Re: Hayden-God blesses your faithfulness.

I’m a long-time volunteer within the Peer-to-Peer support and advocacy movement for persons who experience the consequences of brain injury. I realize that this is not related to for-profit business, however, in my volunteer activities I need to “market” ideas to prospective “customers.”

Brain injury is not curable. It crosses all social constructs. Regardless of your age, skin color or which public restroom door you enter, brain injury happens. Whether you have poverty wages or six-figure income stats, brain injury does not discriminate. Regardless of your sexual preference (often, sometimes, never, gay or straight) you are a candidate. Yet most people have very little understanding regarding what it means in real terms.

The main stream media and entertainment venues have characterized brain injury and disability in a negative manner forever. These characterizations become two dimensional cartoon-like negative ideas in the back of the minds of the general population. This prejudice affects the way that most people view brain injury and any resulting disability.

Once an injury occurs, the prejudice rises up in full fury like a monstrous objection. Family and friends drift away in many cases. Spouses divorce the person injured. And the individual oftentimes rejects the person they see in the mirror, longing for some convoluted memory of their ‘former’ self. The individual’s own prejudice can lead to self-hatred and destructive living. Nevertheless, there is hope. Recovery is different for everyone. And the pace of recovery is as varied as the population.

To reach persons who might benefit from peer-to-peer support, I must overcome some very real objections that are based in fear. This is exactly the same process that every salesperson faces whether they knock on doors, use postal mailing, blog, or use any other medium to reach their target market.

I find the ideas that you share to be fresh, yet soundly rooted in solid principles that are tried and true. Though my efforts are not generating profit or even revenue for the organization, they are helping people to find the peer support that can really make a powerful impact upon their recovery. And in some small way, you are contributing to this process by helping me improve the ways that I use to reach them. So for that, I thank you publicly.

Respectfully,

John Pistorius