We were lucky to catch up with Rachel Paverman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

When I was 25 years old, a shocking discovery was made of a 3 cm cavernoma (vascular tumor) on my brainstem. After 2 failed craniotomies with the purpose of removing it, it was finally successfully removed after a third craniotomy in December of 2019. Although the surgery removed the lesion, I was left with multiple physical deficits which interfered with my ability to walk, my vision, my hearing, and the ability to use the right side of my body. After being released from the hospital in February of 2020, the COVID pandemic began a few weeks later. I was left trying to navigate recovering in my new body alone without the help of professionals, since therapy services shut down. The one thing that kept me focused was my strong motivation to get back to as normal a life as possible. I also really tried to focus on being positive in my journey. During that time, I started a recovery instagram page called @recoverwithrach where I was able to connect with others in the brain injury community and spread my positivity to those who needed it. I also started journaling my day to day recovery. In between my surgeries in the ICU, my mom would read me books about other brain injury survivors and it inspired me to begin writing my own book. During COVID, I wrote bits and pieces of what I remembered about my terrifying journey. This story, combined with all of the journal entries, turned into my own published book, To The Abyss.

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have a bachelors degree in sports events and tourism marketing. I graduated in 2016 and started working for the New York Giants. I also worked for a events company that put on pharmaceutical programs for oncologists, and I traveled all across the US and internationally before discovering my cavernoma in 2019. I had no previous writing experience, but I was very motivated to share to my story with the world.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I love being able to motivate and connect with other people who might be in similar situations as me. I feel like my view on life has changed for the better and I want to inspire other people to see the world the way I do. I love that my instagram and book have allowed me to have creative outlet and platform to be able to do so.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The process of writing a book for me was different compared to the average person. Since I cannot use the right side of my body and I am right handed, I wrote the whole book from my phone using my left thumb. I also had one eye stitched closed for a medical reason, so I was only able see out of one (shaky) eye. After my whole story was written down, I had no idea what to do next as I have never gone through the process of publishing a book before. I had to research all of the different ways that a book can be published to figure out the best way to get my story out to the public. After realizing how expensive editing services were, I decided to edit my book myself by re-reading it multiple times and enlisting the help of my sister to help me edit the book. I chose the route of self publishing, and my book was finally published about 2 years after I initially decided to start writing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rachelpaverman.com
• Instagram: @recoverwithrach
• Facebook: To the Abyss
• Linkedin: Rachel Paverman
• Other: TikTok: @rachpaves