M. Renae Dubois, or Renae, as she prefers to be called, is a Brisbane girl who suffered from a brain injury as a result of a motor vehicle accident at the age of 16.

 

Renae was brought up in a family with creative influences. Her father is a classical musician who worked with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) for 30+ years, and her mother is a retired sales lady who volunteers with craft organisations to support women in distress. Renae's parents engaged her in musicals, choirs, and the public speaking for such events. Renae was even with her family in the opening of the Lyric Theatre at QPAC in Brisbane prior to the Centennial celebrations culminating in Expo 88.

 

The children’s choir her father managed had also organised to perform at Expo ’88, at a Religious Pavilion.  

Academically Renae did well at school as a result of her prolific reading, until Senior levels.  In fact, the only subject Renae passed in year 11 was Logic, a philosophy subject that was self-paced. Renae did well in this subject, and intends to study philosophy more, in her current Bachelor of Arts degree.

 

The motor vehicle accident that caused the closed, frontal and temporal lobe injury, occurred at Numinbah Valley, near Mt Tambourine on the Gold Coast hinterland. It was a head on collision with a truck on a narrow, blind corner. Renae was 16 at the time and was in a coma for a number of days. She also broke both arms, requiring plates in her right arm.

 

Renae experienced an almost immediate personality change and began to act in ways that were unfamiliar to her family and her church group. She had already begun to move away from the influence of religion and her parents Baptist church, but the decisions she was making after the accident were radically different than anything that had occurred previously. 

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Renae entered the adult world very quickly and totally unprepared. Symptoms of a head injury include risk-taking behaviour, poor judgement, and sometimes, hypersexuality. 

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Renae began drinking alcohol soon after the accident, and before too long, was introduced to drugs, soft and hard. Upon getting fired from her first full time job, and turning 18, Renae began working in the sex industry which she continued on and off for 30+ years.  

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All along she wrote poetry, a skill probably brought on by the head injury. In 2020, after leaving hospital for a recent nasty drug habit problem, she published her first verse-novel. Renae received no assistance in this endeavour save her father's financial aid. 

 

Since this, Renae has fully recovered from her drug problem and taken up reading and is aiming on studying at University. She is also proud to have written and released her second verse novel, by the name of “Utterly: A Biography in Verse”, which deals with relationships, mental illness, death of a loved one, and her exit from the adult industry.