Living with Dissociative Amnesia has brought many challenges, but amidst these challenges, there have been small blessings that my loving husband has given me. His thoughtful gestures, like buying me beautiful journals and nice pens over the years to help me keep track of my memories, have been a true blessing in my life. He also takes me to places that bring back good memories, offering me a sense of comfort and connection to my past.

For the first part of my of my 41 years of life, I was told that I had both ADD and ASD. I leaned more towards the Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis because of my dyslexia, but my frequent and extreme memory loss didn’t quite fit into those diagnoses. This perplexed many doctors in Georgia. It wasn’t until 2018, after the tragic death of my sister due to an overdose, that I began to notice something was very wrong with me.

My usual quirkiness was gone, and I lost myself in a sea of grief for years. My husband’s health situation further complicated my state of mind. For two years, I wandered aimlessly, often having no memory of my actions or what I had done. And though I knew I had done nothing wrong, as I deeply love people and animals, I couldn’t recall long periods of time.

Thus, when my husband underwent a Bone Marrow Transplant in 2020 in Manhattan, during the height of the COVID pandemic, we were both terrified. My husband was so concerned for me that he petitioned the heads of MSK to let me stay in the hospital with him throughout his stay. During this period, counselors and psychiatric staff were assigned to me to help figure out what was happening. It was then that I learned I had Dissociative Amnesia, a condition that had likely been present for most of my life due to some incident in my youth that I don’t remember, or maybe even a personality flaw that I might have inherited from my father’s own traumatic experiences in Vietnam. Which has also been known to happen to children of parents who served in wars. But while I am certain it was nothing severe, my brain must have thought otherwise. So, this is me. This is my life, my story.

And while I ask for no pity from anyone. Whatever happened is now forgiven and well in the past. I merely wish to bring to light the problem of Dissociative Amnesia that is a ever present part of my daily life, and while it can be a problem in some small ways, I find it can also be a small blessing. As it enables me to love people more deeply and live in the moment.

That being said, I am excited to share a photo of my new Peter Pauper Press Journal and my Bruno Visconti refillable pen. These tools will help me keep track of my day-to-day tasks and are a source of joy.

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For more information on Dissociative Amnesia, you can visit this link.

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