I was not a woman who looked traumatised. I looked capable.

A motorbike accident changed the brain I had built my life around.

In February 2019, a motorbike accident broke bones in my face, in my cheekbone in two places and left me with a brain injury I did not know I had for years to come.

Before the accident, memory was one of my strongest capacities. I could remember phone numbers, addresses, names, anything numerical; I could fit in a tough fitness regime, life administration and family responsibility in my head all at once.

After the accident, thought trails disappeared mid-sentence. I lived with severe brain fog. For several years, I could not read a book. No one understood me because I looked so capable and intelligent.

My family lived in different countries and I recovered alone. That aloneness touched something much older in me: the abandonment and rejection I had carried since childhood.

Yet I still looked functional.

That distinction — between functioning and actually being well — is one I understand intimately.

A capable woman can be in enormous pain while the outside world continues to reward how well she is coping. Is this familiar to you?

The accident stripped away some of the capacities I had used to organise my identity. I could no longer rely on being the woman who remembered everything, managed everything and kept everything moving.

I had to meet myself without some of the competence I had mistaken for self.

The mind that had carried everything finally broke under the weight.

During lockdown, relationship pressure, isolation and the unresolved impact of the accident culminated in psychosis, later diagnosed by a psychologist.

I use that word literally, not symbolically.

I did not know I was experiencing psychosis while I was inside it. I continued teaching yoga online through a mind I felt I was slowly losing.

My brain broke down in the space it needed. Then I began the slow work of rebuilding.

I eventually accepted something I had resisted: I was not going to get my old brain back exactly as it had been.

Acceptance was not resignation. It was the point from which I could finally work with reality.

Acceptance was easy once I saw my reality of never having my old brain ever again. I learned to improve what could be improved, and compensate for what had changed.

That period changed my relationship with strength. I became less interested in appearing strong and much more interested in what actually creates stability.