Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

2009
Original TED talk
Excerpt from book
Interview on Oprah

You don’t really need to read the book to get the message, since there are videos and interviews available and she has been on Oprah. But she does talk in some detail in the book about her mother’s tireless care of her after the stroke, which she credits for her recovery. She describes right after the stroke as being like a person with no skin, so that when she got to the hospital, the bright lights, the noise, people speaking loudly to her, were like torture. She finds especially important being allowed to sleep. Her mother defended her from visitors and intrusions, worked with her on exercises to help her recover, but then insisted that she sleep until she had regained her strength before she tried again.

Here's a mother for you!

On the third morning after the stroke, G.G. was scheduled to arrive, and Jill says everyone at the hospital was obviously excited—the buzz in the room was all about "G.G." "I'm thinking, what's a 'G.G.'?" Jill says. "I didn't even know what a mother was, much less who my mother was."

Jill says she remembers the exact moment her mother made her entrance. "I'm in bed, and G.G. peeps in around the corner of the room, and the room is filled with my doctors and my colleagues," she says. "And G.G. comes in and she walks past the doctors, she nods to them, she greets my colleagues, she walks around the bed, she picks up the sheet and she crawls in bed with me. She wraps her arms around me and she starts rocking me. And I'm thinking, 'Wow! This is what a 'G.G.' is. This is nice.'"

A Western Ph.D. neuroanatomist experiences a stroke, remains conscious throughout, remembers afterward the experience of what reality looked like and “nirvana” felt like when the left brain is silent, and then determines to recover so she can share this message with us. If you haven't. it’s worth listening!