2 l The Trauma Porn Episode

Welp, we had to get it out of the way! Detailing the first, not very cash money, 20 months following my accident. Hear about the car bodying me, the first 14 surgeries (yes - I had two more following where this video ends), and the entire big bad sad. FINALLY we get to my spiritual intervention that sent me on the trajectory that I'm on now. How I reached positivity, a life of love, and found my newfound trust in the Universe. Oh yeah, and we're laughing during it.


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Transcript

I was frisbeed, threw glass onto asphalt, and I didn't need brain surgery at first. Like I told you guys, my head is fucking strong.

 (upbeat music)

 Almost dying taught me how to live. Being struck by a car left me in a three and a half week coma with 15 broken bones and 16 surgeries to complete, including brain surgery. However, I woke up from that coma in an even greater place than I ever foresaw for myself. How? The universe will guide you out of the darkness and into the light if you allow it. Often, spirituality comes off as too high -brow. I'm not about that. Welcome to the podcast that talks and teaches about it through the lens of humor. Together, we'll harness positive energy and use it to work with the Universe, all while giggling the entire time. Welcome to Gabriella rebranded, Win most lose some. We are back. We are doing this again.

This is the trauma porn episode. I wouldn't say I'm excited about it. I just feel like I've really thought about all these things a lot before. So when I get into it, it's going to kind of be like talking to an old friend in a sense, even though I'm talking to a camera right now. But yes, before we get into the bulk of the trauma porn episode, that part, let's start with my two things where said I was gonna give you guys a spiritual moment of the week and some sort of

recommendation. I have for you like a content recommendation. 

And today, my spiritual moment of the week occurred this past Friday. And I had two moments

this Friday where things went wrong and I have a frontal lobe injury. So when something goes wrong, even if it's something incredibly minor, a frontal lobe injury controls your executive functioning, your decision making, your speech, your, how you behave in social situations, interpersonal relationships, emotional regulation, and basically just the ability to think rationally and also read the room. So this past Friday, I had two things go wrong, back to back. So I was

leaving to go to my workout class early in the morning and I was running late. And as I was getting into my car, I noticed that I couldn't find my phone. But my phone was connected to my car, so I knew it was still with me. But normally, again, rational, it's still with me. It's somewhere in my car, drive and go to your workout class. That's how a rational person would think. But for me, my brain now automatically goes into fight or flight when something goes wrong. I've lost the ability to rationally think through things. So when something like that happens, like your phone missing, that's something that would normally cause me to have a menty b like screaming, crying, just all that kind of situations. But I actually stayed calm this time and I was like, it's connected to my car. It's with me. I'm going to be late for my workout class and I'm penalized if I'm late or if I miss it. So I was like, I'm just, I'm just going to go and I will figure it out once I get there. And when I got there, I calmly walked in, said to the instructor, I can't find my phone. It's in my car. I'm going to go look for it. I'll be back in class again, rational, but a healing brain is also obsessed with schedules and also is obsessed with abiding by the schedule. And so normally missing even two minutes of my workout class would launch me into a spiral, but I was able to just be like, "Hey, I'm going to look for my phone." And I found my phone in less than a minute. And if I had had my menty b, if I had started crying like I usually do, it would have taken me, I probably would have missed 30 minutes if not the entire workout class. I know that about me, but because I was able to calmly go through things, I think the Universe kind of rewarded me a little bit by making my phone really easy to find. So I was already riding on a high because I didn't freak out for once. 

And when I left the work out class, I have an electric vehicle, so I was going to charge my car. And right before I turned it to the car charging place, this like car swerved it in front of me and sure enough they took the last of the car chargers and it takes like 45 minutes an hour to charge my car so I was then going to have to sit there and wait until this person was done charging their car or one of the people were done charging their cars which again normally send me into a menty bbecause I have an obsession with schedules and I'd be like this is 45 minutes or an hour of my day that now I have to wait and I'm not going to get back and I'm just going to have to sit here and wait and normally I would start crying. I'm thinking about getting a car charger in my own apartment but it's taking a very long time for it to be approved. I was told it would take a short amount of time but it's now oh my god I request this in July and it's November when I'm recording this and I still don't have it So it's taking a very long time to get approved. So normally

what I would do is like cry, freak out, be texting my Mom because I always take it out on my Mom that like, see, this is all because my apartment will give me the charger and I would have never bought, but no, I just stayed calm and the Universe really rewarded me on this one. And how they rewarded me is the person who skrted in front of me, speeding by the way. And as somebody who was hit by a car, I don't like that. But the person who skrted in front of me couldn't get the charger to work. I didn't offer to help. I stayed in my car and pretended I didn't

know what was going on. They couldn't get it to work. So within five minutes, they gave up and left. I went and it worked for me in a second. and I was immediately allowed to charge my car for like a five minute delay. So that is how the Universe rewarded me two times in both those situations for not freaking out, not having a menty b be, not losing my shit, which it doesn't sound like a big thing probably to you guys, but my friends and close friends and family would know that would normally both those situations set me off. And I'm a vibrant Italian woman so when I go off from New York as well so when I go off I'm going fucking off but I was

awarded 

and then what I wanted to recommend to you guys this week it's on Netflix it's a Netflix film it's called Society of the Snow last year it was nominated for Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards it didn't win it should have won But the reason why I recommend this movie is it's based on a true story. It's based on the story of Flight 517, but a Uruguayan rugby team.

This is like a very famous story. Their plane went down in 1972 and it crashed into the Andes Mountains in Chile. It crashed on October 13th, 1972. It was a Friday, so Friday the 13th does apply here, and there were 45 people originally on the plane. It crashed. Obviously, some people died upon impact, but most did not. But they were stranded in the snow, in the mountains, with only the food and beverages on the plane. All search and rescue efforts failed. They couldn't see them. Something with the sunlight reflection on the snow, they couldn't be seen. And there were friends, there were family, there were team staff, like the coach and the team doctor, all on this flight with the team. And the team, they were young, they were kids. And they were stranded in the snow and they had no hope, so you would think. But on December 23rd, so right before Christmas, 16 of them were rescued, 16 of them toughed it out for over two months in the freezing snow in the mountains and made it back to society. They had to resort to methods of cannibalism, unfortunately of the people who died and you probably think, ‘oh, this film is extremely graphic and horrifying,’ but It's not, it's an incredibly uplifting movie. And the reason why I think it is so important is this podcast is largely about overcoming trauma and spirituality and overcoming trauma. And this movie highlights a lot of the core message that I'm trying to get across to you guys, or I hope to get across to you guys in the podcast of keeping the hope. It's a story of hope and hope is aligned with love. And the Universe wants us to align with love, not with fear. And accepting death would have been aligning with fear. But they aligned with love and 16, which I know is less than 45, but the fact that that many of them double digits made it out, stranded in the snow with no food or beverages left for over two months, that's incredible. So Society of the Snow, directed by Spanish filmmaker Jay Bayona and it's incredible so I highly recommend and also please watch it with subtitles. Watch the movie in the language it's meant to be spoken in. So much of acting is not just about your physicality is it it's about how you say lines and the emotions that come with it and a story can definitely be told when you don't understand what the people are saying. So my wish for you all is that you will watch it as it's intended to be watched in the language it's in with subtitles. That is it. 

