90. My Husband's Accident + Navigating Grief & Becoming a Caregiver
In this episode of The Nourishing Autism Podcast, Brittyn returns after several months away to share a deeply personal update about the past 8 months and why life has looked so different for her and her family.
Just before Christmas of 2025, Brittyn’s husband, Jack, was involved in a serious cycling accident that resulted in a severe traumatic brain injury and an unexpected, life-changing recovery journey. Listen as she shares how Jack is doing today, the incredible progress he has made, & what the road ahead looks like for Brittyn and her family.
Most importantly, this episode is a heartfelt thank you to the family, friends, community, and listeners who have stood by Brittyn throughout this journey. If you’d like to help support Brittyn and her family, one of the best ways is to support the work she has built over the years. You can learn more about her nutrition membership, resources, & products through the links below.
Resources & Ways to Connect with Brittyn
Nourishing Autism Collective: Looking for individualized support with your child's nutrition, selective eating, gut health, supplements, or expanding their diet? Join the Nourishing Autism Collective for courses, resources, recipes, expert guidance from Brittyn and her team, & a supportive parent community. Here's the link to learn more: https://www.nourishingautism.co/
Food Hopper: Brittyn's app designed to help parents expand their child's diet by tracking food exposures, building a personalized food list, and discovering new foods based on the foods their child already eats. Here's the link to learn more and start your 7-day free trial: https://www.foodhopper.co/
Best Part Kids Multivitamin: The sensory-friendly children's multivitamin Brittyn created in partnership with Harkla, available in unflavored and berry options. Here's the link to learn more or to purchase: https://bestpartkids.com/
Free Resources on Nutrition for Autism: Visit www.autismdietitian.com for freebie PDF download, free blog articles, podcast episode archives, & additional nutrition resources for you and your family.
Masterclass for Nutrition Practitioners: Are you a practitioner, or do you know a practitioner, who wants to better understand nutrition and supporting autistic children and families? Learn more about Brittyn's practitioner masterclass here: www.autismdietitian.com/masterclass
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
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TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everybody. It has been a long time since I've recorded an episode for the Nourishing Autism Podcast, and there is so much to update and so much has happened since the last episode. So I wanna take a second to share a little bit about what's been going on in my personal life and what's been going on inside of Autism Dietitian since then, and really just catch everybody up if you haven't been following me on social media or if you have, just getting an overall update on everything Brittyn and everything Autism Dietitian.
My husband was involved in an accident in December. We had just gone home for the holidays to Oklahoma to visit my family for the holidays. Both mine and my husband Jack's families are from Oklahoma. We met in high school. And we went to my mom's house that she has on a lake, and Jack went out for a bike ride, he's an avid cyclist, and didn't come back. And I got a call from Oklahoma Highway Patrol on December 22nd, around noon, that he was involved in an accident and had been hit by a car, and that he was being life flighted to the nearest level one trauma center.
They told me he was alive, that he was in critical condition, and that I needed to leave right now to go to the hospital. It was about a 20-minute life flight, but an hour-and-a-half drive.
So I told my mom. We have a one and a three-year-old. They had just turned one and three at the time. This was three days before Christmas, and I ran downstairs. I told her while I was still on the phone what had happened, ran upstairs to pack a bag, and took off to the hospital. My dad lives in Tulsa, which is where he was being life-flighted, and I called him, and he immediately went to the hospital and got there around the same time that the helicopter was landing.
And so he was, like, giving me updates from there, what they were hearing what they were seeing, and, that was helpful, and I was calling Jack's family and then calling friends to, have them just start praying because I could tell how serious it was based on what the police or the highway patrol had told me.
And cutting ahead to where we are now, against all odds, Jack made it. He sustained a severe traumatic brain injury and level three diffuse axonal injury, which is a type of brain injury that happens at high speeds. What happened was that a man who should not have been driving, an impaired driver, should have never been on the road.
