Mom Went Viral Sharing How She and Husband Care for Her Ex After Brain Injury. 1 Year Later, What She's Learned (Exclusive)

• Kris Armstrong's first husband, Brandon Smith, suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him with severe disabilities

• Armstrong was determined to remain his caregiver, though, and she became his legal guardian — even as she also went on to remarry

• She has been sharing her family's unique journey on social media and tells PEOPLE that "the kindness is the thing that has shown brighter than anything"

Kris Armstrong says she has experienced the best — and worst — of social media since she decided to open up about her ex-husband's traumatic brain injury, learning to be his legal guardian and caretaker and then remarrying a spouse who helps care for him, too.

Some commenters felt it was cruel to put Brandon Smith, her ex, in public in light of his disabilities. Others applauded Kris and James Armstrong’s selflessness in light of such sudden challenges. Everyone had an opinion.

“It’s been challenging at times, because there’s a lot of people that are just really ugly, calling us ‘adulterers,’ but you have to ignore those people,” James, Kris' second husband, said in an interview when PEOPLE first shared their story last year.

“The whole reason [my wife] started this TikTok is because she wanted to create a community of people who maybe are going through the same thing,” James, who works on compressors and generators for an oil rig contractor, said then.

A year later, Kris, 40, is reflecting on their lives today and says the positive effects of telling their story far outweigh the negative comments they have gotten.

“I think the story gets skewed and people think Brandon is being forced to be around me and my husband. I don’t even think Brandon knows James is my husband,” she says. “But the positivity and the kindness is the thing that has shown brighter than anything else to me in sharing our story.”

None of this, though, is what they had expected. Kris married her first love, Smith, at 21. The Texas high school sweethearts met when they were just young teens and clicked immediately. Then their lives were shattered in 2008 when Smith was involved in a horrific car crash that left him both mentally and physically disabled, with a brain injury.

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After the crash, Smith was unable to fully communicate with his then-wife. Kris could talk to him, but they couldn't discuss complex thoughts or issues. Meanwhile, doctors said they "didn't know what his future would look like."

“Of course they told me he had a severe brain injury and would be affected his whole life, but I didn’t know what that would be," Kris explained to PEOPLE last year. "The unknown portion was particularly terrifying.”

She stayed by his side as he partially recovered, and changed her career from art history to become a speech pathologist, but after a few years she realized “he wasn’t going to have a recovery where we could have a partnership."

His full abilities have fluctuated over time, from non-verbal to limited speech. After living with Kris for a few months once he left the hospital following the crash, Smith was moved into a long-term care facility about 10 minutes away.

“I knew that I loved him dearly, wanted to take care of him, and to still be in his life,” Kris said last year. “And I knew of the people in his life, I was the most able to care for him.”

Related: Woman Divorces Man After His Traumatic Brain Injury — and Now Her New Husband Helps Her Care for Him

In time, however, Kris realized that she wanted a life partner as well — someone with whom she could raise a family, and someone who could help her with caregiving.

About two years after Smith's crash, she divorced him but became his legal guardian. She has never stopped caring for him, she says, and her husband, James, whom she married in 2015, has been by her side through all of it.

“My heart just poured out to him, just seeing him in a wheelchair, unable to care for himself and not there mentally for the most part,” James, 38, told PEOPLE last year.

He and Kris recently attended a special Christmas brunch at Smith's nursing home, near where they live in Houston. James was feeding him when Smith got tired and placed his weary head on James.

“It was a sweet moment when he was leaning on James and James had him,” Kris says. “He’s a safe person that Brandon can trust. It’s a special relationship and I'm glad they both are able to benefit from that.”

Kris works with others who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. Her social media still revolves around Smith and his care, which has inspired her followers and allowed them to form a special bond with him, she says.

In a recent post on TikTok, Kris talks about a recent gift someone got Smith after finding her videos online. Smith has loved Bob Marley for most of his life, and so a follower had gifted him a Marley commemorative coin.

Smith clearly says “Bob Marley” in the post — an example, Kris explains, of how he can go in and out of the world. She says it is hard for people to understand his cognitive ability from the videos: There are times when there is no communication and other times when he talks but it doesn’t make any sense, “just kind of disjointed.”

“He almost says ‘I love you’ when I tell him I love him,” Kris says.

“Then there are times, especially from the past, that’s very salient, like Bob Marley,” she says.

Music, she says, has always been important to Smith, and she says it was “cool” to capture that moment on video.

“He has moments of clarity, but then he has a lot of time where it’s hard to connect with him at all,” Kris says. “But those moments are really sweet.”

The big Smith project this year was a fundraiser to get him a specialized wheelchair which will allow him to go on outings with the family after exceeding their GoFundMe goal and raising more than $10,000 of the needed $9,800. 

Kris is looking forward to hitting the road. “Just to get him outside more, just to open up his world a little wider,” she says.

Living at the nursing home offers little stimulation, something Kris believes is vital in keeping Smith alert. The family already includes him in many activities, including attending church. James and Kris have also talked about taking Smith to brain injury camp.

“Brandon doesn't always verbally express how he is moving through the world, but I think something like this would bring a lot of joy to him,” Kris says. “I can tell when he's joyful because he smiles, even if he doesn't say explicitly, ‘I’m enjoying this,’ he'll smile or look relaxed.”

“Brandon has taught us every day that life does not end when tragedy happens,” she says. “We have to get creative and find ways to keep on living. Even when it doesn’t look the way we had always planned.”

Read the original article on People