Driving Home

Book excerpt: Driving Home is a memoir focused on a single year of the author’s life in which she and her 9-year-old daughter moved in with her dying mother, she suffered a traumatic brain injury resulting from being hit by a semi-truck, and she dealt with the reality of living hours away from her husband and their 5-year-old son. After the main events of the story are told, the implications of the experience are addressed from a variety of different perspectives, exploring the challenges and opportunities it presented. The story is seen through the lens of her identities as a daughter, a mother, a wife, a researcher, a yogi, and a part of the Jewish tradition. With both honesty and optimism, she presents her personal journey through universal themes of responsibility, loss, trauma, striving, connection, and compassion.