Every month, the SELF Effectively-Learn Ebook Membership highlights a well timed, pleasant, and essential ebook on a topic that helps readers dwell higher lives. Up to now, we’ve coated every little thing from the politics of working to the state of contemporary motherhood.

While you hear folks talk about traumatic mind accidents, you may consider soccer gamers, boxers, or cheerleaders. TBIs are a medical occasion that really feel confined to skilled athletics, or another scenario that’s significantly unlikely and violent. In actuality, an estimated 3.8 million concussions happen in america every year—and as many as 50% of concussions go unreported, that means most of the individuals who have them may not even remember.

So goes the story of Annie Liontas, who fell off their bike and hit their head on the age of 35. On the time, their prognosis was “traumatically induced transient disturbance of mind operate,” which, Liontas quickly understood, is interchangeable with “concussion,” “delicate head trauma,” and “delicate traumatic mind damage,” or mTBI. They element this incident and its deep, rippling results in a brand new ebook, Intercourse With a Mind Harm, SELF’s January Effectively-Learn Ebook Membership choice.

Over the subsequent yr, Liontas skilled two extra concussions, exacerbating their signs. In a brief span of time, Liontas went from being a “wholesome particular person”—a author, a instructor, a accomplice in a wedding—to somebody who identifies as Sick.

Within the weeks and months following the accident, Liontas couldn’t learn. They forgot the place the numbers went on a clock; they could not stand being exterior within the solar; their short-term reminiscence was shot. They get “arousal migraines,” tinnitus, and nausea throughout foreplay—that means intercourse, which was a supply of pleasure and confidence for Liontas, grew to become one thing virtually feared. “A head damage will take so much from you,” they write. “Loud music, fragrance, storms, sprinting, delight, however what it takes out of your accomplice is insufferable…you already know 48 to 78 p.c of marriages disintegrate after mind damage, don’t you?”

Their story is without delay a cautionary story in what can occur once you trip a motorcycle and not using a helmet, a mirrored image on how little we actually find out about our our bodies regardless of all of the science and healthcare accessible, and a private historical past of what occurs when our bodily relationships with most of the issues we all know and love—our households, scrumptious meals, and sure, even intercourse—evolve past our management.

We hope you’ll be a part of us in studying Intercourse With a Mind Harm. Seize your individual copy of the ebook under, and keep tuned for a Q&A with Liontas on self.com later this month!