Author lost much, but gained more
Dhahan was blinded and left in a coma by two bullets. Now her mission is to inspire
A decade after two bullets to the brain nearly ended her life and left her completely blind, a Surrey woman is determined to help others see that in every darkness, there can be light.
Gurjeet Dhahan is the author of a new book called Upbeat Snippets that she hopes will inspire others. The book features snippets of thoughts that read like meditations of encouragement.
“Stop feeling your life cannot go forward. Stop feeling your life cannot change … Don’t give up,” she writes.
Dhahan hopes the book will help others cope with life’s unexpected challenges — even deeply traumatic events like the one that changed her life when, at the age of 39, her husband shot her in the head and then killed himself.
In 2006, after 18 years in an arranged marriage marred by verbal and emotional abuse, Dhahan, a mother of two, separated from her husband. Her career with Fraser Health Authority was solid. She was ready to strike out on her own.
But after dropping her daughter off for a custodial visit, her husband jumped into her car and put a gun to her head. He shot her twice before turning the gun on himself.
“The way arranged marriages worked in those days, couples were introduced by somebody else, they didn’t really know each other,” Dhahan says.
Although there were red flags, she says she felt a cultural sense of duty to try to make the marriage work. “Some women can’t stand up for themselves, and I was one of them.”
Dhahan stands up for herself today: She is clear she doesn’t want to carry the name of the man who shot her at point-blank range. One bullet went straight through her brain, while the other completely severed her optic nerves.
After numerous surgeries, physicians told Dhahan’s family she was brain-dead, and advised them to remove her from the ventilator. They reluctantly agreed.
“But I just kept breathing,” Dhahan says.
When she emerged from a coma
after nine weeks, she had the mental capacity of a two-year-old. “I wanted my teddy bear. I was asking for my mom and dad,” Dhahan says.
But she was alive, and she was a fighter. As she struggled to learn to walk and talk again, Dhahan was walloped with excruciating pain and the terrifying realization she was in complete darkness.
“It was really difficult being blind,” she says. “It was horrific. I couldn’t pick up a spoon. I didn’t know where the fork was. I would go to pick up a glass of water, it would tip.”
It took time for Dhahan to accept the reality that she would never return to work, she would never drive again, she couldn’t care for her children.
“You just feel there is such a loss in your life. Anybody who turns blind knows this,” she says.
And the loss wasn’t just physical, it was emotional.
“When you lose your vision,” she says, “you live in darkness. You can’t see the light. It’s not just your sight, it’s the darkness of your life.”
Dhahan’s brain injury also left her with severe chronic nerve pain and a seizure disorder. She credits her family and friends, her team of doctors and the CNIB for helping her become independent again.
“It was a lot of learning, and there were days when I had so much pain I couldn’t do anything,” she says.
Dhahan began to speak out on behalf of other victims of domestic violence, but each time she shared her story, the feelings of sadness engulfed her. She needed to step away from dwelling on the trauma and find herself again.
She began to try to write her feelings down.
“I needed to say something,” she says. “Going through something like that, it’s so emotional. You have anger toward yourself. You ask, why me?”
The early writing was very dark, she says. Physically, it was hard. Mentally, she struggled to keep her thoughts straight. Slowly it became easier.
“I started thinking that if I can do this, anybody can get through things. Now I find life completely different,” she says. “I don’t think of that anymore: the sadness, the sorrow.”
Dhahan says that although she will always be blind, she has another kind of vision.
“I can see things that nobody else can see. I see the deeper meaning,” she says.
In Upbeat Snippets, Dhahan uses some of the ordinary challenges and pleasures of everyday life, like misplacing a broom or buttering a scone, as metaphors for spiritual and emotional survival. Some are humorous, and others read like riddles or Zen koans hiding a deeper meaning.
“When a broom gets lost, how the heck am I going to find the broom?” Dhahan says. “Where am I going to look for it? That is not just about the broom, it’s about a lot of things in your life you’ve lost and you are seeking but you can’t find them. But there is always a way to find it.”
Meanwhile, Dhahan exalts the way butter spreads over a scone’s curves. “It’s about finding a point of happiness in your life, and seeing the happiness after you find it,” she says.
Dhahan hopes the book will be an opportunity to share her journey of hope, and she is planning some public speaking engagements to reach out to other trauma and brain injury survivors.
For those whose suffering is emotional, Dhahan asks: “Are you going to live in sadness and sorrow the rest of your life, or are you going to open up and let that happiness in?”
When you lose your vision, you live in darkness. You can’t see the light. It’s not just your sight, it’s the darkness of your life.