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We with brain injury are too often told to be positive and "to forgive." By "forgive," many people mean "to reconcile" as well as forgive (though forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation). To fail to do so is seen as a deficiency in us, not a lack of understanding in the demanding person. But we don’t have to accept blame for how our brain injury and resulting grief expresses itself. Instead, we can turn the other cheek in the way this phrase meant originally 2,000 years ago. I explain more in this excerpt from my award-winning self-help book, Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief: How to Heal When You Are Alone.

Resistance Is Not Futile

Turning the other cheek means, in fact, compelling the other to treat you with respect—as an equal. It also forces them to see the lie that they are better than you.

We don’t have a non-violent cultural equivalent to this first-century gesture. But we can learn from it. We don’t have to cooperate with humiliation, infantilizing, and blame for the way our broken neurons express themselves. We can resist non-violently. Silence is a tactic I used in my tweens to resist bullies. I discovered it makes people uncomfortable.

Silence Speaks Loudly

Silence says to the humiliator they’re not worth responding to; their words and actions are too ridiculous and disrespectful to expend energy on. When they talk without listening or helping, their words aren’t........

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