Skip to main content

Cristabelle Braden moves forward after brain injury


When you listen to Cristabelle Braden speak, she does it confidently and with a smile, yet she's quiet and chooses her words carefully.

When you listen to her sing, she hits the notes perfectly with her powerful voice.

It's what you'd expect from any professional singer, but not one who went through what Braden has.

On December 2, 2007, Braden suffered a traumatic brain injury when she hit her head off the floor while playing a game, which caused her brain to swell. It was a story we covered two years ago, but the impact of the injury still affects her today.

Even though the life-altering event took away a lot from Braden, including memory loss, there was one thing she found after the fact – hope.

With that hope, Braden created an organization called Hope After Head Injury to instill that hope to others who have suffered through similar situations.

"It's a part of who I am at this point. With my Hope After Head Injury organization, I named it that because after my head injury, that's when I found hope. At first, there were some dark times," Braden explained. "When I found hope, I've continued to hold on to it. When I think of my brain injury, I just think of hope. I think of moving forward.

"I still have difficulties, I do. They haven't gone away. I still have headaches and problems. I think of where I came from and how far I can continue to go. With that, I think of hope."

At first, Hope After Head Injury was just an anonymous Twitter account that Braden created. After a while, it picked up steam, which led Braden to come out behind the figurative curtain to put a face with the account.

"There were a lot of people out there that really needed hope. I continued tweeting, but then I realized I should probably say who I am and not keep it anonymous. I connected it to my music career after about a year of tweeting anonymously," Braden said. "I started a Facebook page, an online blog, video blog and an Instagram. It grew from social media to real life things. I started to have Hope After Head Injury events incorporated into my music career. It's just now something that is starting to get established. I'm excited for the future of the organization."

It's something that the Center Valley native will have more time for now that she is almost finished with college. Braden graduates from Lebanon Valley College on Saturday, May 9, with a double major in music and religion.

Along with her organization, Braden is looking forward to continuing her budding music career, which she says will be her full-time job.

"I'm going to be recording my third CD. I'm very excited. I'm going to be continuing full force into my music career. I'm very excited to be going into that full time," said Braden. "Now that I'm finished with school, I can put all of my energy into doing this full time. It's what I love."

Braden, an independent artist, said she will be releasing her single for her new album in June with the working title of "We're Gonna Make It." Her new album will be out later this year, but it will be different from her past two efforts, which were faith-based worship CDs.

"My music has changed a lot over the past couple of years, especially with going to Nashville last year for a few months and coming back. Now, I write inspirational pop music. It's music that you can sing along to and it can brighten your day," Braden said, with a smile. "I know that I have very hard days. My next single is a drive-in-your-car-with-the-windows-down-fist-pumping song. Because those hard days that you have I want my music to be the place people can go after those hard days. They'll know that somebody gets it. I want them to listen to the song and get it, too."

For now, Braden is promoting her latest single, "Hope Survives," which is available on iTunes, Amazon and bandcamp.com. On the latter site, people can buy the song and make a donation. All of the proceeds from the song go to brain injury awareness.