And now we get to get into the trauma porn of the episode. I actually want to start out this episode with a tribute to Nicole Brown Simpson. Nicole Brown Simpson, for those of you who don't know, she was the ex -wife of OJ Simpson and she and Ron Goldman, her friend, were brutally murdered. She was nearly beheaded. And people often forget about Ron Goldman because the murder was so sensationalized because Nicole Brown Simpson was the ex -wife of OJ Simpson. And people thought that OJ committed the murders, that OJ murdered Nicole and Ron. He did it, he absolutely did it. OJ murdered both of them. So it was this media sensationalized crime of passion. So Ron Goldman often gets forgotten about, but he

was murdered as well. And I think it's really important to honor him. And he was murdered. He was returning Nicole Brown Simpson sunglasses that she had left at a restaurant that night. And he was returning them to her when they both were murdered by OJ. And the reason why I want to start out this episode with a tribute to Nicole and Ron, is because when I was hit by a car,

I was going back to get sunglasses that I left at a restaurant. They are on the album cover of this podcast. I still have them and my message for you all, my takeaway that I want you to take away is this. If you leave your sunglasses at a restaurant, they are gone. They belong to the Universe now. Do not go back for them. Take it from me, do not go back for the sunglasses. They're gone, they're gone. They belong to the Universe. Don't have your friend go get them. Don't try to pick them up. Don't ask the restaurant to hold them. Let the sunglasses go. 

So yes, I was going back to a restaurant to get my sunglasses. The restaurant, is right here in West Hollywood. I had dinner with my friend and current roommate Paige and I had Uber to dinner. Paige had drove so Paige drove me home and when I got home I realized that I left my sunglasses at the restaurant. They were Dior sunglasses that I'd gotten for my high school graduation so they were five years old. I definitely got in my use out of the sunglasses But the day before I had signed a lease for a new apartment, a studio in Beverly Hills, and every other pair of sunglasses I owned were it's like $10 from Amazon, and I was like, ‘oh my God, I need the one nice pair of sunglasses that I have.[ So I wanted to go back for them. Paige offered to drive me back and like a goddamn fool. I said, no, I will take myself, went back to get the sunglasses, went into the restaurant, asked them if they had the sunglasses. They said no, bitches were lying because a few days later when I was comatose, they called my Mom to tell her that they indeed did have the sunglasses. And my Mom was like, ‘thanks, I guess.’

Obviously not the main concern, but I mean, we did get the sunglasses and I did wear them and actually my return to social media to tell everyone, "Hey, I'm alive and I'm back." I was wearing the sunglasses in the picture. So yeah, the sunglasses are very, very important to me. 

I add here that I don't remember about a week or so before my accident, so everything I'm about to tell you has been told to me by witnesses and other people. I don't remember any of this. So the restaurant told me they didn't have the sunglasses. I was walking back to my

car in the wrong direction I add, which definitely plays into how my accident was meant to happen. I was walking in the entirely wrong direction and I don't remember, obviously, but I assume I was annoyed because they told me they didn't have my sunglasses and I knew that I left them there. So I just was in my annoyance walking in the wrong direction. 

I came to a crosswalk and it didn't have a stop sign. It was one of those stop when pedestrians are present crosswalks. And the car approaching stopped and waved me on to cross. And I was crossing the street. The car behind them, I guess, decided or thought that they were stopped for no reason and they must have had some place to be so they went around the car that was

stopped to let me cross didn't see me punted me and continued on their merry way which to be honest I don't quite know how they didn't see me because like for the first time in my life. I wasn't wearing all black. I was actually wearing white and light blue. I'm usually a girl who wears black. Oh my god, I'm wearing white and blue today. I just realized my shirt's white and I'm wearing light washed denim. But I wear a lot of black. But I know they didn't see me. 

I landed on the hood of the car. They took me for a little ride. I went about 60 feet, fell off the hood of the car, landed onto the asphalt. So the valet from Ysabel, the restaurant I had been at, they heard me get slam dunked. They didn't see it, they just heard it, and they looked to be like, "What the fuck happened?" And these valet, my heroes, immediately took out their phones, called 911, and videoed the car driving away because the guy was still going. The guy was continuing and in his rear view mirror he saw that they were videoing him so he stopped and pulled over and he told Valet he had no idea he hit something.

Let me paint a picture for you. I shattered this guy's windshield with the left side of my face okay. I broke my orbital floor which is the bottom bone of your eye and this eye has had four or five fucking surgeries, I think five, um, the car was totaled. The Nissan totaled me, but I totaled the car right back, okay? The car was totaled, severely dented, smashed body, all shattered, and this motherfucker had no idea he hit something. Okay, sure. But thanks to the valets fast thinking and calling 911, the ambulance was already on their way and super, super quickly. 

The people that were there at the time thought I died. I was hit at 50 miles per hour. Look up the statistics for people that live when they're hit by a car at 50 miles per hour, it doesn't exist because it's assumed that if you're hit by a car at that speed, that you die. But my head is strong as fuck. There's a video of the valet that I've seen where they're videoing the car and they also get in the video, the driver walking towards the scene. And they say in the video, you can hear the valet's voice say, "This is the car that killed the girl." And when the driver comes into view they say “you killed her you killed that girl” “this car this car killed a girl right now right now he killed a girl look oh my god” that's what everyone thought, that was their thought we were dealing with. They thought it was a death. 

First of all, I chose a great place to get hit by a car. Okay. I chose a fantastic location. The closest hospital to me, and it was really fucking close, was Cedar Sinai, which is the second best hospital in America. And definitely a lot of the reason I lived is because I went to that hospital. Not only did I have an incredible head ER doctor, Dr. Berdahl and brain surgeon,

Dr. Mamalek. I'll talk about that in a bit, um, that totally saved my life. But my, my father is a doctor and we're from Manhasset, New York, um, which is on Long Island, but I asked about a hospital in that area that worked at, that he worked at, and I said, “what happened if I had been hit here? Like what happened if the accident was here and I went to that hospital,”  and without hesitation. He said, “Oh, you would have died. Oh, you would have died” without hesitation. My location scouting, incredible. 

So I was brought to Cedar Sinai in a total of seven minutes from the time I got hit to the time I was in the ER, which definitely saved my life because I mentioned this last week in my first episode, but I partially tore an artery in my neck. I tore my carotid artery in my neck, it was partially torn. So I was losing blood really fast. So the fact that the ambulance was able to get to me so quickly definitely saved my life. And again, if I had torn that artery all the way through, I no shot I lived. I would have bled out in a very short amount of time, no shot I lived. You don't tear that artery completely and live. that just doesn't happen. 

I was almost across the street when I was hit by a car, almost, like I was fucking so close almost across the street. And for a while after my accident, I didn't want to think about the could’ve, should’ve, would’ves  because if I had just been a few seconds earlier or a few seconds later, I would have either missed the car entirely or already been across the street. So this whole thing wouldn't have happened. But in that same boat, if I had been a second later, the car would have hit me more directly, and I probably would have died. So I was meant to get hit by the car, but I was also meant to live. And it is important that in situations, no matter how traumatic and chaotic. We really take stock of where we are. Because would’ve, could’’ve, should've almost aren't all negative. There are positive ones. And as it pertains to my accident, there are a lot more positive ones than negative ones. And that's what I've chosen to focus on because energy is exponential. So focusing on the positive is going to give more of that back to me, but Also, energy is exponential, so if you focus on the negative, you're going to get more of that back to you. 

That also happened to me many times along this journey. I was focusing on the negative. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. I talk about my eye a lot. This is a needy bitch, okay?

This eye has had five surgeries. My left eye costs more than the average American home, okay? Shawty costs upwards of 700K. Like, this eye is a fucking needy bitch. So I'm gonna talk about more eye surgeries throughout, but just that, because I think it's hilarious that my left eye costs more than the average American home. But if we wanna unpack how fucked up that is, which we will definitely do in its own episode, because unpacking that, we would be here until the Chinese New Year if we took the time to unpack that. It's really fucking messed up. 

