My Stroke of Insight

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Despite the mounting effects of the stroke, Taylor managed to call a colleague, who immediately put her into medical care. She spent about 8 years recovering from her injury, which she now considers a transformative experience. Taylor’s experience with a one-sided brain injury drives the point home. With her left brain mostly out of function by the stroke, Taylor discovered that she felt calm and totally in touch with the world. Because her right side was in charge, she was now neither scared about the present, nor fearful for the future. Fortunately, how we choose to be today is not predetermined by how we were yesterday...You and you alone choose moment by moment who and how you want to be in the world. I encourage you to pay attention to what is going on in your brain. Own your power and show up for your life.”

Oh my God, no. I’m so grateful it happened. It took away all my stress circuitry. Who doesn’t want that? My left-brain emotional system went offline, and with that went all my negative judgment. It took away all my emotional baggage from the first 30 years of my life. And it set me on a new path of possibilities. The job I had before was fantastic, and I was prospering and winning awards and having a great time. But when that was all gone, I felt this incredible sense of relief because I was no longer juggling a billion details. Probably the biggest difference between who I am today and who I used to be is that I trust the details are going to fall in place as they’re supposed to fall in place with just a little direction from me. I don’t have to go out and try to control the world, which I can’t do anyway.On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life—all within four hours­—Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover.

In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (Penguin Group, 2008), Bolte Taylor, 49, shares lessons learned from a stroke patient's perspective, including tips for doctors, nurses, caregivers, and other stroke survivors. Perhaps most surprisingly, she recalls feeling an intense sensation of inner harmony and deep connection during the stroke that has remained with her. She believes this state of awareness is available to all people if they know how to look for it.I was also so grateful that I was still alive. I made a conscious effort to stay out of my way emotionally or say, Well, I’m less than what I was. Another thing that was very helpful was that I was given years to recover. When I left the hospital after the stroke, my neurologist said to me, “We won’t know anything for a couple of years.” Because she gave me years, I felt free to sleep and take my time and not make negative judgments about myself. I think losing our mind is one of the most terrifying concepts for anybody. And the irony of a brain scientist at Harvard who loses her mind and lives to tell the tale — I think it’s just a great story of the human spirit.