After a brain injury, Bonita Rae Pafford rebuilt her life by calling stores to practise speaking

“I didn’t need a tragedy to teach me how wonderful life could be. I already knew.”

Bonita Rae Pafford had a fulfilling career in education, broadcasting and the performing arts. Then, in 2014, a car accident changed everything.

A traumatic brain injury, followed by another head injury, left her struggling with abilities she had once taken for granted. Speech, balance, memory and everyday activities became enormous challenges. She lost much of the life she had known, including her sense of identity.

She came close to giving up. What kept her going, she says, was not wanting her son to think his mother would stop fighting to get better. One day, miserable and exhausted, she decided she could not carry on as she was. She did not know whether she could improve, but she knew she had to try.

“So I started small. Really small.”

She practised speaking by calling stores. She worked on her balance and coordination. She found tiny ways to take part in life again, even when she did not feel motivated, and she began deliberately noticing the good things that still existed around her.

“Just because some things in life are terrible doesn’t mean everything is terrible,” she says.

Those small actions helped her build a different life. Today, from Grimsby, Ontario, she is the founder of the Wild Happiness Project, a speaker and a happiness strategist who creates practical programmes to help people rediscover possibility, purpose and joy.

She had wanted to write about her comeback for years, but a whole book felt overwhelming. After attending a Start Over Movement event in Toronto, run by Marco Robinson, she contributed a single chapter to an anthology.

Her advice to anyone starting again is simple. “Don’t wait until you feel ready. Don’t believe you must see the entire path before taking the first step.”

Heroic Breaking News is run by Marco Robinson, founder of the Start Over Movement.