Dusty Wentworth

I began posting my blogs never once thinking about readers. Writing was simply therapy—a way to make sense of life after a ruptured brain aneurysm nearly killed me, stealing my memories and identity. I’d been posting for weeks when, one day, I decided to fill out my blog profile properly. That’s when I discovered the analytics tab. Out of curiosity, I clicked to see what it measured… and I was stunned. People were actually reading what I’d written—hundreds of them! Given my cognitive difficulties, I assumed I’d misread the data. I called my wife over to double-check. She confirmed it. They were real. People were reading. It’s no exaggeration to say that, in that moment, for the first time since waking up in hospital over a year earlier, I felt a meaningful life was possible. That small group of blog readers did more for my healing than seven months in a neurological rehabilitation centre ever had. When my brain aneurysm ruptured, it shattered my life into a million pieces. ...