He... I can't even go into more about that because it's still an active investigation and is not something that I can publicly share. But it's just very unfair that we had to pay for somebody else's choices that have been repeated and should have never been allowed to be driving a car, nor should they have been allowed to be living their lives out where they could be endangering others.
So, we were in the ICU for 35 days, and at the end of those 35 days, Jack was still minimally conscious. There was a period of time from like days seven to 10 where he was following a couple of commands, like giving a thumbs up, giving a peace sign. He even flipped a nurse off when she asked him to, which we all celebrated.
It's very against Jack's personality to do that, so it was extra funny that he did it and also told us, okay, maybe he has some higher level, functioning if you say give a thumbs up versus, "Hey, flip someone off." Being able to say, "Okay," i-in your brain like, "I know what flip off means," and then be able to use your middle finger to do that action.
And that is what eventually got him accepted into Craig Hospital, which is a neurorehabilitation hospital in Denver, Colorado, and is one of the top neuro rehab hospitals. I believe it actually was just named amongst the top again for 2026, and we qualified to be able to go there in their Disorders of Consciousness program.
And we got there at the end of January and just hit the ground running, and eventually in March, beginning of March, he was officially considered as emerged out of that minimally conscious state. And from there, continued intensive therapy. He went through this really difficult stage for 10 weeks where he had severe restlessness and agitation, which we learned was a process of healing and a process of brain injury.
Unfortunately, just a really tough stage, and some people go through it for days, some people go weeks, and some people go months. And we had 10 weeks of just severe restlessness and agitation where he just couldn't sit still, where he was just constantly agitated and frustrated and just, not himself.
All of it's tough, right? It's like the early days of the ICU where he had brain bleeds and we didn't know if he was gonna make it to making it through without any additional strokes and making it to Craig and going through where we weren't sure if he was understanding language to then knowing that he's understanding language and noticing him laughing and responding to commands and then going through this severe stage where it finally resided in June to then be able to leave Craig and go to another rehabilitation hospital in Ankeny, Iowa, of all places, at a place called On With Life, and had an incredible experience there.
Actually, as we speak, I'm still at On With Life recording this podcast, and we are about to go home and discharge back to Oklahoma. Now, many of you know that we live in Boulder, Colorado. And so when we got to go to Craig, it enabled our family to be able to move back and our one and three-year-old to go back to school and see their friends and us to be back in our community.
And that was truly an amazing thing to be able to have our community. We've lived there for four years, and have them surround us and love on us and support us, and have some routine back for our kids and be back in our house. And, I decided to move the kids after we left Craig to Oklahoma for my mom to be able to continue to be a full-time caregiver for them.
And I've continued going back and forth between Craig or Denver and Boulder, and then Denver to Oklahoma, and then Iowa to Oklahoma every other week to be one week on with Jack and one week on with the kids. And it's just been a blur of eight months of just not knowing what comes next and not knowing what to expect.
And going from, Jack and I were saying, "2026 is our year," because 2025 was a rough one. Some of you may also know, I recorded a podcast on it, but also have shared on social media that after our daughter was hospitalized for RSV at the very beginning of 2025, she developed really severe full body eczema that we've been trying to figure out and understand the root causes of it, and was an incredibly stressful year while we navigated that and breastfeeding and with suspected food allergies for her.
And it was a rough year with the hospitalizations and everything. And we just said, "2026 is it." I had a lot of new things on the horizon for work, one being something that I've been working on for a long time called Best Part Kids, which is a kids supplement line for sensory sensitive kiddos, neurodivergent kiddos, that I partnered with Harkla, an incredible sensory brand who does sensory swings and weighted vests and other sensory tools for kids.
We paired up to create this incredible supplement, which did actually launch in April and something that I'd been so excited and of course still excited to be a part of in launching and just about right when we approved the formula, everything changed. The accident happened. And the other thing that I started developing was a mobile app called Food Hopper, which did actually end up launching this past June.