But yes, so my eye was used as a battering ram through the windshield and in that process of head banging the windshield, I also shattered my jaw and that is one of the surgeries that I would go on to have. additionally what had to sort of be immediately tended to because the jaw surgery came later. But what had to be immediately tended to was I had a titanium rod that was placed in my right tibia and fibula. 

And I did not need brain surgery at first, which is the bleed wasn't bad enough. The bleed has to be a certain magnitude to require brain surgery. And it's crazy that at first I didn't need brain surgery because people need brain surgery from a bad enough fall. I was frisbeed through glass onto asphalt and I didn't need brain surgery at first. Like I told you guys, my head is fucking strong. Like that is absolutely insane, but I didn't need brain surgery at first. 

I broke my pelvis. I broke some vertebrae in my low back. I broke six ribs, I broke my occipital condyle bone, which is, it connects, it's at the base of your skull and it connects your skull to your spine. And I thought it was two different bones, but it's actually just this one fucking major bone that's part of C1. That's the bone that had it been displaced, I would have stopped breathing, and had it broken two millimeters more, I would be a quadriplegic but shawty can still move all her limbs and shawty can still breathe just with really bad asthma that comes from the break of the six ribs because that also wound up collapsing my lung but that's neither here nor there collapsed lungs they happen to people. 

So yeah from my brain surgery you can see my cute little incision is right there my misshapen skull blah blah blah, you can see all that. I had the six ribs plated with metal. I had the metal in

my leg, I had the metal rod in my leg. I had metal put in my jaw for my broken jaw, and I have a metal plate behind my left eye. I have nine metal bones. There are 206 bones in the human body, so I am five percent metal. And that's a crazy fun fact. 

And just because I know everyone's gonna ask, no, they do not set off the metal detectors at the airport. When they put metal bones in you, they're titanium. And the titanium doesn't trigger the sensors at the airport. A lot of people have metal somewhere in their body. That's not like that uncommon in breaks. So like, y 'all, like everybody would be setting off the metal detector at the airport If they did that, I don't set off metal detectors. No. I mean, other things like my jewelry will set off metal detectors, but not the bones of my body. 

We're getting to the fun part, which is my Mom walking into the ICU. So my parents were at my childhood home in Long Island, New York, at the time of my accident. And they called my parents at Cedars Sinai and I to tell them that I was hit by a car and they needed to get the fuck out there. But all the ER told them on the phone was that I broke a few bones and had like cuts and bruises. And I didn't need brain surgery yet, so like that was not mentioned. So my Mom flew out to LA. My Dad thought he could stay back and tie up some loose ends at work before he came out here because they didn't think it was that bad. They were told cuts and broken bones. They didn't think it was going to be this massively horrible thing. They didn't tell my parents that I need a brain surgery until my Mom was already on the flight out to California. 

So my Mom self -described when she got to the, when she walked into the neuro ICU at Cedars Sinai, which is the brain injury ICU. She says that she was picturing Emily Blunt from the Devil Wears Prada. She was just picturing someone really mad and really broken. And she thought like the worst thing of all of it was going to be my mood. She thought that was going to be the worst part, was going to be the mood I was in. But she did not get that mood because I was comatose. So she did not get a bad mood from me. And when she walked into the neuro ICU, there was like this monstrosity of a damaged person. And then when she went up to the desk to be like, "Hi, I'm looking for Gabriella Tranchina, that little bitch." They just looked at the ICU and they looked at the room that I was in. And my Mom said, "God fucking damn it. Her mood

going to be so fucking bad.”

But my Mom didn't get to see that mood because, you know, I was too busy being comatose for three and a half weeks. I want to shout out my brain surgeon at Cedars Sinai, Dr. Mamalek. He is famous and world renowned for operating on the pituitary gland, which is the gland in the brain that is the size of a pea. And basically, and he's globally famous for that. When brain surgery is being done, one knick, one little slip, and so much can go wrong. The brain controls everything. So much can go wrong. Dr. Mamalek, he don't make no slip ups. He gets everything right. And he is the reason that I'm okay as I am. And you know, the reason why Cedars -Sinai has him is because Cedars Sinai is Cedars Sinai, and that's the reason why he's there. So again, I chose a great place to get hit by a car. 

Another doctor who really came through for me was my head ER doctor when I was immediately brought in, Dr. Berdahl. My ER report is over 600 pages, and my father took the time to read through the Harry Potter novel of an ER report and he was amazed and he came into my room as soon as he was done reading it and he was like ‘that ER doctor is the reason you are alive’ because he did everything in the right order and in those kind of situations there was just where there's so much to take care of and it's an emergency that It's just chaos. So

there is no like guarantee that the ER doctor is going to make sure to do everything in the right order. But Dr. Berdahl did and my Dad and I emailed him and were like, thank you so much. I haven't met him in person. My, my unconscious body met him or he met me, but I have not consciously met him. But he and Dr. Mamalek are - In addition to a lot of other things, they are both crucial in my survival. 

So the six ribs I broke, they crushed my lung. So what needed to be done is my ribs needed to be plated with metal, which is very controversial in the medical industry to plate ribs with metal. But I was on a vent and I couldn't breathe and my lung was collapsed. So they needed to be alleviated from some of the pain so they were going to plate my ribs with metal but before they could do that I contracted pneumonia and it took three rounds of antibiotics before my body finally responded and the pneumonia fucked off and my parents legitimately thought ‘oh the car

didn't kill her but the pneumonia is is going to’ which would have been the most anticlimactic end to my story if like I survived this three ton car and then pneumonia kill that just would have been the most annoying anticlimactic end and it would have been like all my friends and family had a flame of hope that was then distinguished it would have just been really mean so thank god that that didn't happen because that would have been really fucking mean 

And the last surgery I had in the hospital was the one for my occipital floor. And that surgery kept being delayed. It was delayed so many times and my Mom was so upset. And she had made it a goal of hers to not let anger into the room. 'Cause again, keep it as positive as we can. And when it was delayed for the third time she lost her shit and she was mainly mad at herself because she had finally let anger into the room but she just couldn't take looking at it anymore because my eye looked so messed up the windshield had gone into it which there's a scar on my eyelid and it's it's amazing because millimeters really helped me out again because if the windshield glass had entered my eyeball I would have lost my vision in this eye entirely and don't get me wrong the vision is a little fucked up but it's still there I still have it so that's another way that millimeters came through for me but my Mom led anger to the room she lost her shit but finally they did the eye surgery to replace my jigsaw of the eye apparently it was broken into like 87 pieces uh I don't know if that was the actual number. But they finally did that.

They put it all back together and that was my last surgery. 

Well, second of all, I have a little bit of another one, but that was the second to last surgery I had

in the hospital. And that was it. And then it was just kind of a waiting game. And we, we, I was in a coma, my family and friends, they thought I was going to be a vegetable. Again, my Dad’s a doctor and I asked him, I said, ‘given your best bet, what was going to happen to me?’ And he was like, ‘that we were going to have to make the decision to turn off your life support.’ 

The hard thing with brain injuries is that each brain injury is unique. No brain injury is like the other. So doctors don't entirely know which Which way it's gonna go they obviously have a very good understanding, but they don't entirely know We know more about outer space than we do about the brain. We know basically nothing about the brain so The question was really it was about me gaining consciousness and them observing to see like what deficits did I have like which way Was it gonna go and some days my brain showed a lot of some days and not so much. So it was just this guessing game that kept changing every day. And it's like, it was, is she going to wake up? Are we going to be able to get to see like what deficit she needs? What care she needs? Like, is she going to be able to tell us what's going on? Yes, I was. 

