After Injury: Reflection, Recovery and Re-Becoming Your Best Self

What does injury mean to you?

A setback? A disaster? An obstacle? An opportunity?

Labor and Employee Relations specialist Zaki J. Doudak reflects on the effects of injury, and offers his compassionate, clear-eyed guidance on how to respond when life changes lanes without indicating first.

Drawing on years of academic study and writing experience at law firms specializing in the plights of injured workers – often times, ironically, while injured himself – Doudak gathers his professional expertise and a sprinkling of timeless wisdom into this short volume of inspiring mini-essays on overcoming hardship.

Whether physical injury, psychological injury, cumulative trauma or sexual assault, Doudak offers encouragement, solace and ‘Big Picture’ strategies for coping when our batteries feel most depleted.

Over 10 concise chapters, Doudak offers readers a positive new perspective, underwritten by hard-won insights from his own life. It’s a self-help book to navigate difficult times. A “pep talk for the soul.” A road-map to feeling fully recharged.

While periods of incapacity and recovery can test our resolve, Doudak also believes they can provide a breathing space to reflect, reimagine and reevaluate our priorities. While we cannot change events, we can control how we react to them. And reinforcing positivity can make a key difference in outcomes.

A speedy recovery is about more than physical healing. It’s about mindset, resilience, and even having the patience to rest, so as not to risk re-injury and a prolonged recovery. It is not just for you; it is an insurance policy for anyone else who relies on you to be a positive influence.

While it is often for someone in a role of responsibility (a parent, partner or “breadwinner”) to feel like a burden, your ability to rely on others when you’re weak is often the surest way back to being strong for them.

After Injury is a welcome reminder to anyone in a time of hardship that while injuries can mean the end of one chapter, they are almost always the start of another.

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