Juliana Ramos' Family: The Tragedy and Triumph of This Day In Our History

Just as we did last year on this very date, we have participated in a special video creation to show you, instead of just tell you, where Juliana is in her recovery.  However, since we are in a very different place in our lives and specifically, Juliana is in a very different place in hers, this update carries a little more meaning. 

Last year at this time we had good reason to hope and the excitement we privately knew was unfolding. This year we prepare for a different kind of awakening and opportunity, but with just as much anticipation of the unknown. The past few months have catapulted Juliana to the next level of consciousness and with that door opening, it is time that we all walk through it. 

To illustrate clearly what I am saying obscurely, this update will take place through a series of videos to be posted in segments over the next few weeks. Although we have long planned to create a video for this anniversary, recent improvements in Juliana’s mental state opened the door to give you 3D—with gravity. You will get a chance to hear from some of Juliana’s siblings whose lives were altered by the events of two years ago and it becomes transparent that this is a family injury.  You will also get to see her physical progress, how her therapists see her now, and finally you will get to hear from Juliana herself. 

We have been asked many times to have Juliana interviewed and it was never something she was willing to do—until now.

It meant a lot to us that Juliana wanted to be heard so you can see this girl just like the rest of us: flawed but fixable.

WATCH: The first installment of Patch's video series:

It’s hard not to get exceptionally introspective as the calendar changes to October once again and I am forced to reflect on all the bad and subsequent good that has happened to my little family. I have never felt deserving of any of it both the tragedy and the triumph but that is the fabric of life and we are cloaked in it.  Juliana has often dictated the critical moments in my life, whether she knew it or not, and this will be another one.  The content is as powerful as it is inspiring.  In the conversations you will see Adam, Dylan, Cheyenne, and Juliana get a chance to say in their own words how they all feel about the events that have shaped our lives. 

It's often said, "Life is not about what happens to you, it's about how you handle what happens." You will see how Juliana is handling what has happened to her with as much awareness as she can muster. I am thankful she is capable and interested in doing so. If I sound a bit cryptic, watch the video series that encapsulates the two-year anniversary of her accident and form your own opinions. Ultimately we are really just a family that was devastated on Oct. 2, 2009, then handed a serendipitous salvage on Oct. 2, 2010.  The accident and all of its effects are the tragedy and Chris’s golden ticket to American Idol was the triumph.  Three and a half months later our lives became a "story." That reality show became a subtitle to our life but when you stop reading the "story" or turn off the Internet or television, our lives continue on. 

As Juliana was being interviewed her answers were sometimes quiet and inarticulate and they vacillated between introspective and superficial, much like the way her brain is re-emerging. What I describe to you in this blog about her progress are the highlights and the lowlights, not usually just the daylights,  But as she participates you will see her being "middle of the road" and may even wonder where all of this miraculous progress has gone that I am writing about lately. 

Believe me, I feel that way sometimes when she reverts back to being difficult to understand or tolerate but this continues to be a jagged road.  

The road repairs appear somewhat randomly throughout the day so the only way to really know what its like is to live it (an experience I do not recommend by the way). Hopefully the videos help to put it in perspective. It took Chris being home for this whole week and seeing Juliana as a composite of extremes along with the quiet stuff in the middle to agree that she is definitely changing in the right direction, but she still has a long way to go. It makes you smile and sigh in the same tiring breath as you try to make sense of it all. 

For our family this day marks the anniversary of two events both as unbelievable as the other and as we lament and celebrate the tragedy and the triumph we must recognize that this also signifies something else: the promise of a whole new year of recovery from a traumatic brain injury—for Juliana.

WATCH: The first installment in our four-part series:

READ:  Where it all began, in For Juliana: Almost to the Almost, One Penny at a Time, by Janet Spencer Barnes.