Um, I woke up from my coma and I want to start by saying this, waking up from a coma is not at all like the movies. Okay. It's not like you don't wake up, look glorious, be perfectly fine, immediately get proposed to like that bitch did in Bridgerton season two. That that's just not how that happens. So there's a lot of parts of the brain and other parts of the brain need to heal. So I was conscious for about a week in the hospital before I was transferred to inpatient rehab. I don't remember any of that week. I have like little dream snippets that don't make sense. Like I had a dream that I was allowed to leave the hospital for dinner. I just had to be back by bedtime. I thought one of my friends had gotten engaged and like she told us at a beach bar. I don't know where that came from, but that is something that I thought. But I don't have any concrete memories of my time in the hospital. 

The first thing that I remember, but it's still not a concrete memory, is my Mom's voice telling me I was hit by a car. Because of the short -term memory and the memory retention issues, I wouldn't remember things. Like, my Mom would leave the hospital at the end of the day to like go to sleep and she would tell me like ‘I'm gonna be back in the morning’ and then the

morning she would come back and I would have like a look of terror and horror on my face and be like ‘where were you?’ like I didn't remember that she was there the day before and that she was gonna come back in the morning I didn't remember thing so the first memory I of me being hit by car is my me coming to know that was my Mom telling me but my Mom had to tell me about six times that I was hit by a car because I kept forgetting. So my knowledge of her voice telling me I was hit, I don't know if that's time three, I don't know if that's time four. I just know

that I remember her voice telling me. 

And I remember my first thought was, ‘oh my fucking God, I hope I wasn't texting or jaywalking because like, I hope I didn't walk myself into this situation.’ And when I found out that I was crossing the street legally. I was so happy. I was like, ‘I didn't do this to myself. I didn't do this to myself.’ But the earliest full memory I had is leaving the hospital to go to inpatient rehab. And I was in a wheelchair. It took me a while to walk and a lot of physical therapy and yes, because I still had a broken pelvis at this point, I saw my broken leg, I walked in, everything was gone,

so I was still in a wheelchair, I was in a wheelchair for a while, and I remember there was a mirror in the elevator, and I remember looking in the mirror, and there were doctors around me, my Mom was around me, there was like nurses around me, and I remember looking in the mirror and looking at this person, And this person was so small. I was emaciated. 

This person was so weak. This person had casts and bandages everywhere. This person had a giant, fresh brain surgery scar and the entire front of her hair shaved off. They were in a neck brace. And I just remember thinking like, ‘holy fuck, like That is not me’ like it was me Obviously,

but but it wasn't me. That was not how Gabriella looked Gabriella never looked weak like that was That was not me but it was It was this person 

so I Found out from my parents or whoever was there exactly what was going on when I arrived to inpatient rehab I found out that I'd already had six surgeries. Not one of them was a nose job, which was a huge bummer, but I did get a boob job out of this situation. I'll talk about that in a later episode. It deserves its own mini -sode. Actually the boob job, because the boobs are a story. They're a big story. Spoiler alert. I had a breast reduction when I was 18, so it's quite a story, but didn't have a nose job. Somehow deviated my septum, but didn't get a nose job, Which whenever someone tells you that they had a deviated septum So they got a nose job because it was part of the surgery. That's not true That is not true when someone gets a nose job. They just get a nose job It is nothing to do with their deviated septum. You don't need to get surgery when you just deviate septums I would know I did it. So when someone tells you that they're fucking lying They just don't want to admit that they had this elective surgery. So now you all know that, okay? 

So I found out that all that had happened and I actually, my Mom was so worried about my mood. My mood was actually pretty okay because the brain kind of does this self preservation thing where it doesn't let you realize how bad things are while you're in them. My brain was doing this up until this last winter, winter, 2024. My brain was doing this. You don't realize how bad things are while you're in them. So I thought it was like going to be okay. I thought this was going to be like a six month thing. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I definitely didn't

think it'd be the rest of my life. I didn't think it'd be over two years of surgeries. So I was like very calm. 

I didn't even cry when I found out what had happened to me. The first time I cried was when they told me I couldn't drink for a year. I'm dead serious. That's the first of my cry was when they told me I couldn't drink for a year. I was like, I don't, I don't get espresso martinis for a year. Keep in mind I was 23 and a half. So being told that you can't drink for a year as a 23 year old is like, and also COVID had just happened. Like I was a COVID grad. So the world finally opened up in like LA finally opened in May, 2021. And I got hit by a car in October, 2021. So I like got to live my real life for like a few months. And then I was hit by a car. That was the most

annoying thing. Like I didn't like what? So that was the first time I cried.

But in in patient rehab, I did speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy. And I would continue those in outpatient therapy. And other than that inpatient rehab was just kind of really boring. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be home. I truly thought that I would heal

more at home because I could sleep. Nurses are loud at night, hospitals are loud at night. I just, I wanted my own bed. I wanted my dogs. I wanted some form of social interaction that wasn't my Mother and doctors and my Dad and my Brother came out to visit once. But like, other than that, I just didn't want to be there. 

My Dad and my Brother, I want to clarify, also came out to visit while I was comatose. I just was only conscious for when they visited for Thanksgiving while I was in the hospital. I need to give my Dad and my Brother that credit. 

But I just, I just didn't want to be there. I just really wanted to go home. And honestly, inpatient rehab was like kind of funny, it was kind of hilarious, it was just like a matrix in my mind clusterfuck. For start, I had, again, healing brains have an obsession with schedules and time, which I still have a little bit, I've just learned it's better and I've also, because I feel more and

I've also learned how to manage it. But I had this obsession with schedules and time. So I would say things like “I'm going to go to the bathroom at 3 o 'clock” and my Mom would be like “do you need to go now?” and it was like 2 .53 and I'd be like “no I will go in seven minutes at 3 o 'clock” like that was the way I worked 

and I thought I had to like get permission to do anything. There was a patio that I could go on and sit outside and we'd like to do that to get me some fresh air once in a while and I thought I could only go out on the patio at times I was allowed. And I told my Brother, or actually wrote 'cause I still couldn't talk at this point. I had my trach in and I like typed for my Brother 'cause I couldn't physically write. Also very misspelled because my fine motor skills gone and they weren't that good to begin with. ‘In the real world, you can go outside whenever you want.’ And my Brother was like, ‘you can go outside whenever you want too.’ And I was like, ‘no, I can't.’

I just kept comparing everything to like how my life was different out in the real world. And I just wanted to re go to it. Luckily, right before Christmas, I was released from the hospital or in patient rehab and I went home to New York. I was going to stay with my parents and my childhood home until we didn't know when I was gonna come back to LA but until I was deemed

ready enough to go back to LA I still had outpatient rehab to do wasn't done with that and I remember when I left the hospital I just realized things were gonna be a lot more scary than I had thought. My overstimulation was really bad. I did not have the energy to talk to people or see friends for like more than an hour. So even though I wanted to see people, I couldn't like do it really. Again, I was not able to walk more than like 10 feet. I had to rebuild everything in my body. I'm still my neck brace when I left the hospital and it was just sort of a realization like, ‘Oh shit, this might be a little bad.’ Still didn't realize how bad it was gonna be, but I was like, ‘oh God, this is gonna be really bad.’ 

So my time at home, that was very boring, not so much as in patient rehab, but I was watching all my friends continue to live their lives on social media and I was sitting on my parents' couch in a neck brace, not able to do anything. And When I first got home, we had a couple more big bad sads occur at the end of January, beginning of February 2022. 

