About Carole
Brain Injury Story
In June of 1999, Carole Starr was 32 years old, and living a busy life in her home state of Maine. She was building a career as an educator and spent much of her free time playing the violin in a community orchestra and singing soprano in a chorale. She loved to travel and enjoyed spending time with her family and friends.
That life ended in July of 1999, when Carole sustained a brain injury in a car accident. She struggled to cope with many symptoms, including intense mental fatigue, sound, visual and balance sensitivities, memory loss and executive function challenges.
Due to her injury, Carole had to give up her teaching career and her classical music hobby. She grieved the loss of her old life and her sense of self.
It took Carole many years to accept her brain injury and the new person she became. She’s built a new life by focusing on what she can do, one small step at a time.
With time, strategies and support, Carole has reinvented herself as an inspiring national keynote speaker, author of the award-winning book To Root & To Rise: Accepting Brain Injury, group leader and mentor.
Carole has been active in her local, state and national brain injury communities. In her home state of Maine, she facilitates the WINGS Brain Injury Support Group and is a member of the Brain Injury Association of America-Maine Chapter Advisory Board. For 11 years, she led Brain Injury Voices, the survivor education/advocacy/mentoring volunteer group that she and her mentor Bev Bryant founded.
Nationally, Carole is a co-chair of the Brain Injury Advisory Council, a survivor group within the Brain Injury Association of America. She is also the co-creator of Get on Board, a training and mentoring program to help survivors get involved in the brain injury community and use their stories to make a difference. Carole co-led the TBI Advisory and Leadership Group, a survivor group within the Administration for Community Living's TBI Technical Assistance and Resource Center and was also a faculty member for the Person-Centered Brain Injury Learning Collaborative.
As a keynote speaker, author, mentor and group leader, Carole has found a new way to be a teacher, a way that honors the daily brain injury symptoms she still copes with. Her life is once again full of meaning and purpose. She is happy, even while living with a disability.
To listen to a podcast interview of Carole talking about her brain injury journey, please click here.