Weaving Through the Labyrinth: Emerging from a Traumatic Brain Injury

Theisen, Ginger A.: - "Ginger Theisen grew up in a small town in northeast Nebraska with a strong sense of curiosity that has guided her throughout her life. Horses played a significant role starting at an early age until high school. Then her interest shifted to film as an art form inspired by the independent and foreign films she watched at the Sheldon Art Museum in Lincoln. This experience sparked her desire to pursue a career in film. After graduating from high school in 1973, she lived in Paris and worked as an au pair, returning to the United States a year later to study film at Syracuse University in upstate New York graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and Film. Eventually, she got a job on the camera crew at Nebraska Educational Television (NET), a PBS affiliate. Then moved into an associate producer position in the Cultural Affairs Unit. In late summer of 1989, she and her son moved to California where she freelanced in the San Francisco Bay area. A year later she got a job at George Lucas's visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). She moved through the ranks starting as a production assistant to a production coordinator and to a visual effects producer. During her fifteen years at ILM, she worked with an extraordinary talented group of people to create ground breaking visual effects on several films including Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, The Perfect Storm and A.I Artificial Intelligence. She left ILM in 2005 to freelance as a visual effects producer until 2012 when her career shifted to the creative side after optioning the film script Crazy Horse based on the life of the Lakota warrior. This prompted a move back to Nebraska to develop the film. At the same time, she worked on the Crazy Horse Ride documentary, filming the ride in June of 2013. Two months later, she traveled to Guyana with two other filmmakers to work with the Witness Project high school students to write, produce, direct and act in their first short film Rebecca's Story. When she returned to Nebraska the beginning of September, work continued on the Crazy Horse Ride documentary and the feature film. A week later, she went horseback riding at Mount Michael Benedictine Abbey with one of the monks, Brother Mel. This was on September 12, 2013. They saddled up the horses and left the paddock when the horse slipped and fell, landing on top of her. The journey through her recovery from a traumatic brain injury is in this book, bringing a sense of closure to that chapter of her life, ready to fully embrace the next chapter."