So the first was that my hair fell out. So when the body goes through trauma, often this happens to women when they give birth, the hair can fall out. The first time I really cried for a serious reason that wasn't espresso martinis was when I realized my hair was falling out and it's because you can see death on your body and I will get more into that but it's you finally confront how much is not there anymore and you can see the cells that you can see it all dying but when women go through trauma their hair can fall out and then also anesthesia makes the hair very brittle and hair can break off and I had seven doses of anesthesia by this point because also an inpatient rehab, 

I'd one last procedure to take my trach out because normally they just kind of like, you know, do it when you're awake, but mine was stuck. So they had to put me under to take my trach out and put another trach in. It delayed me leaving inpatient rehab for so annoying, this fucking trach. And also delayed me talking and I'd never shut the fuck up. So it was really annoying. But apparently that was a thing that my parents loved about me after my injury. When I was fresh out of my coma, I didn't talk as much. 

But yeah, so my hair fell out, which that was very painful. I had a wig. I wound up getting extensions. Now this is all my real hair, but I just got my extensions for good in January. out for good, I mean, in January, 2024. I was wearing extensions for over a year. So that was the first thing that happened at that time. My hair fell out.

The other thing that happened was the plate behind my eye. I told you guys, five surgeries, the plate behind my eye got infected. And at first this lump started forming beneath my eye and my Dad came home from work one day and was like ‘holy shit like we need to get her to a doctor’ and I was like rushed in to an ocular plastic surgeon like that same night and they were you know draining the infection all of a sudden I was having an in office procedure and what started out as a normal day was now a ketamine and Xanax filled clusterfuck and they had to drain it and whole procedure. And the hope was that the infection was just in the skin, in the epidermis, and it wasn't in the actual plate. Because if it was in the actual plate, that would have to be taken out via surgery. 

The thing they don't tell you about metal bones is that metal bones, like plates, only serve the purpose of guiding your bone to heal. Once the bone has healed, the metal is not doing anything more. So like, theoretically, anyone who has a metal in their body can just like, go and get it taken out. It's just like, why would you do that? Take it from me. You don't want

more anesthesia if you don't need to have it. It's just like, it's unnecessary. 

But the hope was that when they took the plate out of my face, that my bone had healed enough so I didn't need another one back in because another one back in would have been another surgery with more anesthesia and I was already getting anesthesia to get the plate taken out, blah, blah, blah. So first they tried draining the infection. The infection came back like two days later. So they said, ‘oh, it's the plate and her plate needs to be taken out.’ 

So my going home and leaving the hospital and leaving inpatient rehab was not having anything done. It was not having any of the bad stuff done because not only was I still in outpatient rehab, but my hair fell out, the plate had to come out via surgery and it was just terrible. 

I went back to work remotely in March, 2022. The company I had worked at, ability, CEO, creator, Jay Boyer, founder, incredible, very thankful for, let me come back. But I went from having a full -time job where I was the Head of Operations to having like a very part -time remedial job where basically all I did was answer emails because I did not have brain power. And I honestly could still could not really pronounce words correctly. I was still talking the wrong way, but I just wanted to go back because I wanted something to do because being at home was so boring. 

And all I wanted to do was get back to LA because being at home was so boring, there was nothing going on and I just wanted to resume living my life. I felt like because COVID and now

this, I've been out of my life for so long and I just wanted to get back to living my life. 

I ended outpatient rehab, I graduated. Actually, no I didn't because then I graduated most parts of outpatient rehab, occupational and physical in April 2022, but I wound up continuing speech once I came back to LA. And I was basically like, I wanna go back, I can go back. And I wound up moving back to LA way earlier than I should have at the end of June, beginning of July, 2022. 

And the reason how I convinced my parents to let me go back, even though no one thought it was a good idea, was because my healing was at an all -time high physically. My healing was great physically. My deficits are mainly mental and that wasn't presenting while I was home. I could walk. I was working part -time, albeit, but that was not going to change any time soon. I was able to talk. I was working. There was no reason. I was, again, physically, I was doing really well. There was no reason on paper for me to not go back. 

So even though my parents really didn't want me to and really didn't think it was a good idea, they let me go back because I was listening to my ego and my personal timeline and my personal deadline was to be back before the 4th of July because my thought process was that I had missed Halloween because of my accident. I'd basically missed Christmas. I had spent New Year's on the couch with my parents and grandparents not able to drink champagne and Brother not able to drink champagne which is the new years when you're 23. And I was like, I'm not missing another highlight. I'm not missing the fourth of July. So I somehow convinced my parents to like, let me get back by them because that was the deadline that I created in my head. So listening to my ego, I moved back to LA then. 

And all the deficits that were masked quickly became unmasked. And the reason why that is, is it's a couple of things, but it's several things. But I don't know why we didn't think about this because in hindsight, it seems so obvious. But while I was living at home, my parents were trying to let me rest. They were trying to support me in my healing, which was necessary. So they were kind of trying to do a lot of hand holding. So I wasn't doing a ton of managing the house or managing my own life. Like I wasn't really cleaning. I wasn't really cooking. I wasn't keeping the pantry stocked and doing the grocery shopping. I wasn't managing my own life.

And when I came back to LA, I lived by myself in the studio suddenly I was responsible for everything. I had to Make sure I was eating three meals a day, which was actually very hard. I didn't make sure I was grocery shopping I didn't make sure I was working. I had to make sure I was going to all my doctor's appointments of which there were a plethora Make sure I was doing my therapy still because I still have therapies going on, speech and also neuropsychological therapy. In addition to neuropsychological exams, I was trying to maintain this part -time job

and then not only that, but I was trying to maintain a social life, which is one of the biggest things. 

And suddenly I was responsible for everything and I couldn't do it. Like again, the obsession with the Something that is a minor in life throwing off your schedule was the end of the world to me like it was just so crazy because like I Hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and a lexapro prescription and my dreams were Quickly just shattered. 

I really thought that I was gonna go back to LA and press resume on my life. I thought my life had been a pause and I was going to go back to LA and press resume, but everyone else's life had kept on going and the world had kept spinning. And when I got back to LA, I now had all these deficits in addition to all the responsibilities that come with trying to take care of your health in extreme situations. And My brain was overloaded and could not do it.

And I started having, remember how I said I was calmer than usual? Well, I was at home. When I was in LA, it was quickly revealed how emotionally sporadic I was. I would go from being on cloud nine one second to screaming and crying the other second, my mentee bees, as I told you guys about. I was dramatic. I fixated on things and fixated on things being perfect and making sure they were all perfect. 

My mother from 3 ,000 miles away was getting 30 calls from me a day at times. She had to do things like hire a task rabbit to help me put a screen protector on my iPhone because I couldn't do it myself like it was just this inability to manage my life.

And as it pertains to social life and my desperation to just press resume and be back with everyone, unfortunately, it's not uncommon for people to lose friends after a brain injury because the person that you were friends with is not the same person anymore. I'm Gabriella 2 .0, and I was trying to make her fit into Gabriella 1 .0's life, and Gabriella 1 .0 is not here anymore. The person that came back was very needy, and I was somebody who was so independent and emotionally mature, and now I was somebody who needed a lot of help with things and needed a lot of hand-holding. 

I couldn't go out, and 24 when I moved back so like obviously like and I was a little bit of a party

girl before I got hurt so That was I went out like too much if anything and then when I came back I I couldn't drink but aside from that my Hearing sensitivity and my tinnitus would get so bad in loud places and I would get so over stimulated at places like bars and things like that So it wasn't fun for me to go there, but I would still go if I was invited, but I wasn't invited a lot because I was very, very sensitive. I took everything so personally and I just wasn't the same person that came back to LA. I wasn't the person that people had become friends with. 