It was originally going to launch in January, but I had to push it back, but is an app for parents of selective eaters to be able to track and log their child's new food exposures, receive new food ideas based on their child's favorite foods of things to try, build their child's food list and more.
That is an app that has launched and is in the App Store if you just search Food Hopper and you can try a free seven-day trial. So all of these things that were in development for 2026 that we were just very excited for and this year just ended up looking completely different than we could have ever anticipated.
Those very exciting things, to also launch in the midst of the hardest thing that we've ever gone through in our lives, I feel really proud, but simultaneously they felt really heavy to launch too because, the person that has supported me in everything and has been like my cheerleader from day one, was just so different.
And he's still, here cheering me on, but just in a different way. I guess that leads me to where Jack is now and what things look like. He is still fighting to learn how to walk and talk and eat and be independent again. He's still not doing any of those fully independently. At this point, he's just been approved to start eating purees and even then is still, we're having to really work at that.
He's vocalizing but cannot independently say words. He can spell different words on his alphabet board. He can walk with quite a bit of support with a walker and gait belt. But it needs me and at least one other person to be able to support him in doing that, so he's still primarily in a wheelchair.
He has come an incredibly long way from being minimally conscious back in even, March, that's five months ago, to... can just tell how much he really is there, and we laugh, and I joke with him, and he knows everything that's going on and is very participative in conversations even though he can't speak, and hand gestures and, it is just... You really truly understand what matters and what doesn't in something like this, and I have just been... my whole world has been flipped upside down, and what I really realize matters is your family and the people you love and the people you do life with. And Jack and I have known each other since we were 15.
We became good friends when we were 17. We started dating when we were 20. We got married at 25. And I've been with him or known him for over half my life and, is the person I talk to every day and like my best friend and it just completely changes everything when something like this happens, especially when it's such a shocking thing that's unfair, that was not his fault or our fault and having a one-year-old and a three-year-old, like there's so much to every day. You can look at your situation and say how unfair it is and how you never deserved this and how this should have never happened because it's all true, but also looking every day of gratitude that he's alive because I've certainly learned from many different people and sources and people who responded to him that day who never thought that he would make it past the Life Flight.
And reading old hospital notes that his risk of mortality was incredibly high. And just looking at him today, seeing how far he's come, I just am so grateful that he's still here with us. And I will never take that for granted again. I'm so grateful for my friends who have supported me, my mom who has stepped in as full-time caregiver for our kids, and my dad who has, slept in the ICU waiting room for two weeks because he didn't want me to be alone if something happened and who has been with me at Craig and, is here to help drive us home from here, who just, again, like agrees, nothing else matters but family.
And so I'm just so grateful, for my family and then, for Jack's family who loves him so much and cares for him so much and the support that they've given him and us, too. There's a lot to be grateful for in the midst of such sadness and heaviness and unfairness.
And for anyone who doesn't know Jack, which I think is most of the people probably listening to this podcast, also just my belief in him to overcome this, and I have been told how long of a recovery journey this is. We're not talking months. We're talking years of recovery. And again, we're eight months into this and still have so much further to go.
But Jack is... he is truly one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I can't believe that I am married to him because he's truly amazing. He is so self-determined, holds himself to such a high standard. He also has an incredible sense of humor and loves his family so much.
He's an incredible father, an incredible partner, an incredible friend. Anyone who knows him can say the same. He's just truly an incredible person. He played really competitive soccer growing up. We're talking for like high school soccer team, we're talking for like he played as a youth with FC Dallas, which is an MLS team, with their U18 team.
He played soccer at Duke while he was in college. He played pro soccer afterward as well, and is just an incredibly hard worker who I feel so confident for him to overcome this. He's also one of the smartest people I know and he tries really hard, but also just is naturally smart and witty.
So like I said, if anyone can overcome this, I know that it's him. It's just unfair that it has to be him to overcome it because he's done everything right in his life. He's worked hard. He's pushed himself and
bad things happen to good people and it's unfair that way. But all of us are pushing through to overcome this and be able to look back and not be able to believe what we've overcome. And so all that being said, wanted to give a huge update on what life is looking like for us right now and as I transition into full-time caregiver and parent and still business owner, just what things are looking like now.
