ANNUAL REPORT 2025 / 2026
Thirteen years after a single-vehicle 
car accident left Karen Skarra with 
a traumatic brain injury, recovery is 
still something she approaches one 
day at a time.
Looking at Skarra today, you might never guess the 
challenges she’s experienced. Yet the effects of her brain 
injury remain: chronic pain and fatigue, short- and long-
term memory loss, and aphasia, which affects her ability 
to speak, read, and write. 
“Rehabilitation was far more grueling mentally than it 
was physically,” she shares. “Because my injuries are 
mostly invisible, people often made assumptions about 
my health and even the effort I was putting into my 
recovery.”
Skarra spent relentless hours working to get to where 
she is today. After a month in acute care, she spent 
another month in the inpatient brain injury unit at the 
Glenrose, followed by nearly two years of outpatient 
rehabilitation. From cognitive exercises to brain games, 
the hospital provided her with tools and frameworks she 
continues to rely on more than a decade later. “There 
were so many things I was already having to relearn,” 
she says. “Having that baseline and somewhere to refer 
back to helped me understand how to challenge my 
brain while it was rewiring.”
That foundation gave Skarra a place to start. From 
there, much of the work was her own — challenging her 
thoughts about what recovery should look like, learning 
to cope with setbacks, and understanding herself in a 
completely different way. The hardest part, she shares, 
Art
as Rehabilitation
Karen Skarra 
works on her 
latest charcoal 
drawing, I Am 
Strong, a personal 
reflection of her 
rehabilitation 
journey

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