When I couldn't seem to get my social life back on track, like for me, the obvious thing to do was to focus on my acting career. I mean, that's part of why I wanted to get back to LA so bad. That's why I was living in LA, my acting career. I wanted to be auditioning. I had signed with my agent a week before I'd gotten hurt. So I wanted to build that relationship with my agent finally. I wanted to be auditioning. I wanted to restart my acting class, that was another thing I was so excited to get back to. They didn't let me back in when I came back. Yeah, yeah, that sucked. 

With acting, all my material or footage was old and it was of a person who looked different because by this point, I still had my fresh brain surgery scar, my hair was, it didn't look great with the extensions 'cause I still had this hair that needed to grow out, like my sort of brain

surgery hair that needed to grow out and make it blend. I had scars everywhere. I've done scar removal for over a year and a half and I've had surgeries on the side to correct the way it looks. So I look very close to how I looked before I got hurt now, but I didn't at this time. So I didn't look like my footage. I looked injured, I looked sick. So I was not necessarily someone that people wanted to hire to work in their projects. 

And I also know now that the Universe was so supporting me because I was not ready to be working full time. I was nowhere ready to be on set for 12 hours a day. I don't think I could do that now. I was so not ready, but I really wanted to get back to my acting career. And when I came back, and that wasn't really working out, that crushed me. 

And the only thing that came through for me is one time when I went to take head shots with my now new physical appearance, I met Tina Vonn. She was my photographer. And she brought me into her acting class, led by film director, filmmaker, Adam Marcus. And that class, his on -camera class was, he calls it Skeleton Crew, it was probably the only good thing that happened to me in a year and a half was getting into that acting class. That acting class was so familial and I was so held there and I was so supported and it was truly what I needed as I regot back into acting because I was not the same actor obviously. 

I had Barely any brain, remember, up until last winter, winter 2024, I didn't realize how hurt I was while I was in it. Like several months later, I'd look back and be like, "Oh my God, I was so not recovered then." So when I first started going to this acting class, I was less than a year out from my injury. So I definitely was not as healed as I was now, and I definitely did not retain a lot of my acting skills. 

I had to relearn a lot and this class was the most supportive place for me to relearn it and for me to feel comfortable as an actor again and this class it was on Wednesday nights and it was truly like the only good thing of my week and it was like the only time I was sure I would hang out with friends and it was the only time I was sure around I'd be around people and the only time I kind of felt normal. And I kind of felt like I was doing something that, uh, Gabriella 1 .0 would do. 

And also to be clear, because I, I did talk about how I lost a lot of friends, but to be clear the friends who have stood by me through this accent, because many did, most of them are New York and I'm in LA, but many did. When you go through hard times, you find out who people really are and I definitely saw that. Why am I gonna cry? I definitely saw that in the friends that I lost but the friends that stayed I found out who they really are and the way that they were there for me that they've still there for me is just I've become so much closer to people than I was before I got hurt and I don't think I would be had it not been my accident, and I kind of don't want to list names because I'm scared I'll forget someone and they'll be upset. But I had so many friends do so much for my family and so much for me throughout all this. I had instances where my friends saw me have the worst panic attacks, the worst menty b’s as I've talked about, multiple of them and they haven't judged me for them. 

I also had friends stopping friends with me because they witnessed one of those, but the friends who have seen them or seen multiple and only helped me through it and only supported me through it. Like, sorry, I'm getting emotional. It's just, it's y 'all know who you are. And, um, I had a lot of friends stay with me and they absolutely in all of this bad they were there just so happens that a lot of them are in New York and also when I moved back to LA a lot of my friends had moved out of LA either while I was her or shortly thereafter once I came back and a lot of these friends that moved shortly after I came back happened to be of those types of friends that were so there for me. They weren't bad friends. They were, my ride or dies and they left. But no, they're so, they didn't leave leave. They left Los Angeles. They didn't leave Gabriella. Whew, okay.

So acting class, that acting class was like kind of the only good thing I had going for me for a year and a half. And as I approached the first year anniversary of my accident, I had thought in my head that all this would be over at a year. That's kind of how doctors make it seem like to you. They kind of make it seem like it's all one year. One year of not drinking. One year for the bulk of healing. One year, one year, one year. And I fixate on things as I've told you guys about. So I was fixated on one year. And I kind of thought it was all going to end at one year. One year till I got my friends back. One year till I pressed resume on my life. One year till I could be normal because I really thought that like once I could like sort of go out again that I would get all the friends I lost back because a lot of my friends were those going out type friends 

but there was no magic switch flipped at one year. Yeah I could have a little alcohol there's still restrictions on it but that didn't take away the hearing sensitivity, it didn't take away the tinnitus, it didn't take away the overstimulation, it didn't take away the fact that I still had multiple surgeries left, it didn't take away the problems with my emotions, it didn't take away the fight or flight and yeah one year came and everything was The same, the same as Gabriella 2 .0 was, but not the same as Gabriella 1 .0 was. 

And I was obsessed with trying to get back everything I'd lost. I was obsessed with trying to make Gabriella 2 .0 fit into Gabriella 1 .0's life. And obviously that was not gonna happen, but I hadn't accepted that yet. I had not accepted that I was never going to fully be myself or fully have the same life again. I hadn't accept that and I didn't want to accept that. I did not want to accept that. 

And as I approached one year, I went to a Reiki healing session with someone that I know from around my hometown, Tina Conroy in Long Island, New York. And I went to a Reiki healing session with her her and I wasn't spiritual at this point, but I went to a Reiki healing session because I just needed something to believe in and I was approaching one year and I was like, things keep getting worse. I want it all to stop. Bad keeps following me. I thought something was following me around since I'd gotten hurt. I was like, I just want it all to stop and I basically had

a breakdown when I went to my session with her and she recommended to me that I read "The Universe Has Her Back" by Gabrielle Bernstein, which I told you guys about

in the last episode.

So I read that book and I sort of had a pseudo spiritual, as I called it, failed spiritual beginning. And the main reason why I read this book is I needed something to believe in. I needed something to make me think it was all gonna all be okay. Because I at first thought, I thought about the law of averages, right? And when everything first happened, I was like, "Oh, I have this really bad thing happen. So now things are going to start to get really good when I go back." And I kind of thought good things would just happen. That isn't the case. But then no good things were just happening. So I was like, "Excuse me, so what was all this bad for?" And

I needed something to believe in. 

So I went to the session with her, she suggested I read this book and I read this book desperate to connect with the Universe because I needed to know something was there to support me because I didn't feel supported at any capacity in my life. So I read this book and I went about it the wrong way because my intentions were still to try to make Gabriella 2 .0 go back into Gabriella 1 .0's life. 

So when I first read the book and I had my failed spiritual beginning, I was still focusing on the what, which basically means I was listening to my ego because I was focused on, I want these things. And I thought if I read the book, I would basically get the Universe like to work for me.

and I would basically just tell it what I wanted and like say my affirmations, I meditate once a day and the universe would just like give it to me. But that's not how working with the Universe works. 

The Universe gives you what you need, not what  you want. If you think you know what's best for you, like I did, you're listening to your own ego, which is what I was doing. Obviously I didn't know what was best for me. I moved back to LA before I was ready, as I just broken down for you guys. I obviously didn't know the what's I needed. So my ‘what's’ that I was telling the Universe,’ oh, I need this now. This will make me what I want to be.’ That's not going to work. Working with the universe requires focusing on the feeling, not focusing on the what. It requires focusing on how you want to feel. And for me, what I wanted was my acting career. And I wasn't focused on feeling productive.I wasn't focused on feeling happy. I wasn't focused on feeling efficient. That's not what I was asking for. 