So right now what I'm focusing on, I love my work, I love what I do. I hope that you all can feel that from, if you follow me on social media or you listen to this podcast, you know that I truly love what I do and love to support families, and I will continue doing that just in a little bit of a different way.
So I love being a business owner too, an entrepreneur, and coming up with new and creative ideas to support families. But right now, what I am doing is looking at what I have and focusing on that. So I won't be launching anything new, but I will be continuing to support families inside of my membership, continuing to support Best Part Kids as we grow the supplement brand, and continue to be creative with Food Hopper, my app.
And so if you're looking for ways to get support, and simultaneously ways to support my business which supports my family, those are the ways to do it. You can get selective eating support and nutrition support for your child who's on the autism spectrum through the Nourishing Autism Collective.
That is my membership that I've been running since 2020, and you can join by going to nourishingautism.co. And we have online courses within there on how to expand your child's diet, on how to help them with chronic constipation or other gut issues, and then just optimizing their diet, helping understand which supplements to look for, what could be beneficial.
We also have what's called the Autism Nutrition Library that's wrapped up in there, where we have hundreds and hundreds of notes inside of our library where you can learn more about multivitamins or learn more about L-theanine or some other supplement. You can also learn about probiotics, prebiotics, look at different symptoms and conditions like constipation or sensory processing disorder.
We have hundreds and hundreds of topics that you can understand, as well as hundreds and hundreds of kid-friendly recipes. And then we also have our huge community where I have additional support in there as well, but I answer questions multiple times per week inside of the community. And everything that you need to have success with nutrition for autism, it is inside of the Collective.
Then I have Food Hopper, which you can download from the App Store on iOS and Android, and again, I explained a little bit about what that was, but basically your pocket guide on how to expand your child's diet with the right foods, and how to document how it's going, and how many exposures you've had to a new food, and which new foods we'd recommend based on your child's foods they already love from a sensory perspective.
So you could go in there and say, "Hey, my child loves apples. Go find apples." You'll see all the different variations of apples that you could consider trying, as well as foods that are similar to apples that you could consider trying, like pears or something else. And it basically just takes that overwhelm of coming up with those new food ideas to add those foods to your plan-to-try list and log those foods over time.
I had this idea back in grad school so over 10 years ago, and finally it's come to fruition, and it has been so much fun to develop and create and it's just been so fun to get so much great feedback on the app. Currently rated five stars in the App Store, and you can also request new foods,
if your child's safe foods are not in the app, we will add them. So you can request those at any time. And then Best Part Kids, you can learn more by going to bestpartkids.com. And right now we have our flagship multivitamin. We have an unflavored option and a berry option that is created with methylated B vitamins, chelated minerals, and all the nutrients that your child needs to thrive.
We also have added brain support nutrients like inositol that can support your child's nervous system, sensory processing. It is the multivitamin that I have always wanted to recommend that I got to create alongside Harkla, and it's just been so much fun. We have so many things that are in the works, like a sleep supplement and probiotic and so many other things.
So those are the three big places that you can find me and get support from me. Again, support my business, which supports my family. And I'll link all of those in the show notes so that you can find that. But if you just go to autismdietitian.com, you will find everything that you need.
You can also find free resources there, so if you're not in the place to financially sign up for something, or you're just looking for additional free resources to add to your repertoire, you can go there, and we have extensive blogs on autismdietitian.com, all of the archives on my podcast, which of course you can find wherever you're listening to your podcast as well.
And you'll also see freebies that you can download there. There's also practitioner trainings if you are a practitioner and you would like to take my two-part master class, or if you'd like to send that to one of your practitioners to take. You can learn more there. But I just wanna thank you all so much for all of the support that we've received already.
