When Mirela Giles lost her speech, it was a devastating blow as she could no longer do her job.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
But the 46-year-old, of Warners Bay, turned to singing, dancing and holistic health to recover.
When she had a stroke in February, it was unexpected because she felt healthy.
"My cholesterol was good and I'm physically active," Ms Giles said.
When the stroke hit, she tried to drink water but couldn't swallow it.
"I wanted to swear but couldn't."
A tradesman doing tiling at her home called for help. Paramedics arrived within seven minutes and took her to hospital.
The stroke left her with aphasia, a communication disability that affects talking, comprehension, reading, writing and spelling.
"The experience was like being plucked from your reality and displaced in another reality you can't control or understand," she said.
She shared her story for Aphasia Awareness Month.
About 140,000 Australians live with aphasia, which can also be caused by brain injury and epilepsy.
Stroke Foundation chief executive Lisa Murphy said one in three survivors of stroke will experience difficulties with communication.
Ms Giles was a teacher when she lost her speech.
She could no longer do her job "because I couldn't speak and speaking is my superpower".
"I was very upset and devastated about the stroke. I relied a lot on my knowledge of health in general, Western and holistic."
She will soon complete a health science degree.
"I thought, OK, I have to look at this from a different perspective, as an opportunity to build a better life," she said.
"I'm either going to be eaten alive by this and be a victim of it, or I can embrace it.
"So I started doing things I love like dancing. I went back to dancing tango."
She said music therapy "helped me immensely with speech" and singing "worked miracles for me".
"I took music classes at Newcastle's National Music Academy, and then I moved on to sound healing.
"Learning to drum and sing at the same time was a huge factor in my recovery."
She wanted to improve her speech as quickly as possible, but hit a roadblock.
"The more I stressed about it, the worse my speech became, which was incredibly frustrating," she said.
"The advice from the speech pathologist and neurologist was to practise speaking in 20-minute periods about five to six times a day.
"I felt that the more I practised, the more pressure I put on myself. I would get it wrong and get really frustrated, tired and demoralised."
So she decided to relax and "let my brain do what it has to do".
She trusted her brain to "recover on its own terms and in its own time".
Her approach worked. She was discharged from speech therapy in six weeks.
She hadn't reached out to family and friends about her condition because "I was embarrassed by it".
"I felt like it was my fault, but it wasn't really. It was a PFO (patent foramen ovale) - a hole in the heart that I didn't know about," she said.
"I had an implant put in. Hopefully that solves it."
Ms Giles said there should be a screening program to detect people with a PFO, which researchers say affects about 25 per cent of people.
She said the Stroke Foundation had given her "so much support".
For help, call StrokeLine on 1800 787 653.