I was asking for very specific things. I had decided that I needed a manager in order to continue with my acting career. I thought that that was the answer for me to continue on successfully. A manager works closer with you than an agent, and I thought after what I'd been through, because I had all these limitations now, I needed a manager. I thought now that I've read this book and I know all these things, I know what to ask the Universe for and it will give me a

manager, and I know how to ask the Universe to give me a manager. 

I took this class about how to get a manager that had an incredibly high success rate, and just after I hit the one -year mark of my accident anniversary, October 17th, and I was ready to go. I enrolled in this class and I thought it was going to be great. I was going to stay home from Thanksgiving through the new year in New York because I was going to have surgery number three on this eye after Thanksgiving, and this surgery was to try to make it look a little better without putting the plate back in. So I said, "I'm going to stay home after Thanksgiving, do the

surgery right after." 

And in this class, they helped me get materials by, they had me do lots of self -tapes and make it seem like they were auditions, so we could see how I was presently acting. So we gathered all my materials. My materials were all curated for me. They told me which I should use, which I shouldn't use. They helped us. We learned how to write our emails for our cold reachouts. A very specific way that was going to show to get attention worked on how to make this, what to make the subject line of the email to get when I was going to cold reach out to managers to like get them to open my stuff. I learned all these things. I made a list of the managers I wanted to call to reach out to and like what shows they had clients cast on that I thought I fit tonally and that was all approved. And we worked on curating that and I was all ready to go. And the ideal time to reach out to them was mid -December. 

So I thought Thanksgiving, have surgery, recover, reach out to them mid -December. And I would take all my meetings with them in January beginning of January that's what I thought but again that was all dependent on everything going entirely perfectly that was all dependent on one two three but it was all dependent on everything falling straight into a row and do you think that happened? like we already know where the story is going - do you think

that happened? No. 

What instead happened was I had Thanksgiving. That was nice at least. Went in for my surgery and it was brain surgery scar removal in addition to making this eye look more normal. And we were going to do an in -office procedure to again avoid anesthesia because we know what that does to me. So we were doing an in -office procedure. So again, a lot of ketamine, a lot of Xanax, and basically what was going to happen is I was gonna lie there while they stitched

out my brain surgery car and like made my eye look more normal. And the goal was that even though I wasn't on anesthesia, if I was on enough ketamine and enough Xanax and had enough numbing injections I would knock the fuck out and just wake up and like it would all be done 

by this point I had developed a tolerance to ketamine so I was awake for the entire surgery I couldn't feel pain but I could feel a presence crocheting the skin on my scalp for five fucking hours. For five hours, I laid there while this, but look how good it is. Can you see my

Brain surgery scar? Not really. I'm like a little bit, but not really. It did a good job. But for five fucking hours, I laid there while my scalp was crocheted and my eye was all, the skin was all messed with. And I was like, yeah, I thought I'd already been through the worst things I can ever go through, but this is the worst thing I can ever go through. Never say never, so I may go through something worse. I probably will, that's how life works. But up until this moment in

time, those five hours worst thing I've ever been through. Like I can't tell you what it's like to have five hours of somebody like embroidering your scalp skin. Like it was it was fucking terrible. 

So I laid there for five hours and I left with a blood -soaked hairline, a stitch -closed eye, and without my dignity. I've had my eye stitched closed three separate times. And without my dignity, I went back to home and I thought, okay, well, at least this is over and now we get to

go to the manager reachouts. Yay!

No. The stitches on my eye popped five separate times. Five separate times through the new year. I had to go back to Manhattan renumbed, which is I call getting stabbed in the face, but renumbed, re -stitched Five fucking separate times. It was terrible. And the worst part is this month, the month of December, it's the second worst month of my life thus far. 

The first worst month of my life is inpatient rehab. The second worst month of my life was December ‘22. The month I was in a coma was even better because I don't remember it. Like that was bad for everyone around me, but I personally don't remember it. So like that month for me was better. The months that are the worst for me are inpatient rehab and this month of December. And I love the holidays. December is my favorite month of the year. It is my favorite month of the year. I love being home. I think - I'm not religious, but I think the holidays in New York are the best thing ever. I have a huge Italian family. It is so fun. I was so excited for the

holidays. and I thought it would be the perfect place to recover and I would get all the success on the manager front. No, my holidays were pain. It was having my eyes stitched closed the entire month. 

And sure enough, it delayed me reaching out to managers. Obviously that delayed me reaching out to managers. And by the time I reached out, it was too late. It was too late by the time I reached out and so many responses I had gotten were like, "Oh, if you'd reached out to me a week ago, I would love to have a meeting, But now my roster's full, I just signed people.”

That was how my manager search went. That was how that month went, that by the

time I reached out to managers, it was too fucking late. 

(Also, a SAG strike was rumored to begin that May, so managers were being hesitant to sign

new talent, which affects everyone, but this podcast is about me.)

So the reason why I didn't have success on the manager front was because my surgery delayed me reaching out to managers. My surgery, this, this injury is the reason why I was unsuccessful at that front. So I was so annoyed. Like I was like, ‘but I was going to be good because now I have the uUniverse working for me, now I know what to do. I write out my manifestations every single day.’ 

My manifestations were entirely wrong because it was focused on I need a manager with these four specific qualities. That is way too limiting. Your manifestations could never be that long of a line. You need to allow flexibility to work with the Universe. I had a way too rigid of a grip on the Universe, which is essentially like blocking it and strangling it by saying, I needed a manager with these four specific qualities. 

I didn't focus on, I'm a productive person. I didn't focus on I've endless opportunities. I focused on, I want a manager with these four specific qualities and that is the opposite of working with the Universe. So I thought, I kind of thought that the Universe wasn't even there because I was like, now I'm working with the universe and my surgery went terribly and my manager search went terribly. So the Universe isn't really there. And that was truly how I felt. 

So when I went back to LA in January, after the start of the new year, after my last eye complication, the way that the whole thing with my eye ended was that the surgery failed and we basically gave up and decided to try again next year. So the entire surgery was a fucking failure. So it was a month of pain over a month for nothing, for nothing.

 And to be clear, I want to insert this right here. I'm not going to say his name, but the surgeon

of that whole procedure was a fucking douchebag, that surgeon. He basically blamed me for the stitch that kept popping. He kept insisting that I must have been like rubbing it off and pulling at it in my sleep. Every night I slept. I slept with an eye mask of gauze and medical tape and every

morning it was unmoved and untouched. I was not rubbing my stitches off in my sleep. but instead of admitting that his work wasn't successful. He was so pretentious that he wanted to put the blame on me, the patient, and the customer is always right! Obviously it was not my fault. And more than that, he disrespected my doctor Father who he should have viewed as a colleague. But clearly this motherfucker was way too pretentious to do that. And you know what, his surgery fucking failed and he provided me with the worst month of my life. Fuck you. I'm not saying his name because I don't want to disrespect him, but I hope he hears this.

So the surgery went terribly. The manager's search failed and I was back to feeling like nothing was there supporting me because I had thought the Universe would be there for me, but none of it had worked. So I was back to feeling alone, which is really how I felt this entire time. And I was back to feeling like nothing was supporting me. And really, that's all I wanted. That's why I wanted something to believe in so badly. I just wanted to feel like something was supporting me. And I thought it would be the Universe, but now the Universe wasn't there. 

But in actuality, something was supporting me the entire time. I just wasn't listening to it. The Universe was trying to redirect me, telling me that I needed to afford myself the time to heal, I needed the time to afford myself the time to seek other opportunities. And by being so obsessed with a manager and actor, by being so fixated and listening to my own ego, that's the thing I need, I wasn't listening to the support that was available to me the entire time. 