I just can't say enough how grateful I am for everyone's messages that I'm still sifting through over social media and inside of my membership. You all have been just the most supportive and amazing people. I'm just so grateful to be able to support you all through all of this. And to my team, my amazing team who has helped me get through this and has picked up basically where I left off when the accident happened, my incredible assistant, Kamila, who is just my right-hand woman who just took everything on as her own and my amazing team, Renee and Allison, so grateful for you all and everything that you've done to support me throughout this entire journey.
Those are the people that are working behind the scenes to make things happen while I was out, and now that I'm back, again, focusing on family, focusing on being a caregiver, and then focusing on the three things that are currently going. And for the podcast, I am allowing myself to release pressure from releasing weekly podcast episodes and just doing it where it feels good.
And so you will occasionally find a podcast episode pop up every now and then. I do have one recorded here just recently with Dr. Dana Johnson, who specializes in whole body apraxia for autism, but it actually was a recommendation from a couple of members inside of my membership.
But Jack now experiences whole body apraxia. You can have both apraxia that you're born with and acquired apraxia. She will talk through what apraxia is. I had her inside of my membership and recorded that podcast live. For those of you who may not be familiar with what apraxia is, it's a brain and nervous system disorder that stops a person from doing planned tasks or movements, even though the muscles work fine.
So basically, the brain fails to send the correct plan to the body, which can affect speech and body movement. So we see this in autism, but we also see this in brain injury, again, where it's acquired, like in Jack's case. And so I learned so much from her, and so did the members inside of my membership.
And so I will be releasing that podcast episode soon. And then again, we'll just be recording podcasts where it feels good and therapeutic and helpful for me and members of my membership as well as you all in my audience. Thank you for understanding and allowing me that flexibility to take that space as we transition into this new normal for our family and just supporting us in all of these ways.
I just really appreciate it so much. And there's so much to share on our journey. I have documented a lot of it on Instagram, and I've saved those as a highlight, so you can go to Instagram and follow our journey from the very beginning, from the ICU days to Craig to on with life and see the progress that Jack has made.
I plan to continue to update you all. I'm not sure in the way that will be best, but certainly through social media. And who knows? One day maybe I'll write a book about our experience that we've gone through, through this whole process and what I've learned along the way. I believe that what's meant for us will find us, and if that is writing a book one day, so it will be.
But until then, thank you all so much for all the love and for all of the prayers. Truly, that's the biggest thing that's gotten me through this is being lifted up in prayer. I've felt so loved by everyone who has been praying for us and keeping us in your thoughts. Not to go into a whole another topic, but a lot of this has completely restored my faith and I just really believe that everything that we've been through and the progress that Jack's made, it's just truly made me realize that there's so much more to life and really has brought me back to my faith that I grew up with and took some time away from, in later adulthood, and I just see it so differently now.
So just wanna say any prayers are always welcome, and I will definitely share more about that journey if anyone's interested in hearing that, but again, I'm grateful for where we are and where Jack is now and for all the support that's gotten us here. So much love to all of you and I hope to have another episode soon on the Nourishing Autism podcast.
Would be so grateful if you rated my show five stars and if you download Food Hopper, if you would rate it five stars in the App Store as well.
Thank you all so much for everything, and I hope to be talking with you again soon.
Transcribed by Descript
About Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD
Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, is a distinguished Registered Dietitian and Autism Nutrition Expert, known for her innovative, sensory-friendly feeding approach to nutrition for children on the autism spectrum. As the founder of the Nourishing Autism Collective, and as an autism sibling herself, Brittyn brings both professional expertise and personal understanding to her work. She empowers families with her expert guidance, helping children receive essential nutrients for optimal health and development. Her strategies are tailored to the unique dietary needs and sensory preferences of each child.
Brittyn's influence extends beyond her membership site through her active social media presence and her popular podcast, 'Nourishing Autism'. Her educational content on Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms has established her as a leading voice in autism nutrition, providing valuable resources, practical advice, and a supportive community for parents and professionals.
