"With my handicap, they said I would be in a vegetative state all my life and to be able to talk and breathe and be alive, that's what I'm particularly proud of..."
"(The Multiple Sclerosis) has progressed in the last couple of years pretty bad… it's a cruel disease because it affects any part of your body that has nerves, which is everything. In my case, it affects my legs, my swallowing… I can't button my shirt because I don't feel my fingers… you knock things over… it gets really trying…"
"My dad left my mom when I was 2 years old, so my mom was an alcoholic… she neglected me… led me to go to the street life. I got jumped into a gang at age 13… in and out of institutions… was in juvenile hall at 13 for assault and battery… at 16, I stole a probation car… at 18, I got my first county time. I started using drugs at the age of 21… meth, progressed to heroin… that took me to prison. I have 6 kids now… I never raised any of (them)."
"I was a dancer… coming home from rehearsal one night, a drunk driver hit me… ruined my ankles, my knees, my back, my neck… bad amnesia, short-term memory loss… couldn't stay awake. I couldn't drive. I couldn't remember if I'd eaten or not… I could no longer take care of myself."
"I don't think anybody does it to be acknowledged (as a hero)…I think we just do it to do it. You're born with it…it's a calling."
"My first two wives were emotional bootcamp... both schizophrenic... I was a battered husband."
"I lived a carefree life and felt very lucky...then I got MS and had to completely re-evaluate my life."
"I've survived two kinds of cancer...had open heart surgery...my entire left leg has been amputated..."
"If people are depressed and they feel like they can't get through the day, look at your life, what you've overcome, what you've done already, and what you can do in the future."
"I was…sexually abused by an ordained priest…I was Joe Jock, Big Man On Campus, I had a lot of friends, I was a stud…and all of a sudden, I'm being sexually abused, used like a toy, by another man…everything is shattered…"
"I came from a broken-up family; I had a father who was very successful...he was my hero…he succumbed to mental illness, schizophrenia…he snapped when I was 17. It was devastating."
"Throughout my life, I've had trouble viewing myself as a person who had issues that needed to be solved… I was a very timid person… I was at core, at least…"
"I was born in Vietnam. I know what I saw when I was growing up…people who were crippled…begging for money…it's not a good sight to see…I know what it's like to get to that point where you just say, you know what, there's just too much building up, the only way is to just end your life."
"I think that people with illnesses that overcome it without being negative about it and not playing the victim role are probably the biggest heroes to me, because that (takes) a lot of courage to do that. And it helps other people say, 'I have that, too, and if they can do it, I can do it.'"
"Being diagnosed with breast cancer… was a challenge. It came out of the blue… I had no clue. I had just quit smoking a month before… went for my first mammogram… they found something suspicious. I said, 'Gee, I just quit smoking; it's like closing the barn door after the cows are out.'"
"When I was 16, my mother had a nervous breakdown…I was on a train, it was the middle of winter, and I was officially homeless. And I'm on the train, and I was mad at God: 'Yo, wassup, God? Why you wanna dis' me like that? Why you wanna leave me hangin' like that? What did I do to deserve this kinda stuff?"
"(Sarah's) father and I divorced when she was young…we did what we thought was right to assure her that it wasn't her fault…she just got tired of fighting…fighting to keep her mom and dad together, fighting to have her own opinions in a Catholic school…she found that, by clamming up, being quiet, repressing all of it, she could just fly under the radar. Eventually, it was gonna have to open up and come out somehow."
"I always was a curious person…about drugs and older kids and that lifestyle…it was a way to escape from teenaged life…parents, family issues. It definitely was a freeing experience, a new experience…gave you this feeling of everything's okay. But it was a superficial feeling, because it would end and you'd have to do more drugs."
"I was mired in what I would call an attention addiction… the idea of, if one person is radically attracted to me, what about three people in a room that are intensely attracted to me? I was in total denial… I was on Craigslist, soliciting anonymous sex…"
"I was 48 years old and crippled in a chair for 13 years… had two complete knee replacements… then I lost my vision to a cornea melt… all due to arthritis. (It was) one thing after another; I thought I was finished…"
"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome…changed everything. If somebody had said, 'this will take 7 years,' I'd have said, 'kill me now.'"
"In 1968, there was a Tet Offensive… a big (Vietnam War) battle that happened right in my hometown… it did a lot of damage to the town because of all the fighting and bombing… my house got bombed on New Year's Eve, and the house got cut in half. My mom and my younger brother and I could not run… we hid under the bed…"
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