But then something happened. As I approached the year of my accident, my neuropsychologist, Dr. Anne Gottuso, who I was also working with up until spring 2024, she assigned me for the first anniversary of my accident to watch The Crash Reel. The Crash Reel is about Kevin Pearce. I talked about this a little bit in the last episode. He was a snowboarder that was expected to win gold and beat Shawn White at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. And less than two months out from the Olympics, he took a gnarly fall while trying to land a trick that he felt he needed to win the Olympics, - a double cork for those who know snowboarding,- I don't. He hit his head and he was also in a coma. Coma buddies had brain surgery and when all was

said and done, he could not go back to snowboarding and his entire life had been snowboarding. He had not gone to college. He had moved to California so he could

snowboard around his he's from Vermont and that's where his whole family was. He was

homeschooled and took Summer classes so he could like spend the winter focused on

snowboarding. That was his life and he couldn't do it anymore. 

So what options did he have? The option that he decided to go with is take that determination that comes from being an athlete and apply it to starting the organization LoveYourBrain which is an organization that I've become involved in and has grown very close to my heart. And for reaching the anniversary of my accident, um, Dr. Gottuso assigned me to watch The Crash Reell, highly recommend you guys watch it, it's on Amazon. And it's about his entire story. And it was the most validating experience because finally I was hearing somebody else with a brain injury, talk about what it felt like and talk about all the loss that came with it. And finally I was seeing someone go through and feeling exactly what I felt. 

And my family and my friends who have been there for me have been absolutely amazing. But there is just something that you don't know and you don't understand unless you have a brain injury. There is an innate feeling that you won't understand, that I feel all the time when I go about my daily life, that you don't understand what it's like unless you have a brain injury. And people don't realize how much harder it is for me to just sit here and talk than it is for somebody who doesn't have a brain injury. 

And because I present so normally, brain injuries are a hidden disability because I present so normally people think that I'm fine and I'm operating as normal or very close to normal with only a few deficits. That's not the case and people close to me will tell you that but even so people close to me don't have a grip on how bad it is except for maybe my Father because he's a doctor and my Brother’s a doctor as well so except for maybe the two of them, but Other than that, people close to me do not. 

It is impossible to understand unless you are living with a brain injury, how much, how hard it is for me at every moment of the day and how much I have had to become to used to constantly feeling the way that I feel. And I watched this film and finally someone said it. 

And at the end it mentioned this organization, he had started LoveYourBrain. So instantly I looked up the organization, I emailed them and they offer retreats and I applied and I attended a

retreat in March 2023 in Colorado. Now I volunteer at the March retreats in Colorado, but I attended a retreat in March 2023 and it was all these other TBI survivors, traumatic brain injury, who for the most, yeah, for the entire part, everyone was further out from their injury than I. I was just under a year and a half and I was the closest one by far. I think the next closest person was three or four years out. There were people who were 20 years out from their brain injury that attended this retreat. And I was given the most hope. I was validated for a week. I always say I'm like, that's the one week a year I get validated. No one's allowed to mess with me and my brain injury retreat. I didn't have to explain myself, which I often feel I do to normal people

around me. I didn't have to when I was here and I don't have to when I'm there because finally everyone just got it and everyone understood. 

And what I mainly got in addition to validation was advice on how to go forward because everyone was further out. And I also got, which I needed, the confirmation that I was doing a really good job. I was healing exactly how I was supposed to heal. I'm more so than that. I was actually healing really fucking good. The fact that I was less than a year and a half out and I was able to attend the retreat and talk about my experience as much as I did and I do was amazing.

Everyone was telling me that they were so depressed when they were where I was, or

they weren't able to talk to crowds yet, or they still had all this stuff going on. And the fact that I was there, I was doing fucking great. And all the emotionsI felt, the emotional spirals, the outburst, it was normal and it unfortunately comes with the type of injury that I have 

and one of the main things I got was that I needed to make friends who only knew me since my injury and I needed to build relationships and also pursue opportunities that were aligned with Gabriella 2 .0 because it was really affirmed for me that Gabriella 1 .0 was never coming back. So I needed to make relationships and have opportunities for my career and whatnot that

resonated for Gabriella 2 .0 and fit Gabriella 2 .0.

I also got a sign, a very specific sign for me. One of the things you'll learn about if you read the

Universe Has Your Back is a chapter sort of teaches you about how to ask for a specific sign and I asked for a specific sign. I don't want to say what it was because I still ask for it sometimes and I don't want to kind of fuck it up by saying what it is in the book that I'm writing. I say it's a deer so I'm gonna go with that. I asked for a sign of a deer and the last day of the retreat the attack thoughts started to creep back in about like "Oh, this was a great couple days, "but now I have to go back to the real life and it all fucking sucks. Real life fucking sucks for me right now." 

So I went for a walk to try to calm myself down because exercise really does that for me. And I hadn't seen deer the entire time. I was there, deer were not part of Colorado. And while I was going on this walk with my attack thoughts brewing and just thinking about how that everything was a deer ran across my path. And I said, the Universe is there, it is there, it is there, but I need to start listening. So when I got back to LA, I took my hands off the steering wheel and I said, “all right, take me we're going to go.” 

And I actually had the opportunity to sign with two managers after I got back from my retreat. But I didn't feel they captured all the qualities that I wanted in a manager. So I didn't sign with either of them. And before the retreat, I definitely would have signed with one of them just to say I had a manager and feel that. But I said, now, ‘if a manager is what I need, the Universe is going to put the right one in my path when it's the right time. But I don't think either

of these are the right time.’ 

And then, that May 2023, a SAG strike happened, so acting wasn't a thing, and I was forced to take a break. And this break allowed me to focus on other things. I really focused on fitness. I focused on building new relationships with people that I actually met at my gym, HEIMAT right here in Los Angeles. I focused on exploring all these other things like spirituality that I really found to love. I started writing my book. I was really, I became more inclined to do that. And I afforded myself. The SAG strike forced me to afford myself the time to heal, which is what I needed. See, the Universe gives you what you need. I think I was the only acto that was thankful, SAG, went a strike. I think I was the only actor that was thankful that that happened. I stopped choking the universe.

I stopped making everything abide by my personal timeline, am I a personal deadline? I stopped having everything go by my goals or what I thought I needed. And I started listening. And that is how I got to this place because I truly started listening. Stopped asking for the what and things kind of started to fall together and are still falling together for me since I did that. 

I just told you guys in the last episode about how I fell into the studio and I truly think that's because this is what I'm supposed to be doing or I think it's what I'm supposed to be doing. I right now am taking a break from acting because I was starting to get annoyed when my agent sent me auditions and they disrupted from what I actually wanted to do, which was write my book, start this podcast and explore spirituality more and also explore fitness more and

explore all these new avenues that Gabriella 1 .0 did not care about.

Gabriella 1 .0 was not spiritual. Gabriella 1 .0 like alternated between over exercising and not exercising at all. Now I'm very consistent about exercising every day for like a perfectly normal amount and I am in the happiest place I've ever been in my life and some of the relationships and friendships I've built, I would not have built them, had my accident, not had happened. And I've met people who I know are going to be in my life for a long time. You guys are going to meet one soon. My life coach, Dominique Gold, you guys are going to meet her soon. 

So that is the trauma porn episode. That is how we got to this place. That is how long it took me to stop listening to myself to stop being a narcissist and start being a spiritual student. And I am very glad that I am, and I'm very glad that I'm here. And this is the next part of me doing that because thus far, finding the studio, meeting Diego meeting Rebecca, things kind of seem to be falling into place as far as the podcast goes and as far as writing my book goes. And I think the Universe wants me to be doing this right now. So yeah, I was meant to get hit by a car, but I was also meant to live. And here's my journey about finding out why I was meant to live.