Liz Murray
Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.Collection: Dreams
If I could have a family and a home one night, and all of it's gone the next, that must mean that life has the capacity to change. And then I thought, 'Whoa! That means that just as change happens to me, I can cause change in my life.'Collection: Family
I feel like my life has been a series of miracles. I was in every sense a lost cause.
I've learned in my life that you really don't know what's possible until you're already doing it.
I guess if there is a big spiritual experience in my life, it is me becoming a mother.
When I grew up in the Bronx, we always had everyone telling us, 'Watch out for the system, watch out for child welfare, watch out, they'll get you,' and I grew up with this feeling of, 'Society is over there and they're dangerous and not safe.'
I realized eventually that when I ran out of places to stay and found myself on the D train and in Central Park, I was actually homeless.
I think there is something to be said for what you can do when you don't know what you aren't supposed to be able to do.
The lesson that people can't give me what they don't have, and if there's anything I took from it, it was: okay, I don't really expect anyone to hand me anything. There's going to be me and the world.
People are surprised by the poverty and think that I wasn't cared for. But that wasn't the case - I was deeply loved.
I'd been living on the streets of New York, and I was sleeping at my friends' houses, sometimes in the subway.
When you take charge of your own narrative, it gives you a handle on it.
I was 17 and living on the streets. I had the education of technically an eighth-grader, but in reality, I had never had a formal education.
My mother used to sit at the foot of my bed, and she would share her dreams with me.
I had a calling inside of me. I had a sense that when I was going through experiences like living on the streets, losing my parents to AIDS, just having my whole world turned upside-down, there was this feeling inside of me like I was meant for something greater.
I have just one black and white photograph left of my mother when she was younger. She was 17 when it was taken and beautiful with wispy curls and eyes that shone like dark marbles.
Ma was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease she'd had since birth. This meant she was entitled to welfare, and our lives revolved around the first day of every month when her payment was due.
As well as being blind, Ma turned out to have the same mental illness that her mother had had. Between 1986 and 1990, she suffered six schizophrenic bouts, each requiring her to be institutionalised for up to three months.
Shortly after I turned 13, Child Welfare took me into care. I was sent to a residential centre where girls with behavioural problems were 'evaluated'. My time there comes back to me now only in flashes of smells, images and sounds.
If I had a magic wand, I would live in a building in New York, big enough so my friends, my family could all have apartments in it. We'd raise our kids in the same space and have backyard barbecues and get old and fat together.
If I want to be a loving, generous, giving person, I'm not going to test the waters. I'm simply going to be a loving, generous, giving person.
I thought, 'Let's make it a check list. What if I got my education even though I lost my mother, even though my dad is in a shelter?' and looking at these things as hurdles to go over. I could inspire myself.
I realized that I had the ability to carve out a life for myself, that it was in no way limited by what had already occurred in my past. And that inspired me to go to school.
I guess more than anything, I just realized, okay, one day I had a home to live in and my family around me. The next day, I did not.
There was just so much attention that got focused on my story, and what that created was an opportunity for me to share what were the tools, what were the strategies, what was the thinking that had me break though those boundaries.
This fork in the road happens over a hundred times a day, and it's the choices that you make that will determine the shape of your life.Collection: Life
Anything that is within someone else's reach is also within yours. Set your goals no matter how impossible they may seem. Then focus on what is between you and that goal. And then, simply take out the obstacles as they come.Collection: Goal
There's always a way through things if you work hard enough and look close. It all depends on your level of determination.Collection: Determination
You are bigger than your circumstances.Collection: Bigger
In the years ahead of me, I learned that the world is actually filled with people ready to tell you how likely something is, and what it means to be realistic. But what I have also learned is that no one, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it.Collection: Mean
Life takes on the meaning that you give it.Collection: Giving
One point of view gives a one dimensional world.Collection: Views
But avoidance allows you to believe that you're making all kinds of strides when you're not.Collection: Believe
Success creates opportunities for other people.Collection: Opportunity
Life has a way of doing that; one minute everything makes sense, the next, things change. People get sick. Families break apart, your friends could close the door on you.Collection: Doors
Many nights, I longed for home. But it occurred to me as I struggled for a feeling of comfort and safety: I have no idea where home is.Collection: Home
When you go back to your environment and you deal with employees... do you inspire people or do you make them feel fear? Do you make them feel confident or incompetent? I think that distinction really marks the leader.Collection: Leadership
My mother used to sit at the foot of my bed and she would share her dreams with me.Collection: Mother
... In our family, if you said the words 'I feel,' they better be followed with 'hungry' or 'cold'. Because we didn't get personal, that's just how it was.Collection: Cold