The Day My Words Became a Puzzle
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The Day My Words Became a Puzzle

What happens when the words are still somewhere inside you, but the route to them has changed?

After my stroke, speaking became something entirely different.

I have read countless articles about aphasia, trying to understand exactly which type I have, and I still cannot quite identify where I fit. Perhaps because the brain, like the human being, does not always fit neatly into categories.

What I do know is that speaking tires me. When I am tired or stressed, put on the spot, interrupted, or expected to answer quickly, I can go into what I call “listen mode.”

My brain knows what I want to say. Finding the route to the words is another matter.

The best way I can describe it is to imagine that my brain had thousands of folders, with files inside each one. There was an Italian folder, an English folder and a French folder, each containing words, sounds and meanings.

Before my stroke, those folders were organised.

Afterwards, it was as though someone had thrown everything onto the floor and mixed all the files together.

I could be speaking to an Italian person and open the file labelled animal, only to find strawberry in French. Sometimes the word I needed was there, but in the wrong language. Sometimes I knew the word but could not find the sound needed to say it.

It felt like thousands of train tracks crossing each other

Then came another challenge. The muscles in my mouth had changed. I could no longer produce all the sounds I once could, my accent changed, and I didn’t recognise the voice coming out of me. For several months, I was overwhelmed.

My speech therapist started with something incredibly basic: making sounds come out of my mouth. I remember putting my hand on my throat, feeling my vocal cords, and being on the telephone listening carefully when a sound came out.

Hurdle number one: I could speak. Then began the much bigger task of finding the words again.

The Day My Words Became a Puzzle 2

Slowly, I started putting the folders back together. File by file. Piece by piece. Puzzle by puzzle.

I have always thought of life as a huge puzzle, but after my stroke it felt as though someone had taken four different puzzles and thrown all the pieces together. I hated puzzles as a child, but I loved finishing them. So, I started again.

And then, just to make things more complicated, I decided to learn Egyptian Arabic. I also discovered a new unopened folder, Spanish, I could understand it.

It reminded me that perhaps there is more inside our brains than we realise. Learning to listen. There is an unexpected gift in struggling to speak. I learnt to listen.

Not simply to words, but to voices, pauses, rhythm and what sits underneath what someone is saying. I notice when someone’s words don’t match their tone. I notice stress, hesitation and when someone is genuinely present.

I also became fascinated by the brain: neuroplasticity, different pathways, music and memory, and how the brain can adapt when something fundamental changes.

Losing some of my ability to speak made me much more attentive to communication.

And that has changed the way I think about leadership. What if we slowed down?

We work in organisations that reward speed. Quick answers. Fast decisions. Immediate reactions. We interrupt. We finish sentences. We fill silence.

  • But what if we have confused speed with intelligence?
  • What if the person who takes longer to answer is processing more deeply?
  • What if silence in a meeting isn’t uncertainty, but thought?
  • What if finishing someone’s sentence prevents us from hearing what they were actually trying to say?

My aphasia has taught me that pressure changes communication. When I am calm, words come more easily. When I am tired or stressed, the tracks cross again.

And I suspect this is true for far more people than those living with aphasia.

Creating space for someone to think is not simply kindness. It can be good leadership.

Surrender

I have learnt to surrender to my aphasia.

Not surrender to it, as in giving up, but surrender with it. I understand that this is how my brain works now. I know what helps. I breathe, wait, find another route and sometimes the word appears.

Now I am looking at my paralysis in the same way.

I want to deconstruct everything. Understand how it works. Find another pathway. Train it. Rebuild it.

And surrender.

Because perhaps healing isn’t always about getting back to who you were.

Perhaps it is about becoming deeply curious about who you are now.

The brain is not a machine that simply switches back on. It adapts, compensates, learns, and finds new routes. Sometimes what we think is lost is still there. We simply must learn a different way of finding it. So, the next time someone takes longer to answer, don’t finish their sentence. The next time someone goes quiet in a meeting, don’t immediately fill the silence. And the next time someone struggles to articulate an idea, don’t assume they don’t have one.

Give them space. Listen beyond the words. Because we never really know what is happening inside someone else’s brain.

And perhaps ask yourself: How much of what we call good communication is actually just fast communication?

My aphasia took something from me. But it also gave me something I didn’t know I needed. The ability to listen differently.

Sometimes losing your voice teaches you how to hear.

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