The events I have been working on to happen at OSU next month are way too important to me.  November 11th, from 11-1 pm will be TBI Raiders Awareness Day.  I still need to find a veteran to speak for thirty minutes.  But there will be booths for support groups that help those with TBI from both the Veteran and Civilian side as well as a booth for TBI Raiders, the Service Learning Center, and the Disability Office.  The last thirty minutes is to help build up for the next day.  It is to talk about what the speaker talked about and start the building of a platform to help those with TBI.  Then the next day I will be speaking about TBI, then there will be a financial literacy training followed by an open discussion among TBI survivors on what they feel needs to be done and what should be on the platform for Raid Oklahoma.

Then there will also be discussion about there being a national conference the summer of 2016 for Raid Oklahoma.  This would happen sometime between the Republican and Democratic Primaries.  This would to be bring the state brain injury associations together and have a solid unified voice for the election.  It would be to also see that candidates address disability issues, concerns and finally answer questions about disability issues like they need to be answered.  I have created a voicemail for TBI Raiders.  The number is 405-698-2403.  Something should have already been set up so that veterans who had sustained a TBI wouldn’t be having the trouble they are.  Something more needs to be done and I am standing here asking “Who will join me and help see that more is done?”